Radical Art Histories and Futures: A Roundtable with the Editors of Selva: A Journal of the History of Art


This roundtable panel brings together editors and editorial board members of the newly-founded online peer-reviewed journal Selva: A Journal of the History of Art, which aims, per its mission statement, “to move beyond the discipline’s present impasses by going to the roots of art historical method.” This task begs a host of urgent questions: What is radical in the history, or historiography, of art? How might the study of radical art histories contribute to shaping the discipline’s future? What is the ‘best practice’ of radical historiography? Would it be a comprehensive approach, as surveyed—to quote from Molly Nesbit’s recent account of Henri Focillon’s methodology—from a vantage that would “contain in its very structure unequal combinations of motion so that [...] one might be able to discern all the wealth in the topologies of the perspectives”? Or should the radical art historiographer aim for density over breadth, zeroing in on moments of actuality—citing Nesbit on George Kubler—like “diamond[s] with an infinitesimal perforation through which the ingots and billets of possibility are drawn into past events”? What shifts in theory and practice are warranted by the skewed topologies and perforations of an art-historical past shaped (perhaps irretrievably) by various dominating classes and epistemologies? Where do we stand today in relation to the counter-art-histories and -historiographies of the recent past?

Field of Study:






Chairs:
Daniel Marcus,The Ohio State University - marcusdanny@gmail.com and Daniel Spaulding, - daniel.m.spaulding@gmail.com
Discussant:
Jeremy Melius,Tufts University - jeremy.melius@tufts.edu

Rebecca Zorach on Radical Art Histories and Futures
Rebecca Zorach, Northwestern University
Lisa Florman on Radical Art Histories and Futures
Lisa C. Florman, Ohio State University