CAA News Today
International Review: Vibrancy In Stone: Masterpieces of the Đà Nẵng Museum of Cham Sculpture
posted Aug 29, 2019
The following article was written in response to a call for submissions by CAA’s International Committee. It is by Swati Chembakur, an architectural historian at Jnanapravaha, a center for the arts in Mumbai, India. The author is also a 2019 alumna of the CAA-Getty International Program.
Vibrancy in Stone: Masterpieces of the Đà Nẵng Museum of Cham Sculpture, by Trần Kỳ Phương, V. Văn Thắng, and Peter D. Sharrock. Photographs by Paisarn Piemmettawat (Bangkok: River Books, 2018)
In 2018, the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) partnered with the Đà Nẵng Museum of Cham Sculpture in central Vietnam to produce a remarkable and visually striking centenary catalogue of its world-renowned collection of the sacred arts of the Cham people of Vietnam. The publication of Vibrancy in Stone: Masterpieces of the Đà Nẵng Museum of Cham Sculpture was timed to coincide with the renovation and expansion of the museum.
Beginning in the second century CE, settlements appeared along the central coast of what became Vietnam. The Chams probably migrated over the ocean from Borneo and were accomplished navigators. Their ports were the first call for any ship heading from China to India and the Arab world. Their role in the medieval maritime trade grew steadily and reached an apogee in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the great neighboring empire of Cambodia declined. The prosperity won from trade led to large scale temple construction earlier than the Cambodians.
Figure 1. Map of Cham archaeological sites in Vietnam
When tourism resumed in Vietnam after the wars of the twentieth century, the museum quickly became a prime attraction in the port city of Đà Nẵng. It is the world’s only museum devoted exclusively to the art of ancient Champa, the name given to the civilization of the Cham people. With 500 objects on display, its collection far outnumbers those in the Hanoi and Ho chi Minh City History museums, as well as the Musée Guimet in Paris.
Figure 2. Đà Nẵng Museum, Vietnam Photo: Trần Kỳ Phương
In the late nineteenth century, fifty sculptures were gathered by a French colonial administrator and amateur/enthusiastic collector, Charles Lemire, in a public garden at Tourane (Đà Nẵng), forming the embryo of the future museum collection. Some years later, French architect and archaeologist Henri Parmentier took charge of the neglected artworks and proposed a museum for their protection, which opened in 1919 (Fig. 2). He compiled the first comprehensive catalogue.
French colonial research formed the basis of Cham studies. Today a growing number of Vietnamese archaeologists and art historians are taking an active interest in this subject, expanding our understanding of the ancient art. Ethnic Cham scholars still remain few in number. Almost seventy years after Parmentier’s catalogue, a short guidebook to the museum was published about Cham history and art (Trần Kỳ Phương, 1987). It marked the first catalogue of the collection compiled by Vietnamese researchers and highlighted the link between Vietnamese and French research. After the devastating twentieth-century wars in Vietnam, some of the objects in Parmentier’s 1919 catalogue had disappeared, been damaged, or moved to other institutions. At the same time, many recently discovered artifacts have been added to the museum inventory.
Knowledge of Champa’s history, culture, and art, and an appreciation of its richness and uniqueness, has gradually progressed with the accumulation of new data and the engagement of various scholarly disciplines by both national and international scholars. Champa studies no longer appear in only French-language journals, as in the early twentieth century, but now attract a growing number of scholars from Europe, Asia, and North America, who work alongside Vietnamese experts.
Vibrancy in Stone is organized into two parts. Part I includes fourteen essays about the history and culture of Champa by Vietnamese and international scholars. Part II presents a stunningly illustrated chronology of Cham sculpture accompanied by meticulous descriptions and comments by contemporary scholars.
The introductory essay by museum director Vo Văn Thắng discusses the history of the museum, its collection, changing installations over the years, and the current renovation and expansion of the building. Subsequent essays by Kenneth Hall, John Whitmore and Đỗ Trường Giang address the importance of several Champa ports extending along the central Vietnam coast and their active role in the maritime trade network. Champa was probably never a unified state or kingdom but rather a series of loosely linked smaller polities. Its capitals were widely separated settlements on different parts of the coast, which took turns assuming hegemony over others.
Whitmore’s essay delineates fully for the first time the rise of Vijaya (in today’s Bình Đinh province) as the culture’s capital in the ninth century to its sudden demise in the fifteenth century.
