World Art

"Volume 0" is a curatorial project curated by Dr. Max Carocci - anthropologist and curator of Indigenous American arts. Taking Renassiance texts such as Ramusio’s of Navigations and Voyages as a point of departure, the project looks at the historical role of Venice in the development of European knowledge about Indigenous North-Americans. Invited Native American / First Nations artists, Alan Michelson (Mohawk, USA) and Nadia Myre (Anishinaabe, Canada), have been asked to respond to European perceptions of indigenous American peoples in an act of de-colonization of the historical relationships that connect them to Venice.

Catalog of the 2011 exhibition of works by renowned Tunisian artists Nja Mahdaoui and Khaled ben Slimane at the New Sahara Gallery, Northridge, CA.  Co-organized with Galerie el Marsa (Tunisia). Contact me about obtaining a hard copy of the book.

In Pursuit of Universalism is the first comprehensive, English-language study of early twentieth-century Japanese modern art. In this groundbreaking work, which is also the inaugural recipient of the Phillips Book Prize (awarded by the Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art), Alicia Volk constructs a critical theory of artistic modernism in Japan between 1900 and 1930 by analyzing the work of Yorozu Tetsugorô, whose paintings she casts as a polemic response to Japan's late-nineteenth-century encounter with European art. Volk places Yorozu at the forefront of a movement that sought to define Japanese art's role in the world by interrogating and ultimately refusing the opposition between East and West. Instead, she vividly demonstrates how Yorozu reframed modern art's dualistic underpinnings and transposed them into an inclusive and synthetic relation between the local and the universal. By looking closely at questions of cultural exchange within modern art, In Pursuit of Universalism offers a new and vital account of both Japanese and Euroamerican modernism. Volk's pioneering study builds bridges between the fields of modern and Asian art and takes its place at the forefront of the emerging global history of modern art.

Reviews:
“Masterfully written. . . . Alicia Volk embarks upon a fascinating journey to develop an alternative perspective for narrating the complexities of the Japanese art scene. . . . Volk’s stimulating book definitively illuminates a new horizon for the field of modern Asian art. . . . It is precisely what the discipline needs.”— Journal Of Oriental Studies

“Forceful and eloquent. . . . Volk masterfully unravels the knotty strands that coalesced to shape one individual artist’s perception of self and his work within existing academic, institutional, and professional structures. . . . [The] book deserves praise for being a substantially rigorous and provocative probe into the search for universalism in a differentiated world.”—International Journal Of Asian Studies

“Deserves to be read by all historians of modern art and East Asian culture.”—Journal Of Asian Studies

“An impressive book, beautifully produced and sustaining intellectual rigour with its detailed, stimulating research.”— Japanese Studies

“Excellent. . . . Exquisitely written.”—The Art Bulletin

"Written beautifully and compellingly... Volk has made an important contribution to the growing literature on alternative artistic modernisms." --The Journal of Japanese Studies

"In presenting readers with this most cogent argument for the emergence of Japanese modernism through the artistic engagement of one of its central players Volk has made a genuinely original contribution to the field."--New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies

"This is an... intellectually nourishing read, in which Volk's voluminous knowledge of art movements and discourse creates a text of commanding erudition."--The Japan Times

“Volk's impressive study rethinks the East-West binary often reiterated in discussions of Japanese modernism by reinserting local aspects into the universalizing tendencies of modernism itself. The book makes an important contribution to the growing literature on modern Japanese art history by providing an alternative comparative framework for understanding the global development of modernism that decenters Euro-America. Rigorously historical in her critique, Volk destabilizes our understanding of the Japanese experience of modernity through the prism of Yorozu's singular vision of the self, leaving us questioning conventional wisdom and contented to wobble.”—Gennifer Weisenfeld, Duke University

“In Volk's affectingly stunning and deeply reflective study of the Japanese artist Yorozu Tetsugorō's work between 1910-1930, we have a profoundly historical reminder of how modernism everywhere struggled to meet the demands of the new with the readymades of received artistic practices. In this study of Yorozu's utopian universalist project, Volk has imaginatively broadened our understanding of the modernist moment and perceptively captured its global program to unify art and life, contemporary culture and history.”—Harry Harootunian, author of Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan

Este famoso ensayo de Arthur Danto, que se presenta aquí traducido al español, fue el primer desarrollo de su concepto de «mundo del arte» como un marco contextual que da sentido, por medio de sus usos teóricos-lingüísticos, a toda forma de arte reconocible en el mundo. Este concepto tendría una influencia enorme en todo el mundo, y fue la base de todo el pensamiento posterior de Danto acerca del arte, y su principal herramienta filosófica para vender en todas partes la idea de que las obras de Andy Warhol no sólo eran legítimas obras de arte, sino incluso, obras importantes de arte.

