This book is about the yearning for authenticity via art and exoticism. Exoticism related to art cannot be reduced to primitivism alone and also encompasses a search in one_s own unconsciousness among other things. The yearning for authenticity through exoticism is explored in a cultural anthropological perspective in the realms of Western philosophy (capita selecta) and colonial literature, currents of art, and in the appreciation of Western art conceptions in non-Western societies.