Several essays address the Hindu-Buddhist religion, its rituals, archeology, and inscribed objects (by Shivani Kapoor, Ann-Valérie Schweyer, John Guy, Arlo Griffiths, Lâm Thị Mỹ Dung, and—full disclosure—myself) while others (by Trần Kỳ Phương and Parul Pandya Dhar) focus on the architecture, taking the reader through the history of Cham temples and highlighting the evolution of key construction techniques and design features that produced a series of tall, distinctive and elegant brick towers along the coastline (Fig. 3).
Figure 3. Mỹ Sơn valley temple displaying long, elegant brick sanctuaries Photo: Trần Kỳ Phương
The iconography of the beautiful and vibrant Cham sculptures erected in these towers—referenced in the catalogue title—is the subject of chapters by Thierry Zéphir, Grace Chiao-Hui Tu, and Peter D. Sharrock. Cham art has hitherto been almost exclusively studied through an Indic lens but Hui-Tu’s work brings out many new and unseen Sinitic aspects in Cham sacred art. For example, a ninth century monumental sandstone Buddha from Đồng Dương monastery is seated in the “European” position with pendant feet and palms resting on the knees (Fig. 4). While Buddhas seated with pendant legs can be found in Indian, Southeast Asian, and Chinese Buddhist art traditions, this particular hand posture is seen only in China and Đồng Dương.
Figure 4. Đồng Dương pedestal from Đồng Dương, Quảng Nam. 9th century, sandstone, 30 x 177 x 70 in. (76 x 449 x 389 cm); sandstone dais supporting the Buddha, 28 x 87 x 49 in. (70 x 222 x 124 cm). BTC 177-178 Photo: Paisarn Piemmettawat
The question of the relationship between Cham and neighboring Khmers forms the core of the paper by Peter D. Sharrock. Addressing the beautiful Khmer bronze of a naga-enthroned Buddha discovered by the French in the main Cham temple outside Vijaya, he points out that this icon was never part of Cham iconography. He then uses art historical and epigraphic evidence to untie a series of long-distorting knots in the history of the Khmer-Cham relationship.
Part II of Vibrancy in Stone focuses on masterpieces of the museum, one of which is the beautiful bronze illustrated in Figure 5, found in the Đồng Dương monastery in 1978. Earlier labelled as Tārā or Prajñāparāmita, here it has been correctly identified as the female aspect of Avalokitesvara and the main cult image of the monastery.
Figure 5. Lakṣmīndra-Avalokiteśvara, 9th century bronze found in the monastery of Đồng Dương. height 6 in. (115 cm). Attributes: lotus (right hand) and conch broken at the time of discovery. BTC 1651-BTĐN 535 Photo: Paisarn Piemmettawat
Other masterpieces include the most famous Mỹ Sơn Śivalinga pedestal (Fig. 6a-b), the only Cham sculpture that records the daily spiritual activities of ascetics performing rituals, practicing meditation, conversing, playing musical instruments, treating diseases, etc., and a widely acknowledge high relief of a Trà Kiệu dancer draped in beads (Fig. 7).
Figure 6a. Mỹ Sơn, 8th century temple pedestal displaying several daily ascetic activities, sandstone, 25 ½ x 107 x 131 in. (65 x 271 x 333 cm). BTC 6-22.4 Photo: Trần Kỳ Phương
Figure 6b. Details of the ascetic activities depicted on the Mỹ Sơn pedestal. Photo: Paisarn Piemmettawat
Figure 7. Trà Kiệu dancer/apsaras, Trà Kiệu, Quàng Nam, 11th century, sandstone, 43 x 106 in. (110 x 270 cm). BTC 118/1-22.5
Vibrancy in Stone brings together some of the most priceless and rare works of Cham art. As such, it proclaims the value and artistry of works by the Cham people whose heirs today are an ethnic minority in Vietnam. Equally important, it gathers together these beautiful and rare works of art as a resource for scholars, students, and connoisseurs alike.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Aug 28, 2019
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A New Definition of “Museum” Sparks International Debate
The International Council of Museums’s proposed definition—which incorporates mention of “human dignity and social justice”—has stirred debate among the consortium’s 40,000 professionals. (Hyperallergic)
Don’t Stress the New Semester
If you’re scrambling to create a syllabus, find useful readings, and develop effective assignments, remember you don’t have to recreate the wheel. Here’s a great round up of resources from AHTR. (Art History Teaching Resources)
The Met Is Investigating Objects in Its Collection With Ties to Disgraced Dealer Subhash Kapoor. Will Other Museums Follow Suit?
