Global Conversations 2020: Things Aren’t Always as they Seem: Art History and the Politics of Vision
Affiliated Society or Committee Name: CAA-Getty International ProgramThe politics of seeing in art history may be understood as a power struggle of interpretations conducted from divergent perspectives: past and present, right and left, neo imperialist and decolonial, industrialist and environmentalist, as well as the entire spectrum between these and similar binaries. This Global Conversation, an annual session organized by the CAA-Getty International Program, intends to articulate the responsibilities of art historians in our current sociopolitical situation, problematizing the relation between art history and the politics of vision from the perspective of global art history: who should be seeing what, how it has been seen, how should it be seen, when or where it should be seen, not (yet) or never seen. The four papers in the panel articulate these questions by focusing on the afterlife of art, and interrogate the reuse and abuse of images and artworks in a context different from an original one. Drawing on case studies from East-Central and South-Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, they investigate artifacts subjected to institutionalized interpretive recontextualization. Thus, they also debate the implications of art historical interpretation as an epistemological device capable of shifting the meaning of images and artworks according to various ideological pressures, and view art history not only as a site of epistemic violence, but also as struggle for epistemic justice.
Field of Study:
Chair:
Cristian Emil Nae,George Enescu National University of Arts, Iasi - cristi_nae@yahoo.co.uk
