Published by De Gruyter

Contact Zones

Studies in Global Art

Edited by: Lars Blunck, Bénédicte Savoy and Avinoam Shalem

ISSN: 2196-3746

e-ISSN 2196-3754

Overview
Volumes

Mobility - in the broad sense and use of the term - is a major theme in the reflection on art and history today. With its emphasis on processes of influx and reciprocity, it suggests an interpretative approach new to traditional thinking on art history, most often concerned with art in its static state. The Contact Zone series encourages studies focusing on spaces of interaction, transaction and movement of persons and objects, art and ideas, materials and techniques, and on spaces where aesthetic concepts related to the visual arts evolve and develop.

Topics

Book Open Access 2021

Rhapsodic Objects

Art, Agency, and Materiality (1700–2000)

Yaelle Biro, Noemie Etienne, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)

Volume 7 in this series

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Circulation and imitation are key factors in shaping the material world. The authors in this volume explore how technical knowledge, immaterial desires, and political agendas impact the production and consumption of visual and material culture across times and places. Their essays map multidirectional transactions for cultural goods in which source countries can be positioned at the center. Rhapsodic – literally to stitch or weave songs – paired with objects – from thrown against – intertwines complexity and action. Rhapsodic objects thus beckons to the layered narratives of the objects themselves, their making, and their reception over time. The concept further underlines their potential to express creativity, generate emotion, and reveal histories – often tainted with violence.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110757668
ISBN:: 9783110757668
ISBN:: 9783110656640
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Arts, general
Subject:: Genres
Subject:: Applied Arts
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Fluctuating Alliances

Art, Politics, and Diplomacy in the Modern Era

Pilar Diez del Corral Corredoira

Volume 6 in this series

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What was the role of art in the context of rapidly changing political alliances of the early modern period? The interdisciplinary contributions to this volume explore this question from the perspectives of "War and Peace," "Jesuits and Diplomacy," "Negotiating with Faith," and "Court and Diplomatic Celebrations". Special attention is paid to those art genres that were suitable for easy distribution due to their reproducibility, such as medals and prints. But also paintings, tombs and ephemeral festivities like fireworks served the manifestation of claims to power. The exemplary analyses provide a broad view of the political dimensions of early modern transcultural artistic exchange in Europe and beyond.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110606416
ISBN:: 9783110606416
ISBN:: 9783110604894
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Periods
Subject:: 16th-17th Century
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Dynamis of the Image

Moving Images in a Global World

Emmanuel Alloa, Chiara Cappelletto

Volume 5 in this series

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Images are not neutral conveyors of messages shipped around the globe to achieve globalized spectatorship. They are powerful forces that elicit very diverse responses and can resist new visual hegemonies of our global world. Bringing together case studies from the field of media, art, politics, religion, anthropology and science, this volume breaks new ground by reflecting on the very power of images beyond their medial exploitation.

The contributions by Hans Belting, Susan Buck-Morss, Georges Didi-Huberman, W.J.T. Mitchell, and Ticio Escobar among others testify that globalization does not necessarily equal homogenization, and that images can open up alternative ways of picturing what is to come.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110530544
ISBN:: 9783110530544
ISBN:: 9783110528749
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Arts, general
Subject:: Art Theory
Subject:: Museums and Collections
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Genres and Media in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Visual Arts, Photography
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Padua and Venice

Transcultural Exchange in the Early Modern Age

Brigit Blass-Simmen, Stefan Weppelmann

Volume 4 in this series

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Venice and Padua are neighboring cities with a topographical and geopolitical distinction. Venice is a port city in the Venetian Lagoon, which opened up towards Byzantium and the East. Padua on the mainland was founded in Roman times and is a university city, a place of Humanism and research into antiquity. The contributions analyze works of art as aesthetic formulations of their places of origin, which however also have an effect on and expand their surroundings. International experts investigate how these two different concepts stimulated each other in the Early Modern Age, and how the exchange worked.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110465402
ISBN:: 9783110465402
ISBN:: 9783110465181
ISBN:: 9783110464832
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Arts, general
Subject:: Genres
Subject:: Painting
Subject:: Sculpture
Subject:: Periods
Subject:: 16th-17th Century
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Images of the Art Museum

Connecting Gaze and Discourse in the History of Museology

Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Melania Savino

Volume 3 in this series

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In recent years, the emerging field of museum studies has seen rapid expansion in the critical study of museums and scholars started to question the institution and its functions. To contribute differentiated viewpoints to the currently evolving meta-discourse on the museum, this volume aims to investigate how the institution of the museum has been visualized and translated into different kinds of images and how these images have affected our perception of these institutions.
In this interdisciplinary collection, scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds, including art history, heritage, museums studies and architectural history, explore a broad range of case studies stretching across the globe. The volume opens up debate about the epistemological and historiographical significance of a variety of different images and representations of the Art Museum, including the transformation or adaptation of the image of the art museum across periods and cultures. In this context, this volume aims to develop a new theoretical framework while proposing new methodological tools and resources for the analysis of museological representations on a global scale.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110341362
ISBN:: 9783110341362
ISBN:: 9783110384345
ISBN:: 9783110338874
Subject:: Architecture and Design
Subject:: Architecture and Design, other
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Arts, general
Subject:: Museums and Collections
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2014

Echoes of Exile

Moscow Archives and the Arts in Paris 1933-1945

Ines Rotermund-Reynard

Volume 2 in this series

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Thousands of people were driven into exile by Germany's National Socialist regime from 1933 onward. For many German-speaking artists and writers Paris became a temporary capital. The archives of these exiles became "displaced objects" - scattered, stolen, confiscated, and often destroyed, but also frequently preserved. This book assesses previously unknown source material stored at the Moscow State Military Archive (RVGA) since the end of the war, and offers new insights into the activities of German-speaking exiles in the 1930s in Paris and Europe. Against the backdrop of current debates surrounding displaced cultural goods and their restitution, this work seeks to facilitate a transnational, interdisciplinary scientific dialogue.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110290653
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029058-5
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029065-3
ISBN:: 9783110388800
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Arts, general
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

The Museum Is Open

Towards a Transnational History of Museums 1750-1940

Andrea Meyer, Benedicte Savoy

Volume 1 in this series

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Museum science, museum analysis, museum history, and museum theory – all this expanding terminology underscores the growing scholarly interest in museums. A recurring assertion is that as an institution, the museum has largely functioned as a venue for the formation of specifically national identities. This volume, by contrast, highlights the museum as a product of transnational processes of exchange, focusing on the period from 1750 to 1940.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110298826
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029880-2
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029882-6
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Arts, general
Publisher:: De Gruyter