Kapoor was arrested in 2011 for allegedly operating one of the largest antiquities smuggling operations in the world. (artnet News)
Sexism in the Academy
While there were significant gains during much of the 20th century, feminist progress in the academy has slowed—and may have already come to a halt. (n+1)
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Aug 21, 2019
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Statues from the Kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, are pictured in 2018 at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. Photo: Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images
Across Europe, Museums Rethink What To Do With Their African Art Collections
According to commonly cited figures from a 2007 UNESCO forum, 90% to 95% of sub-Saharan cultural artifacts are housed outside Africa. (NPR)
San Francisco School Board Reverses Course, Decides to Save Controversial Mural
Facing international outcry, the San Francisco school board reversed course last week, voting to obscure murals by Victor Arnautoff rather than paint over them. (San Francisco Chronicle)
National Endowment for the Humanities Announces New Grants
The NEH announced $29 million in awards for 215 humanities projects across the country.(New York Times)
Princeton Art Museum Partners with Historically Black Colleges in Art Leadership Program
A new partnership aims to open up career paths for students underrepresented in the field of cultural heritage. (Princeton News)
Decolonizing Your Syllabus? You Might Have Missed Some Steps
“Inviting voices into spaces not built for them or that undermine their messages, lived experiences, and expertise can often work against the well-intentioned goals of inclusion.”(Twitter thread)
New in caa.reviews
posted Aug 16, 2019
Allison Young reviews Grasping Shadows: The Dark Side of Literature, Painting, Photography, and Film by William Chapman Sharpe. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Talia Shabtay discusses Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen, a Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibition. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Daniel Tovar covers the exhibition and catalog William Blake and the Age of Aquarius. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Aug 14, 2019
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Shannon Finnegan’s Anti-Stairs Club Lounge in front of public monument Vessel in New York. Photo: Maria Baranova, courtesy of Shannon Finnegan via Hyperallergic
Fighting the Art World’s Ableism
A call for arts institutions to move beyond ADA compliance and develop greater awareness around accessibility. (Hyperallergic)
After Damaging Collisions (and Too Many Near Misses), Venice Decides to Ban Giant Cruise Ships Once and For All
The Italian government has decided to begin diverting the giant ships away from Venice’s central waterway. (artnet News)
Ranking New York’s Most Toxic Museum Boards
Following the resignation of Warren Kanders from the Whitney Museum board, a look at the makeup of other prominent New York institutions. (New York Magazine)
Sourdough Enthusiasts Are Harvesting 4,500-Year-Old Yeast From Museums’ Egyptian Pottery to Make Bread Fit for the Pharaohs
What happens when a scientist, an Egyptologist, and a video-game designer walk into a museum? (artnet News)
New in caa.reviews
posted Aug 09, 2019
Matthew Bird discusses Childhood by Design: Toys and the Material Culture of Childhood, 1700–Present, edited by Megan Brandow-Faller. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Brett M. Van Hoesen considers Trevor Paglen’s Orbital Reflector, on view at Nevada Museum of Art, Reno. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Adrienne Rooney reviews the exhibition catalogue Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, edited by Tatiana Flores and Michelle Ann Stephens. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Announcing New CAA Professional Committees
posted Aug 08, 2019
CAA is pleased to announce the creation of two new professional committees: a Committee on Research and Scholarship, and a Services to Historians of Visual Arts Committee. The new committees were approved by the Board of Directors at their May 2019 meeting. Concurrent with our annual call for new committee members, we seek applicants to form the inaugural teams for these two new committees.
The deadline for these applications is October 1, 2019, for new committee service to begin at the Annual Conference in February 2020.
Discussion group at 2018 CAA Annual Conference. Photo: Rafael Cardenas
The formation of these new committees responds to requests from our membership and to a desire to be forward-looking in addressing the professional needs of our fields.
The Committee on Research and Scholarship will offer a resource to all members engaged in the production or consumption of scholarly research.
The Services to Historians of Visual Arts Committee will identify and address concerns facing the historian members of our organization (encompassing specialists in any facets of art, architecture, design, material culture, and visual culture).
