We are no strangers today to visual representations of human suffering at sea: the refugee crisis that continues to play out in the seascape between Europe and Africa (and not only there) yields an ever-growing archive of humanitarian tragedy. As both a visual backdrop and a lethal medium of unequal mobility, maritime space and landscape play a significant role in mediating the ethical demands of this crisis. Yet there has been little exploration of the longer history of morality’s role in ...

At the crossroads of philosophy, artistic practice, and art history.Though Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari were not strictly art historians, they reinvigorated ontological and formal approaches to art, and simultaneously borrowed art historical concepts for their own philosophical work. They were dedicated modernists, inspired by the German school of expressionist art historians such as Riegl, Wölfflin, and Worringer and the great modernist art critics such as Rosenberg, Steinberg, Greenbe...

Contrary to general belief, the history of the Florentine patriciate did not end with the establishment of the State of Tuscany under de’ Medici in 1532. Proud and self-confident patricians did not become subservient courtiers overnight, but remained significantly influential for a long period. They retained their urban identity and longstanding family traditions, while acquiring noble titles, estates, and villas at the same time. The mark that these patricians continued to leave on the cit...

The impact of the Great War and its aftermath on Belgian artistic life.World War I had a major effect on Belgian visual arts. German occupation, the horror at the battlefield and the experience of exile led to multiple narratives and artistic expressions by Belgian artists during and after the war. Belgian interbellum art is extremely vibrant and diverse. 14/18 - Rupture or Continuity takes a look at Belgian artistic life in the years around the First World War and how it was affected by this...

Photography was long regarded as a “middlebrow” art by the art institution. Yet, at the turn of the millennium it became the hot, global art of our time. In this book—part institutional history, part account of shifting photographic theories and practices—Alexandra Moschovi tells the story of photography’s accommodation in and as contemporary art in the art museum. Archival research of key exhibitions and the contrasting collecting policies of MoMA, Tate, the Guggenheim, the V&A, an...

It is no coincidence that a historical figure such as Patrice Emery Lumumba, independent Congo’s first prime minister, who was killed in 1961, has lived in the realm of the cultural imaginary and occupied an afterlife in the arts. After all, his project remained unfinished and his corpse unburied. The figure of Lumumba has been imagined through painting, photography, cinema, poetry, literature, theatre, music, sculpture, fashion, cartoons and stamps, and also through historiography and in p...

Exile and migration played a critical role in the diffusion and development of modernism around the globe, yet have long remained largely understudied phenomena within art historiography. Focusing on the intersections of exile, artistic practice and urban space, this volume brings together contributions by international researchers committed to revising the historiography of modern art. It pays particular attention to metropolitan areas that were settled by migrant artists in the first half o...

Male bonds were omnipresent in nineteenth-century European artistic scenes, impacting the creation, presentation, and reception of art in decisive ways. Men’s lives and careers bore the marks of their relations with other men. Yet, such male bonds are seldom acknowledged for what they are: gendered and historically determined social constructs. This volume shines a critical light on male homosociality in the arts of the long nineteenth century by combining art history with the insights of g...

Rather than centring on the well-known collections in Western European and North American museums, Collecting Asian Art turn to museum collections of Asian art in Central Europe which emerged from the late 19th century onwards. Highlighting the dimensions of Central European connectedness, this volume explores how these collections evolved and changed under changing cultural and political conditions from the pre-World War I to the post-World War II periods. With a primary focus on collections...