World Art Studies Research Papers

The project of global art history calls for balanced treatment of artifacts and a unified approach. This volume emphasizes questions of transcultural encounters and exchanges as circulations. It presents a strategy that highlights the... more

The project of global art history calls for balanced treatment of artifacts and a unified approach. This volume emphasizes questions of transcultural encounters and exchanges as circulations. It presents a strategy that highlights the processes and connections among cultures, and also responds to the dynamics at work in the current globalized art world.

The editors’ introduction provides an account of the historical background to this approach to global art history, stresses the inseparable bond of theory and practice, and suggests a revaluation of materialist historicism as an underlying premise. Individual contributions to the book provide an overview of current reflection and research on issues of circulation in relation to global art history and the globalization of art past and present. They offer a variety of methods and approaches to the treatment of different periods, regions, and objects, surveying both questions of historiography and methodology and presenting individual case studies. An 'Afterword' by James Elkins gives a critique of the present project. The book thus deliberately leaves discussion open, inviting future responses to the large questions it poses.Contents: Introduction: reintroducing circulations: historiography and the project of global art history, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel; Reflections on world art history, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann; Art history and Iberian worldwide diffusion: westernization/globalization/Americanization, Serge Gruzinski; Circulation and beyond - the trajectories of vision in early modern Eurasia, Monica Juneja; Circulations: early modern architecture in the Polish-Lithuanian borderland, Carolyn C. Guile; Cultural transfers in art history, Michel Espagne; Spatial translation and temporal discordance: modes of cultural circulation and internationalization in Europe (second half of the 19th and first half of the 20th century, Christophe Charle; Mapping cultural exchange: Latin American artists in Paris between the wars, Michele Greet; The global NETwork: an approach to comparative art history, Piotr Piotrowski; Global conceptualism? Cartographies of conceptual art in pursuit of decentering, Sophie Cras; The German century? How a geopolitical approach could transform the history of Modernism, Catherine Dossin and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel; Afterword, James Elkins; Index.

What is the scope of 'global art' and who drives its framing within the current climate of corporate globalization? In what ways do the recent global turn and curatorial turn underwrite meaningful global inclusivity and visibility, and to... more

What is the scope of 'global art' and who drives its framing within the current climate of corporate globalization? In what ways do the recent global turn and curatorial turn underwrite meaningful global inclusivity and visibility, and to what degree does this globally shared art constitute mutuality? Does 'global art', including the accompanying process of biennialisation, allow for local narratives in a way that seriously accounts for a geopolitical view of contemporary art in the twenty-first century? While the inclusion of 'new art worlds' in what Belting, Buddensieg and Weibel (2013) term 'global art' is framed as a democratisation of contemporary art and the demise of the western art canon, it is important to raise questions regarding the blind spots of this supposedly global, post-1989 expansion.

In this article I analyse the current discourse of 'global art' as articulated in The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds (Belting, Buddensieg & Weibel 2013), focusing on its origin, transcription, mapping, consumption and ultimately, I
suggest, its emergence as a function of privilege. Challenging the charting of supposedly new art regions (Belting et al. 2013:100), which 'writes-out' local narratives and counter-narratives, I argue for a logic of subtraction in place of a logic of addition. While the latter triumphantly implies that 'new' art worlds have been added to the dominant core, the former is useful to a geopolitical perspective that strips away normative vision and actively seeks that which people often fail to see.

In this paper I analyse the work of CAPE Africa Platform in South Africa, which, while briefly and erroneously used as "evidence” of biennialisation and global expansion in The Global Contemporary, was locally referred to as 'not-another-biennial'. Discussing what some see as the shortcomings of the Cape 07 and Cape 09 exhibitions, I propose a reconsideration of measures of 'success' and 'failure', suggesting that an embrace of 'failure' can enable new ways of seeing the privilege of the contemporary art world. It is only when blanks, failures and things presumed not to exist are carefully regarded, that the goal of achieving mutually shared art on a global scale might become possible. Only then does it become apparent that the global south can have a certain edge over what is viewed as the prevailing art world.