The Services to Historians of Visual Arts Committee is intended to recognize our organization’s enduring support for historians, offering them a presence and a voice similar to the role played by other profession-specific committees in our organization (such as the Services to Artists Committee and the Committee on Design). As noted in the committee charge, the Services to Historians of Visual Arts Committee “offers a forum for the discussion of issues of mutual interest across the discipline’s many diverse fields and methodologies. In a climate of great threat to the survival of history of art and history of visual arts programs, this committee provides a locus for advocacy issues particular to historians in these areas of interest.” It is understood that the committee will play an active role in the Annual Conference but is also intended to serve as a central hub and resource for communication among historians of the visual arts well beyond the chronology of conference programming.
As stated in the committee charge, the Committee on Research and Scholarship is charged with “gathering information, [and] assessing and proposing organizational advocacy for CAA on matters concerning the research and scholarship in visual arts and design, encompassing all facets of research regarding history, theory, education and practice.” Specialists in the visual arts—whether practitioners or historians—face unique challenges in the production of their scholarship, such as the cost of image permissions, the closures or reorganization of academic presses, and/or the misalignment of the multiyear workflow of exhibitions or excavations against the strictures of a tenure clock. A scholar’s type of institutional affiliation, or independent scholar status, has an enduring impact on the types of research and scholarship that can be produced—arguably in more profound ways than in other humanities or arts fields. The Committee on Research and Scholarship will provide a vital hub to our members interested in addressing any of these areas of concern—or advancing other concerns or questions concerning the area of research and scholarship.
If you wish to apply for either of these new committees, send an email to Vanessa Jalet at vjalet@collegeart.org with a brief statement of interest and attach a reduced résumé (no more than 2-3 pages).
Kindly also enter in the subject line: “Applicant for Committee on Research and Scholarship” or “Applicant for Services to Historians of Visual Arts Committee”
Deadline: October 1, 2019
Committee on Research and Scholarship Charge
The Committee on Research and Scholarship is charged with gathering information, assessing trends, and proposing organizational advocacy for CAA on matters concerning the advancement of research and scholarship in visual arts and design, encompassing all facets of research regarding history, education, and practice. Recognizing that professionals must navigate a rapidly-transforming field of options for conducting research and disseminating the results thereof, the committee is responsible for assisting the organization in engaging with current issues and serving its membership in this important facet of their professional life.
Services to Historians of Visual Arts Committee Charge
The Services to Historians of Visual Arts Committee identifies and addresses concerns facing historians of art, architecture, design, material culture, and visual culture. It creates and implements programs and events at the conference and beyond. It offers a forum for the discussion of issues of mutual interest across the discipline’s many diverse fields and methodologies. In a climate of great threat to the survival of history of art and history of visual arts programs, this committee provides a locus for advocacy issues particular to historians in these areas of interest. The Committee lends support and mentorship for both seasoned and emerging professionals. It is also charged with maintaining dialogue with other professional organizations and affiliated societies focused on the history of art, architecture, design, material culture and visual culture.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted Aug 07, 2019
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Toni Morrison. Photo courtesy Alfred A. Knopf.
No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear: Toni Morrison on the Artist’s Task in Troubled Times
Author and professor Toni Morrison passed away this week at the age of 88. Read her 2015 essay on the role of the artist, “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear.” (The Nation)
In a Powerful Statement, the Baltimore Museum of Art Is Dedicating All of Its 2020 Programming to Female Artists
The museum is planning thirteen solo shows for artists including Joan Mitchell, Candice Breitz, and Katharina Grosse. (artnet News)
Congress Is Investigating the Rapid Closure of Art Institutes Across United States
The collapse of the university franchise that owned more than 40 college campuses across the country has left nearly 26,000 students with ample debt and no degrees.(Hyperallergic)
Becoming Full Professor While Black
“My promotion happened—like those of all the black women before me—not because times have changed, but because I beat the odds.” (Chronicle of Higher Ed)
New in caa.reviews
posted Aug 02, 2019
Volker Schier reviews Liturgical Life and Latin Learning at Paradies bei Soest, 1300–1425: Inscription and Illumination in the Choir Books of a North German Dominican Convent by Jeffrey F. Hamburger et al. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Debra Pincus writes about the exhibition Mantegna and Bellini and its accompanying catalogue. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
João Florêncio discusses Lyndon K. Gill’s Erotic Islands: Art and Activism in the Queer Caribbean. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
Sunanda K. Sanyal explores the use of virtual reality in Laurie Anderson, currently on view at Mass MoCA. Read the full review at caa.reviews.
The CAA-Getty International Program: Looking Forward, Looking Back
posted Aug 01, 2019
This article was written by Janet Landay, project director of the CAA-Getty International Program since its inception.
2019 participants in the CAA-Getty International Program, photographed at the Annual Conference in New York. Photo by Ben Fractenberg
This is open season for the CAA-Getty International Program; that is, we’re accepting applications from international scholars between now and August 23rd to participate in next year’s program at the Annual Conference in Chicago. This will be the ninth year of the program and we’re looking for academics, curators, or artists who teach art history from countries not well represented in CAA’s membership (primarily non-Western countries from the global south, all parts of Asia, and Eastern Europe). Specifically, we want to bring scholars who are advancing our understanding of the visual arts, be it through art history, visual studies, or any number of intersecting disciplines, such as aesthetics, history, post-colonial studies, gender studies, cultural heritage research, etc. The range of topics addressed by participants since the program began nine years ago is remarkable, as exemplified in last year’s programs included at the end of this article.
The mission of the CAA-Getty International Program is to bring new voices to the CAA community to enrich the conversation about globalization and inclusion in visual arts scholarship. Since it began in 2012, the program has brought 120 scholars from 46 countries to its conferences, including representatives from Argentina, Albania, Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, China, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Ghana, Greece, Haiti, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, and Vietnam. Many of these scholars have returned to CAA conferences as speakers, session chairs, and members of CAA’s International Committee. They have also contributed articles to CAA’s publications and collaborated with scholars in the United States that they met while attending a conference.
Map showing home countries of 2019 CAA-Getty International Program participants. Map provided by Nazar Kozak.
Each year, US-based CAA members serve as hosts to the international scholars, introducing them to colleagues, guiding them through the conference’s vast array of sessions and programs, and frequently taking them to museums and collections in town. To date, over 60 CAA members have participated in the program, supported with honoraria from the National Committee for the History of Art.
In 2020, we will bring fifteen new scholars and five alumni to the Chicago conference. Please help us spread the word of this grant opportunity to colleagues or institutions in the regions mentioned above by sharing this link to the program’s description and application.
And if you would like to participate as a host, send me an email at jlanday@collegeart.org.
What follows is the program for two key events from the 2019 CAA-Getty International Program: a preconference colloquium on February 12th on international issues in art history at which twenty scholars participated, and an alumni conference session on February 14th that featured five CAA-Getty alumni. Included below is the program for the February 12th colloquium, followed by the abstracts for the February 14th alumni conference session.
Word cloud showing most frequently used words in the 2019 Preconference Colloquium of the CAA-Getty International Program. Illustration provided by Nazar Kozak.
PROGRAM
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS 2019
PRECONFERENCE COLLOQUIUM
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Starr Foundation Hall, Parsons School of Design
8:30 AM Coffee, welcome, and introductions
9:15 AM Examples of Defining or Constructing Aesthetics in Chinese and Japanese Art
Chair: Chen Liu, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University, 2018-19
The Making of Scenic Sites: Landscape Painting, Tourism and Nationalism in Republican China
Pedith Chan, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Art by Japanese Prisoners in New Zealand during WWII
Richard Bullen, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Lucy Driscoll and Developing a Theory of Chinese Painting
Jian Zhang, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou
CAA-Getty International Program preconference colloquium, February 12, 2019. Photo by Ben Fractenberg
10:30 AM Orientalism/Occidentalism
Chair: Nadhra Khan, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan
From Occidentalism to an Occidentalizing Art: An Iranian Gaze to the Occident
Negar Habibi, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Deconstructing Imperialism: The Intersection of Religion, Politics, and Design in the Iconography of a Christian Saint
Halyna Kohut, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine
Orientalism and Female Portraiture in Nineteenth-Century Painting in Romania
Oana Maria Nicuță Nae, George Enescu National University of Arts, Iasi, Romania
11:45 AM How Do We Approach Religious Art?
