Thinking Europe Visually. A Schizophrenic Certitude

Existe-t-il un musée imaginaire européen ? Cet article aborde la question par le biais des illustrations de presse des années 1880-1960. Dans les périodiques illustrés de cette époque, les images d’art traversèrent mieux les frontières que les images non artistiques, en particulier en Europe. Mais plutôt que de conclure à un musée imaginaire européen, une étude multiscalaire plus fine incite à se pencher sur les facteurs sociaux, esthétiques, économiques et techniques de la circulation imprimée des images artistiques

The Global History of Art and the Challenge of the Grand Narrative

It might seem rather early to propose an assessment of the famous ‘global turn’ in the history of art. However, the challenge of globalisation and of the ‘decolonization’ of our thought is now a daily preoccupation for many art historians. In order to propose a ‘global history’, one that would do justice to art from all continents, and in particular from those that have long been neglected and scorned, the ideal solution comes in the form of an articulation of a truly global narrative. Where could these new stories come from? We have sought to interrogate actors from the world over who are interested in new and global practices in the history of art. t might seem rather early to propose an assessment of the famous ‘global turn’ in the history of art. However, the challenge of globalisation and of the ‘decolonization’ of our thought is now a daily preoccupation for many art historians

Circulation and Resemanticization: An Aporetic Palimpsest

Studies of the processes of resemanticization at work in artistic circulation are few and far between; attempts at articulating a theoretical understanding of such processes are rarer still. This paper will investigate the questions raised by a circulatory approach to the history of art, and review the methods and sources which can allow us to answer them. How is the meaning of a work of art conveyed? How is this meaning constituted, and how does it evolve across different places and moments? What are the factors that contribute to such changes? What are the possible consequences of artistic resemanticization? Are there resemanticizations that are more intentional than others, according to the actors and the stakes involved? From reception studies to studies of cultural transfers, from sociological to political, anthropological, and traductological methodologies, an approach that is multidisciplinary but above all pragmatic offers the best hope of answering these questions. Such an approach encourages us to conceive of the work of art within its ever-shifting context, not as a vessel of meaning but rather as an evolving palimpsest, one that is all the more powerful in that it acts as a screen upon which individual and collective desires are projecte

The Uses and Abuses of Peripheries in Art History

Introduction to the Artl@s Bulletin\u27s issue on Peripheries (vol. 3, issue 1)

South-South: Too Political?

When it comes to researching South-South relationships, a powerful political imperative underpins studies of such relationships—an imperative that seems to always point northwards in one way or another. This imperative sometimes leads to the application of pre-existing theories to studies of circulation between different parts of the world and of the roles of the individuals driving these circulations. When, regardless of the situation in question, we must always identify a dominator and a dominated party, a predator and a victim, a colonizer and a colonial subject, we risk developing a historical picture that is incomplete or distorted. Promoting studies into South-South circulation is something of an experiment, one that consists in first imagining configurations that differ from those proposed by postcolonial theory, in order to work more freely, whilst nonetheless allowing ourselves to return to such approaches at a later stage. hen it comes to researching South-South relationships

Visual Contagions, the Art Historian, and the Digital Strategies to Work on Them

How do images and styles spread out over time and place? This article presents how art historians can use digital methods to study “visual contagions”– the visual part of globalization: how images circulate, as material artefacts (paintings, sculptures, engravings, etc.…) or in reproductions (in illustrated periodicals, in photography, or on the internet…), through which channels (cultural, geographical, political…) and according to which visual logics. It sketches the new possibilities offered by deep learning and artificial intelligence algorithms applied to images, to better understand the epidemiology of visual diffusions. This Paper is also an opportunity to assess 10 years of digital approach to artistic globalization with the Artl@s Project (https://www.artlas.huma-num.fr)