In the late 1980s women artists took the reins of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement in Australia. After years of working in the shadows, assisting their fathers and husbands, they burst onto the scene, giving it a new vitality and dynamism. Women artists redrew the boundaries of Aboriginal art, and continue to be among its most daring innovators.

Drawn from the collection of Debra and Dennis Scholl, Marking the Infinite features the work of nine leading exponents of this ongoing tradition: Nonggirrnga Marawili, Wintjiya Napaltjarri, Yukultji Napangati, Angelina Pwerle, Carlene West, Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Lena Yarinkura, Gulumbu Yunupingu, and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. These nine artists offer a snapshot of the diversity of Aboriginal Australian contemporary art practice. Matriarchs in their communities, they are steeped in the ancient cultural traditions of their people. Inspired by these traditions, they extrapolate to the universal, creating artworks that speak
to the entangled globalized world in which we live.

In this volume, the art of each artist is given in-depth analysis by leading art historians, curators, and anthropologists. The essays shed light on the rich and complex histories behind the artworks, placing them in the contexts of traditional Aboriginal culture, philosophy, colonial experience, and the contemporary art world. Marking the Infinite shows nine artists producing works that cross cultures and bridge worlds. This strength of vision is immediately evident in works that shimmer and swirl, affirm their authority like lightning bolts, or sparkle like the night sky. These are marks upon
the infinite, connecting people from different cultures and countries, and reminding us of our shared humanity.

Featuring contributions from Tina Baum, Anne Marie Brody, John Carty, Rachel Kent, Howard Morphy, JoAnne Northrup, Hetti Perkins, Cara Pinchbeck, Sarita Qunilivan, Elina Spilia, Will Stubbs and Suzette Wearne.

This dissertation will investigate in the ways in which contemporary non-European art is perceived in the ‘Western’-dominated international art world and how this leads to a certain portrayal and behaviour of non-European artists as according to limited definitions and confined boundaries. The effect this has is apparent in the area of artistic production and circulation as well as the reception of artwork. It is looked at ‘exoticism’ and ‘self-exoticism’ that are generated and upheld by outdated and mostly inapplicable disciplinary fields of enquiry, involving the demand for a ‘consumable exotic’, not only apparent in the areas of fine art but similarly within aesthetic products of popular culture, transgressing the often supposed boundaries between. The politics involved in (re)producing ‘Otherness’ within the aesthetic and the insights that Postcolonial Theory has to offer are core concerns of the work. The TV-series Game of Thrones as well as the art of Nadín Ospina and Hassan Musa will be analysed. The artists’ work and experience are taken as examples of combining many different cultural elements and signifies the transgression and challenge of notions of authenticity, originality, ethnicity and identity.

This essay explores the relationships between technical practices, philosophical ideas and cultures, from the perspective of ideas about color use in Andean textiles. It proposes that Andean theories of colour, as in Europe, are closely bound to developments in the production of colour. This implies that culturally held color theories change with the movement of ideas across geographical and political frontiers, as part of the cultural reflections that accompany the interchange and commerce of artifacts (woven and others). We examine the current insistence in the region of ignoring the impact of global influences on local productive practices, and the paradoxical situations that result, when the origins of new productive tendencies become confused with regional phenomena. We also consider the attempts to integrate these external influences into political posture that seek to reinvent regional traditions, arguing that this disguises the possible negative effects of a greater integration of populations into wider economic networks, and as a result the loss of their regional autonomy. As a case study we take the k’isa, an industrial pattern of colouring whose use has come to express visually and politically the power of the indigenous movement, above all of Aymara-speaking peoples, in spite of its origins elsewhere.
Key words: Colour ideas, Andean textiles, k’isa, indigenous movement, Aymara identity-Bolivia, Andes.

