Book Description

"This groundbreaking book allows the reader to appreciate the complexity and variety of cultural contacts that have shaped not only European art, but also the very idea of Europe." David O' Brien, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The questions that are engaged in this volume have profound implications for all forms of cultural production and will help transform how we think about and understand art made in Europe and elsewhere. A masterfully conceived and organized collection." Melessa Hyde, University of Florida Art historians have long been accustomed to thinking about art and artists in terms of national traditions, and many general histories, textbooks, and museums of European art are organized around this notion. This volume takes a different approach, suggesting that organization based on national divisions often obscures the processes of cultural appropriation and global exchange that shaped the visual arts in Europe in fundamental ways between 1492 and the early twentieth century. Essays in Cultural Contact and the Making of European Art since the Age of Exploration 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 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---including tourism, colonialism, religious pilgrimage, trade missions, and scientific voyages---that enabled these exchanges well before the modern age of globalization. The contributors are Claire Farago, Elisabeth A. Fraser, Julie Hochstrasser, Christopher M. S. Johns, Carol Mavor, Mary D. Sheriff, and Lyneise E. Williams.