Taking the local seriously

Abstract

This commentary discusses essays by Geoffrey Batchen, Tatiana Flores, Sunanda Sanyal, Alexandra Seggerman and Damian Skinner appearing in a special issue of World Art on Local Modernisms. It argues, along with the contributors, for the need for emic perspectives in evaluating global modern arts that have been excluded from established canons as belated or imitative. It also argues that the failure of the discipline to develop narratives of modernism adequate to its own aspirations to become a world discipline are inconsistent with art history's own fundamental methodologies of iconographic analysis and social contextualization. Neglect of the substantial literature on world modernisms that is now available further exposes the current situation as hegemonic and neo-colonial.

Keywords:

• modernism
• globalization
• local knowledge
• world art history

Notes on contributor

Ruth B. Phillips holds a Canada Research Chair in Modern Culture and is Professor of Art History at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Her research focuses on Native North American and African arts. Her most recent book is Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums.

Notes

1. The monument was made for the Haskell Institute, a government Indian boarding school, in Lawrence, Kansas, now the Haskell Indian Nations University. See http://www.pbase.com/image/35425481 (accessed 18 March 2014) for an image of Comrades in Mourning.

2. The exhibition, Turuki Turuki! Paneke Paneke! When Māori Art Became Contemporary, was held in 2008 at the Auckland Art Gallery.

3. The painting is in to the National Gallery of Canada. For a reproduction, see http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artwork.php?mkey=43533 (accessed 6 January 2014).

4. The lecture was delivered at Carleton University, Ottawa, in March 1973. This is a paraphrase, as I have not found a transcript of Richler's exact words.