Provincializing New York: In and Out of the Geopolitics of Art After 1945

In this article, I argue that the putative global centrality of New York in art after 1945 is a construct, as it is for Paris prior to 1945. Monographs and national approaches are unsuccessful in challenging such powerful myths as these. A global, transnational and comparative approach demonstrates that the struggle for centrality was a global phenomenon after 1945, a battle that New York does not win (depending on one’s point of view) until after 1964. Rather than considering centres and peripheries as a fixed category, I propose to consider them as a strategic notion which artists and their promoters have always sought to manipulate according to their own ends

Provincializing Paris. The Center-Periphery Narrative of Modern Art in Light of Quantitative and Transnational Approaches

The alternative “centre‐periphery” is essential to the myth of modern art and its historiography. Even though Postcolonial studies have denounced the implications of such geopolitical hierarchies, as long as our objects remain centred on one capital city and within national boundaries, it will be difficult to escape the hierarchical paradigm that makes Paris and New York the successive capital cities of Modernism. This paper highlights how approaches focusing on different scales of analysis—from the quantitative and geographic to the monographic—challenge the supposed centrality of Paris through 1945

L’art de la mesure

L’adoption d’une démarche quantitative en histoire de l’art n’oblige pas à se limiter à des questions sociales, géographiques ou économiques où l’art n’aurait plus sa place. La démarche métrique – ici, l’analyse sérielle, comparative et chiffrée de catalogues d’expositions – permet de revoir des oppositions admises de l’histoire de l’art. Elle est même d’un apport certain pour la confrontation avec les oeuvres. Au centre de cette étude, une époque riche en polémiques dans l’histoire de l’art moderne parisien : les années 1910. Les catalogues du Salon d’Automne permettent une analyse sociale, géographique, esthétique et internationale des artistes qui y exposèrent et de leurs oeuvres. Accusé en 1912 d’être un repaire d’avant-gardistes étrangers, le Salon d’Automne a gardé de cette époque une aura progressiste et internationaliste que l’approche métrique incite à relativiser. Bien qu’elle structure le discours sur l’art moderne et notre regard sur les oeuvres, l’opposition entre avant-gardisme, internationalisme et ouverture esthétique d’une part, académisme, nationalisme et conservatisme de goût d’autre part, n’est en fait pas tenable.The quantitative approach in the history of art does not necessarily involve a restriction to social, geographical or economic questions where art would not have its place any more. The metric approach — here, serial, comparative and quantified analysis of exhibition catalogues — makes it possible to re-examine widely admitted oppositions in the history of art. It is even quite valuable for the confrontation of art works. The present study is focused on the 1910s, a time rich in polemics in the history of Parisian modern art. The catalogues of the Salon d’Automne make it possible to carry out a social, geographical, aesthetic and international analysis of the artists who exhibited their works there, and of the works themselves. Notorious in 1912 as a den of foreign avant-garde artists, the Salon d’Automne kept its reputation as a progressist and internationalist place, which the metric approach enables us to challenge. The well-known opposition between avant-gardism, internationalism and aesthetic innovation on the one hand, and academism, nationalism and conservatism of taste on the other hand keeps informing the discourse on modern art and our way of looking at its works, yet it proves to be unjustified

Les expositions Turnus, une page d’histoire transnationale des beaux-arts en Suisse à la fin du XIXe siècle. Et comment découvrir les humanités numériques

Cet article présente le travail de la classe d’introduction aux humanités numériques de l’Université de Genève sur les expositions Turnus en Suisse à partir des années 1840. Près de 50 catalogues ont été retranscrits, décrits et structurés à l’aide de scripts Python, puis géolocalisés. Les données ont été ajoutées à BasArt, le répertoire mondial de catalogues d’expositions d’Artl@s (https://artlas.huma-num.fr/map). Elles permettent de mieux comprendre les premières années de ces expositions et leurs dynamiques locales, fédérales et internationales. Le Turnus fut une plaque tournante pour les artistes suisses, voire un tremplin vers le marché européen de l’art