Jean LIN

Cultural property—any property that appreciators would attribute to a certain culture—, when presented in an artwork, could affect the overall evaluation of the artwork. This paper will assert that cultural property could yield both positive and negative values, focusing on the perception of exoticness, novelty, morality, and authenticity. It will be argued that these values are: 1) significantly dependent on the cultural background of the artist and appreciator; 2) cognitive yet aesthetic; 3) problematic when presented to different cultural groups. The discussion in this paper will involve pursuing the following questions. Is aesthetic property objective or subjective? Are cognitive and moral values aesthetic? How do cultural problems play into evaluating artworks? Investigating these questions will contribute not only to the discourse of aesthetical issues but also the social and anthropological issues, namely the consumption of the Others in the imperial era, the problem of cultural appropriation, and the concept of authenticity in the contemporary context.