Bookmark
Download
- by Ruth Simbao
- •
- 32
  Cultural Studies, Art History, Performing Arts, Art

Der kontrovers diskutierte Begriff einer globalen Kunstgeschichte, »Global Art History«, wird in diesem Band zum übergreifenden Thema gemacht. Die Beiträge international renommierter KunsthistorikerInnen fokussieren jeweils spezifische... more

Global survey of body art, from the prehistoric period through to contemporary globalised developments, via themes such as sociality, beauty, identity, etc.

Bookmark
Download
- by Nicholas Thomas
- •
- 14
  Anthropology of the Body, The Body, Body Image, Sociology of the Body

This special issue of Humanities Research offers a selection of papers presented at the international conference ‘The World and World-Making in Art: Connectivities and Differences’ held at The Australian National... more

Bookmark
Download
- by Rinki Hulth
- •
- 8
  Anthropology, Art, Contemporary Art, Social and Cultural Anthropology

Kunstgeschichte als komparative Kunstwissenschaft -eine Problemskizze Lehre und Forschung, mediale und museale Vermittlung -es gibt kaum ein Element kunsthistorischer Praxis, das nicht auf der Herstellung und Kommunikation von Vergleichen... more

Bookmark
Download
- by Joachim Rees
- •
- 3
  Comparison, Kunstgeschichte, World Art Studies

Global and World Art in the Practice of the University Museum provides new thinking on exhibitions of global art and world art in relation to university museums. Jane Chin Davidson and Sandra Esslinger, editors. The volume includes a... more

Bookmark
Download
- by Jane Chin Davidson
- •
- 11
  Museum Studies, Museum, Museum Education, Museum Anthropology

An introduction to basic visual poetics.

Bookmark
Download
- by Robert Belton
- •
- 10
  Art History, Art, Art Theory, Painting

The starting point of this paper is George Kubler’s topographical and conceptual expansion of art history as a history of things. The author suggests a reading of Kubler’s book The Shape of Time that explores its value for a... more

The starting point of this paper is George Kubler’s topographical and conceptual expansion
of art history as a history of things. The author suggests a reading of Kubler’s book The
Shape of Time that explores its value for a postcolonially informed art history in a global
context. First of all, this raises the question of Kubler’s motives for his critique of the art
historical canon. His studies of Ibero-American art presented him with unforeseen methodological
problems, which he tried to solve in The Shape of Time. Noteworthy here is that he
supports his central theses with examples taken from colonial history that he encountered in
his research. Therefore, a postcolonial re-reading of The Shape of Time is long overdue. The
paper addresses this blind spot in Kubler’s reception. While contributing to a revision of the
status of Kubler’s theory in the current debates around World Art Studies, it also considers
the political dimensions of his book.

Dieser Beitrag nimmt George Kublers topografische wie konzeptuelle Erweiterung der Kunstgeschichte
als eine Geschichte der Dinge zum Ausgangspunkt,
um sein Buch The Shape of
Time für eine postkolonial informierte Kunstgeschichte im globalen Kontext produktiv zu
machen. Dies wirft zunächst Fragen nach Kublers Beweggründen für seine Kritik am Kanon
der Kunstgeschichte auf. Seine Beschäftigung mit iberoamerikanischer Kunst stellte ihn vor
methodische Schwierigkeiten, für die er in The Shape of Time einen Ausweg suchte. Dabei ist
es bemerkenswert, dass er zentrale Thesen des Buches mit Beispielen aus der Kolonialgeschichte
stützt, mit der ihn seine Forschung konfrontierte. Deshalb drängt sich eine postkoloniale
Relektüre von The Shape of Time geradezu auf, wurde bisher jedoch nicht vorgenommen.
Der Beitrag widmet sich diesem blinden Fleck in der Kubler-Rezeption. Er trägt nicht nur zur
Revision von Kublers Theorie in der aktuellen Debatte um die World Art Studies bei, sondern
fragt auch nach der politischen Dimension des Buches.

Espace de lointaines traditions et de mouvements incessants, la Méditerranée est un monde singulier qui s'écrit toujours au pluriel. Aujourd'hui, comme dilué par l'écume quotidienne de l'actualité médiatique, son bleu magnétique n'est... more

Bookmark
Download
- by George Lau
- •
- 3
  World Art History, Modernism, World Art Studies

World Art Studies

Log In