Art historians have long been accustomed to thinking about art and
artists in terms of national traditions. This volume takes a
different approach, suggesting instead that a history of art based
on national divisions often obscures the processes of cultural
appropriation and global exchange that shaped the visual arts of
Europe in fundamental ways between 1492 and the early twentieth
century.
Essays here analyze distinct zones of contact--between various
European states, between Asia and Europe, or between Europe and
so-called primitive cultures in Africa, the Americas, and the South
Pacific--focusing mainly but not exclusively on painting, drawing,
or the decorative arts. Each case foregrounds the centrality of
international borrowings or colonial appropriations and counters
conceptions of European art as a "pure" tradition uninfluenced by
the artistic forms of other cultures. The contributors analyze the
social, cultural, commercial, and political conditions of cultural
contact--including tourism, colonialism, religious pilgrimage,
trade missions, and scientific voyages--that enabled these
exchanges well before the modern age of globalization.
Contributors:
Claire Farago, University of Colorado at Boulder
Elisabeth A. Fraser, University of South Florida
Julie Hochstrasser, University of Iowa
Christopher Johns, Vanderbilt University
Carol Mavor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Mary D. Sheriff, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lyneise E. Williams, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill