For many decades, impressionism has occupied a central place in the canon of art history, but new transnational approaches to the study of nineteenth-century art have complicated the perpetuation of Francocentric histories. As the field’s attention has increasingly turned to places outside of France, including Britain, the United States, Australia, and beyond, the time is ripe to place impressionism within a global context.

In this collection of 14 essays, a distinguished group of scholars deploy new methodological tools, theories, and paradigms to explore how impressionism as an artistic language simultaneously operated locally, nationally, and internationally around the world; how Europe, especially Paris, has existed as a privileged center of modernity and modern art; how a transnational network of artists, critics, scholars, curators, and dealers worked across linguistic, institutional, geographical, and political boundaries; and much more. These texts, while not abandoning France and French impressionism, contribute to the ongoing work to dismantle the franco-centrism of impressionism studies and the anglocentrism of art history as a discipline.

This born-digital publication is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.

Ecocriticism is an interdisciplinary mode of inquiry that examines the environmental significance of art, literature, and other creative endeavors. In Implication: An Ecocritical Dictionary for Art History, Alan C. Braddock, a pioneer in art historical ecocriticism, presents a fascinating group of key terms and case studies to demonstrate that all art is ecological in its interconnectedness with the world.

The book adopts a dictionary-style format, although not in a conventional sense. Drawing inspiration from French surrealist writer Georges Bataille, this dictionary presents carefully selected words that link art history to the environmental humanities—not only ecocriticism, but also environmental history, science, politics, and critical animal studies. A wide array of creative works from different cultures and time periods reveal the import of these terms and the inescapable entanglement of art with ecology. Ancient Roman mosaics, Song dynasty Taihu rocks, a Tlaxcalan lienzo, early modern European engravings and altarpieces, a Kongo dibondo, nineteenth-century landscape paintings by African American artist Edward Mitchell Bannister, French Impressionist urban scenes, and contemporary activist art, among other works, here disclose the intrinsic ecological conditions of art.

 
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:
“Its enlightening and eclectic case studies in the visual arts suggest that this is a thoroughly mature book in the sense that it doesn’t pretend to (or need to) introduce the field but seeks rather to deepen and expand its reach, its implications.”—Mark A. Cheetham, Professor of Art History, University of Toronto

A new transnational history of modernist art that connects discourses on art as therapy to questions of gender, disability, race, and the politics of care
 
In an innovative collection of essays by established and emerging scholars, Modernism, Art, Therapy explores relationships between clinically derived art therapies and the modernisms that developed transnationally in visual arts across the twentieth century. Through sites of practice such as hospitals, clinics, and prisons—but also schools, art museums, and galleries—the book puts art history into conversation with critical medical and health humanities, disability studies, critical race studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Committed to exploring questions of agency and social justice, contributors to the book attend to traditionally marginalized subjects and makers, from children and the incarcerated to women artists, therapists, and care workers. The volume thus aims not only to expand the category of masterworks that art historians deem meaningful but also to expose the limitations of dominant narratives about modernism.

This born-digital book is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.

A revelatory exploration of the food, feminisms, and visual culture of the global Caribbean

Food is more than what we eat; it nourishes us. For women of the global Caribbean, the evocation of food makes visible histories and ideas that remain obscured: domestic labor, community and care, generational knowledge, cultural memory, artistic expression, and acts of resistance. In this interdisciplinary and comparative volume, scholars and artists engage with foodways through decolonial and intersectional feminist lenses, addressing the resonance of these themes in contemporary art. As such, they represent new scholarly and creative interventions on Caribbean and Caribbean-diasporic contemporary art in a global context.

This anthology harnesses the potential of food to create, negotiate, and analyze the visual languages emergent from a region grappling with political occupation, tourism, and ecological crises. Contributors lend a vital perspective into feminisms, the global Caribbean, tropical visuality, cookery, and consumption and feature discussions of such artists as María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Renluka Maharaj, Joiri Minaya, Victoria Ravelo, and Tania Bruguera.


“This exciting volume represents a significant cross-over of food studies, feminism, and art making while charting a new direction to cut across the art of this region.”—Katherine Manthorne, Graduate Center, City University of New York

“One of [the book’s] many strengths is its use of archipelagic thinking, which broadens our understanding of what constitutes the Caribbean. The connections between chapters make for interesting, non-linear reading, ideal for a digital environment, that heighten the volume’s thrust to emphasize crossings and networked relations.”—Marsha Pearce, University of the West Indies

This born-digital book is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.