Abstract
The anthropological analysis of art is still dominated by a notion that the artistic creations of traditional societies communicate intellectual meanings or 'messages' that are implicated in the reproduction of culture and society. In this article, I argue that frequently this approach is at best incomplete, at worst untenably functional. Using as illustration the ka nimbia spirit house produced by the Yangoru Boiken of the East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, I show how attention to the affective properties of traditional art can surmount these difficulties and account for the construction of these labourand resource-intensive works, the varied emotions and feelings they evoked in their audiences, and the nature of the spirituality attributed to them.
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