From the end of the 1980s the innovations of Cultural Studies and the more recent positions
of Visual Studies have been the object of a broad international debate. Having to
deal with the postcolonial question in a renewed global dimension, art history has been
affected by the methodological crisis which had already involved other historical disciplines.
It therefore turned to several disciplines, among which anthropology, in order
to update its own methods. Hans Belting took effective part in this debate without ever
abandoning his studies in the field of medieval art, but moving closer to different histories
and cultural areas. In this way he developed his Global Art History, research which
extended from the study of art to that of its audience. Thematizing the historicity of the
concept of art and the universalizing demand for a historicist approach, he consciously
opened the geographical and cultural confines of his investigation. In the study of the
image, Belting identified one of the cornerstones of his proposal and formulated the
hypothesis of new narratives, free from the colonial gaze, necessary for the constitution
of a Global Art History.

Artykuł szkicuje sytuację polskiego świata sztuki w perspektywie antagonizmu. Zgodnie z głównym założeniem tekstu konflikt dotyczący wartości sztuki i jej znaczenia został ograniczony do obszaru krytyki artystycznej. Artyści, kuratorzy i dyrektorzy instytucji niechętnie wypowiadają się publicznie na temat działalności swoich kolegów. Sytuacja ta przypomina klasyczną figurę „kozła ofiarnego”. Osoby działające w obszarze sztuki unikają konfliktu, zakładając, że żadna dyskusja nie ma znaczenia wobec zewnętrznych czynników kształtujących relacje wewnątrz tego pola.

Japan and Paris demonstrates the deep cross-cultural nature of art in Japan from about 1880 to 1930. Illustrated with masterpieces from Japanese collections by Matisse, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Corot, Cézanne, and Monet, it explores the history of collecting Western art in Japan and its influence on Japanese modern art. In particular, it addresses the development of Western-style modernist impulses as Japan's early interest in the Barbizon School extended to include modes of expression such as Impressionism, Postimpressionism, Symbolism, Cubism, and Fauvism. In addition to showcasing works by some of the best-known French and European painters, works by Japanese artists who were instrumental in the introduction of Western modes of expression to Japan are included, such as Kojima Zenzaburo, Kume Keiichiro, Maeta Kanji, Mitsutani Kunishiro, and Fujita Tsuguharu.

Contributions by Alicia Volk include:

Essay:
1. "‘A Unified Rhythm:’ Past and Present in Japanese Modern Art

Short Essays:
2. "Early Japanese Collecting: The Barbizon School and Other French Painting"
3. "Cézanne and His Influence"
4. "The Nude"
5. "Renoir and Japan"
6. "Matisse and Japan"
7. "Reflections East and West"

Entries:
8. Asai Chû, Fields in Spring
9. Kume Keiichirô, Gathering Apples
10. Kojima Torajirô, Morning Light
11. Morita Tsunetomo, Scene in Aizu
12. Saeki Yûzô, Restaurant (Hôtel du Marché)
13. Kume Keiichirô, Nude
14. Kojima Zenzaburô, Woman with a Mirror
15. Maeta Kanji, A Nude Woman
16. Umehara Ryûzaburô, Narcissus
17. Yorozu Tetsugorô, Head of a Woman (Woman with a Boa)
18. Wada Eisaku, Portrait of Mrs. H
19. Kishida Ryûsei, Self-Portrait
20. Fujita Tsuguharu, Portrait of Anna de Noailles
21. Fujita Tsuguharu, Interior (My Wife and Me)
22. Mitsutani Kunishirô, Scarlet Rug

Hendra Gunawan: A Great Modern Indonesian Painter, is a new book - the first book - on the life and oeuvre of Hendra Gunawan, the flamboyant Indonesian nationalist painter who was kept out of the public eye for nearly four decades due to political circumstances. In the following article the author discusses the continuing importance of his work.
    Author's NOTE: As a PhD student doing fieldwork, I wrote about the artists I interviewed in the Jakarta Post, Indonesia's main English language newspaper read widely by the professional and culture-aware class. Publishing these media articles served two purposes: it helped me organize my notes and thoughts and it brought attention to young artists whose work I felt mattered, in an art world where there were few mechanisms for younger artists to get the attention of curators, critics, and collectors. I am posting some of the over 30 articles I wrote for the JP here, as they represent the earliest writing in English about many Indonesian artists who are globally known today.

