Global and Transcultural Encounters in Art History

Course goals

• To speak and write intelligently about global, transcultural, and postcolonial issues in art history, from the early modern period to the present.
• Familiarity with key artworks, media, materials, and written sources related to the theme. Insight into how contemporary theories about globalization, migration, and (de)coloniality may be relevant for understanding art and material culture from the early modern period onwards.
• Familiarity with the historical and contemporary terms and concepts, relevant to understand the development of European art in a global context.
• To critically evaluate current historiographical trends and imagine new possibilities for the field.

Content

The course explores processes of artistic encounter and exchange from the Early Modern period to the present day. It will take its cue from objects in collections in the Netherlands (and, potentially, nearby site visits to Belgium and/or Germany) and explore them in their relation to worlds beyond Europe, from historical as well as contemporary perspectives.

In the past few decades, art history has been transformed by the turn towards 'global' or 'transcultural' approaches; by a focus on mobility, connectivity, and exchange; and by the acknowledgement of colonial and postcolonial power imbalances. Most recently, the Black Lives Matter movement provided additional momentum to a radical revision of the canon. Museums and collections in the Netherlands testify to this shift, from the Rijksmuseum's exhibition on slavery (2021) to Black in Rembrandt's Time in the Rembrandt House (2020) and the reorganization of the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren (2018-ongoing). Public monuments that testify to the colonial past have also become the focus of critical scrutiny. What is more, it is increasingly evident how artists from the Western canon -- from Vermeer to Mondrian -- were impressed and impacted by traditions from beyond Europe.    
 
Course participants will first be confronted with the ways in which Netherlandish art testifies to the increased interconnectivity of the Early Modern world. The Low Countries were an essential node during “First Globalization”: Antwerp and Amsterdam became global capitals while the ‘world’s first multinational’, the Dutch East India Company, heralded the age of classical capitalism, which involved brutal acts of resource extraction and enforced labour. In the metropolis, everyday lives changed as foreign luxuries, and local copies, became widely available, whereas the colonial constellation that made them possible remained largely invisible. 

In the second half of the course the time line will be extended to the global art world of the 20th-21st centuries and contemporary approaches of global, transcultural, and postcolonial art history. Themes that will play a role are, amongst others, global versus local; the agency of material culture; Orientalism and the exotic; cultural appropriation and hybridity; and cross-mediality.

The entrance requirements for Exchange Students will be checked by the International Office and the Programme coordinator. Acceptance is not self-evident.

Additional information

Please note: the time slot shown here is not yet final and may still be modified until the 3rd Wednesday in September.