Art After Empire

This book explores the relationship between art and visual culture in Europe and the 'wider world' from the early 20th century through to the contemporary era of globalisation. The postcolonial critique of the 1980s is key in this respect, yet this has earlier antecedents in European art itself. Modernists such as Pablo Picasso explored the art of the rest of world in ways that were increasingly challenged as Eurocentric by avant-garde artists such as the Surrealists. The complex relationship between art, politics and postcolonial struggle is then explored in the work of Diego Rivera and other Mexican muralist painters in the period following the revolution of 1910-1920 as an important counterpoint to the 'primitivism' that was central to the modernist encounter with non-western art. The postcolonial critique of the European canon came on the back of the various national liberation struggles in the twentieth century which, combined with the fall of the wall and China's entry into the world market, ushered in the current period of globalization. The book then finishes with an exploration of how more recent installation, multi-media and lens-based practices (including work by Mona Hatoum, Ai Weiwei and Chantal Ackerman) negotiate these shifts in contemporary art. You will study the roles of museums and art institutions, international exhibitions and biennials, and the art market, alongside patterns of artistic migration across continents and the growing use of communication technologies. As such this book would be an ideal teaching text for third level undergraduates in the history of art and related disciplines.