Contemporary Greek cinema garnered a great reputation in recent years, including Oscar nominations, numerous awards and distinctions in international festivals and also worldwide media coverage. The emergence of a new group of filmmakers whose creativity and avant-garde aesthetics were stimulated and heightened by the social and economic crisis was first marked by media critics (film critics and cultural journalists). As journalistic art criticism plays a prominent role in the legitimization of cultural products and artistic genres, this article examines the way in which professional film critics and journalists, both in Greece and abroad, described, evaluated and labelled the ‘Greek New Wave’. In line with cultural evaluation theories, we conducted a content analysis of film criticism articles in order to explore how professionals have reviewed and deployed their arguments towards this new phenomenon. Our results indicate that film criticism decisively influenced the Greek New Wave...

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 full-colour photo essay by Marla C. Berns on the Fowler Museum’s ‘Fowler at Fifty’ project, as well as contributions from Donald Preziosi, Catherine M. Cole, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Claire Farago, Selma Holo, and Gemma Rodrigues.

Taking The Fowler Museum at UCLA, USA, as its central subject, this edited collection traces how university museum practices have expanded the understanding of the ‘art object’ in recent years. It is argued that the meaning of cultural objects infused with the heritage and identity of ‘global culture’ has been developed substantially through the innovative approaches of university scholars, museum curators, and administrators since the latter part of the twentieth century. Through exploring the ways in which universities and their museums have overseen changes in the global context for art, this edited collection initiates a larger dialogue and inquiry into the value and contribution of the empirical model.

El presenta trabajo describe y caracteriza de manera breve y concisa lo que podría ser una ontología del arte. En la primera sección se presentan las dificultades actuales, así como las nociones y preguntas principales de la ontología. En la sección segunda, se bosquejan las definiciones y caracterizaciones actuales de la ontología, se hace especial hincapié, en la ontología aplicada. En la tercera, cuarta y quinta sección se caracteriza y configura lo que podría ser una ontología del arte, se evidencian sus limitaciones así́ como sus perspectivas y trazabilidad para hacer viable dicha ontología; adicionalmente se abordan los aportes del realismo anglosajón a la cuestión. El propósito de esta caracterización es hacer evidente que es plausible dar un tratamiento integral al problema de la realidad y su configuración y desarrollo en los mundos regionales, como, el mundo del arte.

This writing makes a brief historical review, through some epistemological assumptions, on the philosophical reflections on the art world, its status, development and "functioning", in order to pave the way for a further description of the problems about the notion of the art world.

This essay explores the relationships between technical practices, philosophical ideas and cultures, from the perspective of ideas about colour use in Andean textiles. It proposes that Andean theories of colour, as in Europe, are closely bound to developments in the production of colour. This implies that culturally held colour theories change with the movement of ideas across geographical and political frontiers, as part of the cultural reflections that accompany the interchange and commerce of artifacts (woven and others). We examine the current insistence in the region of ignoring the impact of global influences on local productive practices, and the paradoxical situations that result, when the origins of new productive tendencies become confused with regional phenomena. We also consider the attempts to integrate these external influences into political posture that seek to reinvent regional traditions, arguing that this disguises the possible negative effects of a greater integr...

ABSTRACT Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind was an exhibition at the British Museum from 27 February to 2 June 2013 exhibiting sculptures and engravings from the Ice Age of Europe and Eurasia, 40,000–10,000 years ago. It was accompanied by a lavishly illustrated book by Jill Cook with the same title, published by the British Museum Press. The exhibition was a sell-out, attracting considerable coverage in the press. Here I reflect critically on some aspects of the exhibition, exploring what such a display might tell us about ice age life, the modern mind and our present-day approach to displaying such objects.

Il y a deux ans environ, peu après la fin de l’Espace Khiasma, j’ai débuté avec Julien Duc-Maugé, directeur de Synesthésie Mmaintenant à Saint-Denis (www.mmaintenant.org), une conversation autour du devenir des espaces d’art indépendants. Il m’a alors invité à écrire un texte. Cela a pris un certain temps. « Fantômes de la Bienveillance » qui paraît aujourd’hui est rempli des fantômes et de la matière de ces deux années de digestion. Il ne répond pas tout à fait à la question du devenir du lieu, mais cherche au cœur de ses puissances invisibles, un chemin, un œil, une langue.
-----
Relecture : Lorraine Drevon

In this paper, I will offer a succinct reconstruction of the arguments about the meaning of the notion of the world of art, as well as its implications in the ontology of art. First, I will outline the basic principles of Danto's notion of the art world, and from these principles I will outline its influence on George Dickie's institutional theory of art. On this basis, supported by Morris Weitz's  critique to the role of the theory of aesthetics, I will try to highlight the difficulties of what has been called the institutional theory of art at the moment of defining what art is. In the final part of the paper, I will present some suggestions that could be taken into account when considering the relation between the world of art and the artworld ontology.

Dalam buku ini, penulis lebih ingin menyampaikan secara jelas bagaimana kita bisa mendapatkan poin yang ingin disampaikan, seperti bagaimana seorang kurator dapat melejit, dan bagaimana praktik kuratorial berkembang menjadi budaya populer (terutama konsumerisme populer). Kurasionisme tentu saja juga menyinggung dunia seni kontemporer dengan hubungannya yang angkuh dan tegang dalam pembahasaannya. Kurasionisme mulai ditetapkan secara umum, sejak awal abad ke-20, dengan penggunaan ‘-isme’ dalam kubu dan paradigma.

Book Description

This book makes the case that the idea of a "world" in the cultural and philosophical sense is not an exclusively Western phenomenon. During the Cold War and in the wake of decolonization a plethora of historical attempts were made to reinvent the notions of world literature, world art, and philosophical universality from an anticolonial perspective. Contributing to recent debates on world literature, the postcolonial, and translatability, the book presents a series of interdisciplinary and multilingual case studies spanning Europe, the United States, and China. The case studies illustrate how individual anti-imperialist writers and artists set out to remake the conception of the world in their own image by offering a different perspective centered on questions of race, gender, sexuality, global inequality, and class. The book also discusses how international cultural organizations like the Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau, UNESCO, and PEN International attempted to shape this debate across Cold War divides.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE – China and the Restaging of Afro-Asian World Literature

CHAPTER TWO – Moravia’s Presidency of PEN International

CHAPTER THREE – Translating Anticolonial Universality in Gramsci and Pasolini

CHAPTER FOUR –The Singular Universal in Sartre’s Lumumba Preface

CHAPTER FIVE –Malraux’s Imaginary Museum of World Art

CHAPTER SIX –Huang Yong Ping’s Competing Universalities

CONCLUSION

There is much talk in the ' art world ' about boundaries and the blurring of boundaries between art and non-art, art and craft, and various forms within art. What is meant by a boundary is not always clear and this paper tries to make some sense of what may be at stake when deciding on which side of a line something falls. It is suggested that the important thing is how we deal with and react to particular examples rather than worrying about whether it is a this or a that.

This paper discusses the outcomes of a project entitled Archaeology with Art: Space, Context, Fabrication and Gesture, which developed out of a session at TAG (Theoretical Archaeology Group) 2013, led by the two authors. This project approaches art in archaeology from a new perspective, arising from recent engagements of archaeologists and anthropologists with art practice as opposed to art history. Bringing together the work of archaeologists and artists, the session explored the ways in which the study of the process of making art might allow archaeologists to access a greater and more nuanced understanding of artistic manifestations and its effects and contexts in the past. Aspects of making such as design, innovation, accessibility, memory and social interaction were discussed. We focus on the way in which the study of the practice and process of making might be used as part of interpretative archaeological methodologies to see texture and variation in what appear initially to be uniform assemblages. It aims to move beyond static methodologies based on aesthetic and typological analyses, which tend to emphasise the final product. Two brief case studies on Atlantic Rock Art and ceramics from Iron Age East Yorkshire (UK) will be discussed, demonstrating the way in which the physical and technical gesture of art can change our understandings of both site-specific and portable art. By employing the subjective, human experience of the practice of art in the present, we aim to access its effects in the past.

In the last two decades, Southeast Asian contemporary art has secured its place in the global art world, becoming a fixture on the latter’s expanded exhibition circuits and a promising ‘emerging market’ for investors. This consolidation has engendered a burst of scholarly activity, in line with the improving prospects of Asian art history generally and notwithstanding a lack of dedicated academic structures where the region is concerned. But if Southeast Asia has firmed as a framework for organising contemporary art, it has not been favoured as a basis for interpreting or historicising it. As knowledge production in the region has surged, regionalism has waned. In this article, I review the historiography of Southeast Asian contemporary art to reveal a discontinuity between its pioneers, who were regionalists, and a new historicism whose premises are basically nationalist. Reflexive consciousness of region – and of contemporaneity as a regional phenomenon – is advanced as an under-utilised interpretive device and a bulwark against hegemonic and monolithic art histories.