CIHA as the Subject of Art Theory. The Methodological Discourse in the International Congresses of Art History from Post-War Years to the 2000s (original) (raw)
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Cross-Cultural Art History in a Polycentered World
Diogenes, 2011
The essays in this volume have been written by art historians who have all been involved in the activities of CIHA (The International Committee of the History of Art/ Comité International de l'Histoire de l'Art) during the past few years. CIHA is a daughter of CIPSH (Comité international pour la Philosophie et les Sciences humanitaires, The International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies), the body for the Humanities formed by UNESCO and responsible for Diogenes. This is the first issue of this famous periodical that has been devoted to the history of art. CIHA is the oldest international organization of art history in the world. It was first constituted at Vienna in 1873. From that date CIHA has held quadrennial congresses-known colloquially as the art history Olympics, that represent the state of art history throughout the world and which were and are open to all nationalities. Well before it became fashionable to discuss globalization, CIHA was global, and as this volume shows, the concerns of CIHA remain global in a very special way. The last congress was held at Melbourne in January 2008, where the theme was: Crossing Cultures, Conflict, Migration and Convergence. The themes of this issue of Diogenes are taken from the concept of the congress and how art history has developed during my presidency. At CIHA Melbourne, 700 art historians participated from 50 countries. Despite the fact that Australia is a long way from many other countries, the call for papers resulted in a truly global expression of the subject, the concept enticing many contributions from countries south of the equator, notably Latin America. In the large volume 220 papers are published by art historians from 25 countries. CIHA's role has been to stimulate international meetings of art historians, either as the quadrennial congresses or with the more frequent colloquia every year, held in different countries throughout the globe, and to publish the proceedings as a record of the state of art history. Some 33 countries belong to CIHA and the number is increasing. Representatives from local national committees constitute the General Assembly. A smaller Executive known as the Bureau is responsible for guiding the academic programs and many of the authors in this volume are members of the Bureau:
The Revaluation of Art History
Art/Histories in Transcultural Dynamics
Recent debates on the content and objectives of a global art history have been accompanied by an increasing number of questions about its historical foundations. Is the degree of attention that is now devoted to non-Western art really such a new phenomenon, or does it have its own history? Is it the case, as one often reads, that people only started looking at art from a global perspective after the profound economic and geopolitical changes of the late twentieth century, with the year 1989 generally being cited as the decisive caesura? Was it really the present generation of art critics and historians who first recognised the Eurocentric bias of their subject and started to clamour for its revision? And lastly, is there any truth in the notion that all prior art-historical research was confined to national historiographies and as a consequence never even tried to replace the national paradigm with the idea of an international art, a global art or a world art? No small amount of energy has been dedicated to answering this question of late, and though our historiographical knowledge remains fragmentary there can now be no doubt that the current concern with non-Western art is by no means new. On the contrary, it is quite easy to show that art historians have been looking beyond the borders of Europe and seeking to explain and understand what they found there ever since the formation of the discipline in the mid-nineteenth century. In the years around 1900 in particular there were many researchers who started to go beyond mere descriptions of the alterity of non-European artefacts and actually began to concern themselves with the multifarious relationships between European and non-European art, that is, with the mutual influences, dependencies and interactions between them, even if the resulting value system was often very rigid and generally tended to present European art as the apogee of global development. 1 In any case, from around 1890 to 1930 the topic was an extremely popular one among art historians, and it is a striking fact that most of the researchers who were interested in world art came from the German-speaking countries.
Proceedings from the VIth International Congress of Art History Students: Interdisciplinarity in Art History , 2022
When we first applied for the role of organizers of the VIth International Congress of Art History Students, in what now seems like a very distant late 2016, we knew there would be a lot of work ahead of us. The congress had, by then, become a tradition and somewhat of a landmark event in the academic year of art history students, with an ever-growing base of international students, professors and other researchers gathering at the Croatian capital. Keeping the importance and legacy of the event in mind, while also seeing the potential for further development, we worked hard and gave all we could during the next 12 months with the goal of raising the congress to a whole new level. Of special importance for us was the congress topic of Interdisciplinarity in art history, taken not only in methodological or theoretical, but in a much broader sense. With it, we wanted to stress the importance of such approach, especially in the contemporary scientific community in which the humanities are often looked down upon. From usage of contemporary technologies in art historical research, to finding the common ground between related fields, we wanted to show what art history can be in the 21st century, and all the potential it holds.
Modes of Making Art History: Looking back at documenta 5 and documenta 6
As art history further questions its fundamentals, the exhibition format continues to lose its neutrality. In the preface to the second volume of his compendium, Biennials and Beyond -Exhibitions that made art history: 1962-2002, Bruce Altshuler leads the increasing interest by art historians for exhibitions back to the insight that "exhibitions bring together a range of characters, who, exercising varied intentions in diverse circumstances, generate so much of what comes down to us as art history."[1] However, the academic rewriting of selected shows is itself subjected to norms which, given their canonizing e!ects, must be taken into consideration. This article does not intend to question the art historical study of exhibitions tout court. Rather, it criticizes the selection of case studies according to a logic of masterpieces while excluding exhibitions which are regarded as not having made art history. In fact, the di!erent modes by which exhibitions can shape art history require further analysis, eventually casting new light on events which have not hitherto
ReintroducIng CIirculatIons: Historiography and the Project of Global Art History
2015
World art history has gained much attention in recent years, opening many new possibilities for the discussion of the history of art in general. There are myriad ways to approach envisaging a history that is truly global, also meaning universal or comprehensive, an Enlightenment project that may perhaps no longer seem so utopian. This book suggests how a revival of attention to circulations can renew the practice of art history and contribute to the discussion of world, global art history. It proposes that following the transnational circulations of artists, artworks, and styles provides a means not only to escape from the national narratives in which previous approaches had been enmeshed, but also to write a global history of art for a globalized world. We still employ the word " art, " although we recognize that the concept of art may be relativized, that for instance it might be conceived differently in one place than in another, that its meaning changes in time, and th...
Conference, 2023
Introduced in 1902 in response to a polemical article by Strzygowski, the category of haptic formulated by the Viennese theorist Alois Riegl enjoyed a remarkable critical fortune, exquisitely interdisciplinary, throughout the 20th century and beyond. A critical fortune that, not infrequently, has taken the form of a complex and radical reinterpretation of the "optical device”, postulated by Riegl, reflecting on the construction of space in Egyptian bas-relief. Since the 1990s significant new interpretations have been made in Film Studies field by authors such as Antonia Lant, Noël Burch and, in a more openly subversive, transcultural and gender-based key, by scholars such as Laura U. Marks, Jennifer M. Barker and Giuliana Bruno. Although the research that has converged in the Film Studies field still needs systematic recognition, this branch of studies is partially known. Otherwise, the adoptions and interpolations this notion has received in contemporary art criticism and historiography still constitute a widely unexplored field. Given this scenario, this contribution aims at tracing how the notion of haptic has entered the lexicon of contemporary theory and criticism through the modernist period. It will try to record affinities, interpolations and reinterpretations of the Rieglian model to stress the theoretical malleability and vitality of this category. Through the rediscovery of some forgotten sources, such as Louis Danz's prodromic study on Picasso Guernica (1937) published in 1941, this study aims at analyzing critically how this notion has been experienced by authors such as Herbert Read, Clement Greenberg, Lucy Lippard and Jole De Sanna. Tracing essays and theories is intended to show how this category has become an eccentric critical tool to disorientate and dismantle the Modernist epistemic framework.
When 1 entered graduate school in the history of art at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York in the early 1950s, theory was the farthest thing from my mind. In fact, for me and for many of my cohorts, theory was a rather suspect concept, tainted as it was by theories of race (which dassified human beings hierarchically) and theories of quality (which dassified works of art hierarchically). We read the dassic works of the founding fathers, especially Aloïs Riegl and Heinrich WôlfHin (always on our own, never as part of courses). But no one sought to follow them in their quest for the foundations of the discipline-an enterprise that in any case seemed uninspiring compared with the joy and excitement of working with the "objects." Moreover, theoretical structures risked limiting the range and depth of individual creativity, or even collective creativity in the case ofregional or period styles.