Making Art History In Europe After 1945

This book analyses the intermeshing of state power and art history in Europe since 1945 and up to the present from a critical, de-centered perspective. Devoting special attention to European peripheries and to under-researched transnational cultural political initiatives related to the arts implemented after the end of the Second World War, the contributors explore the ways in which this relationship crystallised in specific moments, places, discourses and practices. They make the historic hegemonic centres of the discipline converse with Europe’s Southern and Eastern peripheries, from Portugal to Estonia to Greece. By stressing the margins’ point of view this volume rethinks the ideological grounds on which art history and the European Union have been constructed as well as the role played by art and culture in the very concept of ‘Europe.’

This book examines contemporary artistic practices since 1990 that engage with, depict, and conceptualize history. Examining artworks by Kader Attia, Yael Bartana, Zarina Bhimji, Michael Blum, Matthew Buckingham, Tacita Dean, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Omer Fast, Andrea Geyer, Liam Gillick and Philippe Parreno, Hiwa K, Amar Kanwar, Bouchra Khalili, Deimantas Narkevičius, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Walid Raad, Dierk Schmidt, Erika Tan, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions since 1990 undertakes a thorough methodological reexamination of the contribution of art to history writing and to its theoretical foundations. The analytical instrument of anachrony comes to the fore as an experimental method, as will (para)fiction, counterfactual history, testimonies, ghosts and spectres of the past, utopia, and the "juridification" of history. Eva Kernbauer argues that contemporary art—developing its own conceptual approaches to temporality and to historical research—offers fruitful strategies for creating historical consciousness and perspectives for political agency. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, historiography, and contemporary art. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 license.

This book presents and analyzes artistic interactions both within the Soviet bloc and with the West between 1945 and 1989. During the Cold War the exchange of artistic ideas and products united Europe’s avant-garde in a most remarkable way. Despite the Iron Curtain and national and political borders there existed a constant flow of artists, artworks, artistic ideas and practices. The geographic borders of these exchanges have yet to be clearly defined. How were networks, centers, peripheries (local, national and international), scales, and distances constructed? How did (neo)avant-garde tendencies relate with officially sanctioned socialist realism? The literature on the art of Eastern Europe provides a great deal of factual knowledge about a vast cultural space, but mostly through the prism of stereotypes and national preoccupations. By discussing artworks, studying the writings on art, observing artistic evolution and artists’ strategies, as well as the influence of political authorities, art dealers and art critics, the essays in Art beyond Borders compose a transnational history of arts in the Soviet satellite countries in the post war period.

This book argues that the provenance of early modern and medieval objects from Islamic lands was largely forgotten until the "long" eighteenth century, when the first efforts were made to reconnect them with the historical contexts in which they were produced. For the first time, these Islamicate objects were read, studied and classified – and given a new place in history. Freed by scientific interest, they were used in new ways and found new homes, including in museums. More generally, the process of "rediscovery" opened up the prehistory of the discipline of Islamic art history and had a significant impact on conceptions of cultural boundaries, differences and identity. The book will be of interest to scholars working in the history of art, the art of the Islamic world, early modern history and art historiography.

A member of the art history generation from the golden age of the 1920s and 1930s, Millard Meiss (1904–1975) developed a new and multi-faceted methodological approach. This book lays the foundation for a reassessment of this key figure in post-war American and international art history. The book analyses his work alongside that of contemporary art historians, considering both those who influenced him and those who were receptive to his research. Jennifer Cooke uses extensive archival material to give Meiss the critical consideration that his extensive and important art historical, restoration and conservation work deserves. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, historiography and heritage management and conservation.

This collection of articles explores a possible alternative beginning of Global Art History and World Art Studies, two methodologies that set a worldwide focus in the study of art around the 2000s. Teaching back to earlier efforts to conceive of the international community in a less Eurocentric way, the volume proposes a tentative link between socialist internationalism as a political and cultural diplomatic principle in the Soviet Block and some new approaches to art and cultural historiography introduced there. In the "Second World", universal art history or Weltkunstgeschichte were endorsed as frameworks for the teaching and writing of art history. Authors in this book interrogate whether "world art history" as practiced by socialist scholars had aspirations and achievements comparable to today's Global Art History and World Art Studies. Or was this knowledge production in an internationalist paradigm a mere foil for communist rhetoric, behind which severed cultural relations to the Western world could also be recommenced?

This book maps key moments in the history of postwar art from a global perspective. The reader is introduced to a new globally oriented approach to art, artists, museums and movements of the postwar era (1945–70). Specifically, this book bridges the gap between historical artistic centers, such as Paris and New York, and peripheral loci. Through case studies, previously unknown networks, circulations, divides and controversies are brought to light. From the development of Ethiopian modernism, to the showcase of Brazilian modernity, this book provides readers with a new set of coordinates and a reassessment of well-trodden art historical narratives around modernism. This book will be of interest to scholars in art historiography, art history, exhibition and curatorial studies, modern art and globalization.

Difficult Heritage and Immersive Experiences examines the benefits involved in designing and employing immersive technologies to reconstruct difficult pasts at heritage sites around the world. Presenting interdisciplinary case studies of heritage sites and museums from across a range of different contexts, the volume analyzes the ways in which various types of immersive technologies can help visitors to contextualize and negotiate difficult or sensitive heritage and traumatic pasts. Demonstrating that some of the most creative applications of immersive experiences appear in and at museums and heritage sites, the book showcases how immersive technologies offer the possibility of confronting and disputing presumptions and prejudices, triggering responses, delivering new knowledge, initiating dialogue and challenging preexistingnotions of collective identity. The book provides a conceptual, as well as a hands-on, approach to understanding the use of immersive technologies at sensitive sites around the globe. Difficult Heritage and Immersive Experiences is essential reading for researchers and students who are interested in, or engaged in the study of, cultural heritage, memory, history, politics, dark tourism, design and digital media or immersive technologies. The book will also be of interest to museum and heritage practitioners.