What Does It Mean to Keep Kissing-Close to the Evidence, and Why Might It...
African art specialists often lack detailed information to assess the original meanings, uses, and contexts of so-called historical or traditional arts of Africa, and they rely on indirect evidence to...
View ArticleTechnologies of Recovery and Discovery: The Poetics of “Artefacts”
This article discusses the ways that objects, specifically personal belongings, held in British collections have their stories muted to become imperial signifiers. Using two pieces of jewellery...
View ArticleMaking Absences Present: The Process of Visualizing Knowledge Production in...
In this paper, I evaluate the development of data visualizations as an art historical approach. By visualizing data for Senufo-labeled objects in the Musée Africain de Lyon’s collection, I demonstrate...
View ArticleShifting approaches, innovative methods: collection histories as a tool to...
At the end of 2019, the British Museum launched a new research project focusing on copper alloy objects associated with the Lower Niger Bronze Industry. The aim was to increase knowledge of these...
View ArticleShaky Foundations: Cultural Classifications in Museum Collections Management...
This article uses two musical instruments with attached ancestral remains and labeled as “Asante” from the Fowler Museum at UCLA to consider effects of style-based cultural classifications that appear...
View ArticleYou Cannot See It: Navigating Yorùbá Religious Artistic Materials
My research spanning two decades in Ọ̀yọ́ Palace generated series of questions about access to artistic materials in site-locational spaces, archives and private collections. I probe how scholars have...
View ArticleArt and Evidence in Totems of Uganda (2014)
In his painting and book project, Totems of Uganda: Buganda Edition (2014), Ugandan artist Taga Nuwagaba asks: What is the function of a totem? In Buganda, the historical kingdom in current-day...
View ArticleFrom the Outside, Looking In: Reflections on the Complex Infrastructures of...
This essay engages with the five articles featured in this issue from the perspective of a non-specialist. Each contribution considers challenges facing scholars of African arts when confronted with...
View ArticleStyle Revisited
The resurgence of the concept of 'style' within the realm of artificial intelligence, particularly in the fields of image classification and style transfer, reignites age-old discussions in art...
View ArticleThe Inner Form of Style: On Heinrich Wölfflin’s “Tactical” Formalism
In this article, I examine the enduring relevance of Heinrich Wölfflin’s approach to style, in light of the renewed interest in it among “postformalist” art historians. By delving into the theoretical...
View ArticleManufacturing National Boundaries? The Notion of Style Between Identity...
Art historians have long been preoccupied by art’s geographical inscription. But it was during the interwar period that research on the geography of art really took off and was recognized as a field...
View ArticleCopy, Style, and Art Historians Scrutiny: A Journey from Aby Warburg back to...
This article examines J. A. Ramboux’s watercolor copies after Italian Renaissance artworks and their critical reception by art historians. Initially valued for documenting original masterpieces,...
View ArticleNo Need of Styles: Building Up Architectural Historiography
If styles lost impetus within the methodology of art historiography, in the (parallel) field of architecture, they were firmly rejected one century ago. One might consider that this more radical...
View ArticleA Legacy of Discord: Controversial Meanings in American Mudéjar Style...
This paper offers an American perspective on the term Mudéjar, examining debates in the study of American colonial art and architecture from the 20th century to the present day. It delves into the...
View ArticleHow Many Annunciations Are There? Using European Prints to Digitally Explore...
The combination of a computational approach with the expertise of art historians in studying the similarities and differences between European prints and eighteenth-century Portuguese azulejos has led...
View ArticleStyle, Nonetheless. Eight Good Reasons to Reject the Notion of Style; Three...
This article examines why art historians have distanced themselves from the concept of “style” since the 1960s. It draws on the critiques of Meyer Schapiro and Ernst Gombrich, which were often cited...
View ArticleThe Computational Eye. Deconstructing Style in Digital Art History
With the aim of grounding digital methods in the art historic tradition, this paper uses the discussions around style as a springboard to ask how digital art history can extend beyond providing...
View ArticlePrésence et identité des collectionneurs dans les biennales (1948-1965)
Using exhibition catalogue data from the Artl@s database, this article seeks to define the typology of collectors/owners of works presented at nine international biennials, while quantifying their...
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