Chair: Nazar Kozak, Department of Art Studies, Ethnology Institute, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
The Last Judgment in Spanish America as Social Rhetoric of Salvation and Damnation
Tamara Quírico, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Dancers, Musicians, Brahmins and Ṛṣis: Understanding the Temple Worship of the Pāśupata sect in Angkor, Cambodia
Swati Chemburkar, Southeast Asian Art and Architecture, Jnanapravaha, Mumbai, India
You Cannot See It: Access to Religious Artistic Materials
Stephen Fọlárànmí, Ọbáfémi Awólọ́wọ̀ University, Ilé-Ifè, Nigeria
1:00 PM Lunch
2:30 PM The Body, Identity, and Artistic Agency
Chair: Katarzyna Cytlak, Center for Slavic and Chinese Studies, University of San Martín, Argentina
Shifting Female Identity: Female Cross-dressing in Southeast Nigeria
Chukwuemeka Nwigwe, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
Challenging the “Unconscious”: Agnaldo Manoel dos Santos and the Revision of Afro-Brazilian Art
Juliana Ribeiro da Silva Bevilacqua, University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil
The Reinvention of the Body in Volatile Times: Political and Artistic Intersections between Buenos Aires and New York in the 1980s
Viviana Usubiaga, National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), University of San Martín/University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
3:45 PM Politics and Art in Dark Times
Chair: Sarena Abdullah, School of the Arts, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang
A Flame For Freedom
Marko Stamenkovic, ZETA Contemporary Art Center, Tirana, Albania
Sanitizing Memory through Erasure: Post-apartheid Nostalgia in Contemporary Visual Art Practice
Zamansele Nsele, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
The Crisis Displayed: Greece’s Participation at the Venice Art Biennale
Iro Katsaridou, Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki, Greece
5:00 PM Wine Reception
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS 2019
ALUMNI CONFERENCE SESSION
ABSTRACTS
Thursday, February 14, 2019
Creative Pedagogy: Mapping In-between Spaces Across Cultures
Nazar Kozak (Chair), National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
Art-historical curricula tend to provide imaginary “racks” on which each artwork could be assigned to chronological and geopolitical shelves. In practice, however, such systems has difficulties in accommodating phenomena that fall in-between proposed categorizations. Their presence in art-historical classrooms corresponds to cosmology ‘s Dark matter: it shapes the Universe while remains directly unobserved. Hybrid phenomena have produced an important impact on art scenes across historical periods and cultures, and illumination of this impact plays crucial role in making art history more fully global discipline. This session addresses cross-cultural entanglements and overlaps in which borders looses their fix and reveals their porosity. Structured around creative pedagogy it discusses specific historic cases from the teaching perspectives moving towards inclusive and collaborative paradigm especially in mixed-class environments engaging students and faculty from different countries. The panelist, who are the CAA-Getty International Program alumni from Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, share their teaching methods that proves efficiency in navigating across cultures as well and theoretical optics providing optimal focus on transcultural dialog and reciprocal enrichment.
From left to right: Chen Liu, Nazar Kozak, Katarzyna Cytlak, Nadhra Shahbaz Khan, and Sarena Abdullah at the CAA-Getty International Program alumni conference session, February 14, 2019. Photo by Ben Fractenberg
An Italian in China: The Curious Case of Giuseppe Castiglione
Chen Liu, Tsinghua University
What happens when China and the West encounter each other? A clash of traditions may generate unexpected art forms that defy categorization, as tellingly revealed in the life and works of the multi-talented Italian Jesuit artist Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), court painter to three Qing Emperors. Despite his popularity in China both during and after his lifetime, he is surprisingly little known in the West beyond those who specialize in classical Chinese art, with sparse literature in languages other than Chinese (mainly in Italian and French). Existing studies of Castiglione’s works, focusing largely on his paintings, tend to emphasize the “Western” trend he initiated in early modern China or his fusion of “European” and “Chinese” traditions, leading to oversimplification of both. A novel teaching course featuring cultural hybridity in both its subject and audience (a mixed group of Chinese and Western students) may help address such problems of transcultural interpretation and reception as exposed by the curious case of Castiglione. Using Castiglione’s art – painting, decoration and architecture – as a mirror, and by posing previously neglected questions such as “what is ‘non-Chinese’ or ‘non-Western’ in his works, and “which ‘Chinese’ and ‘European’ artistic styles/techniques did he adopt, adapt, or reject”, the course seeks to stimulate more profound reflections on the sophisticated, sometimes ambiguous traditions of both Chinese and European art, their compatibility and incompatibility, and to illuminate the confused in-between areas.
Pedagogy of the Transborders: Reviewing East European art from the perspective of transatlantic cultural exchanges with Latin American and African cultures
Katarzyna Cytlak, Centro de Estudios de los Mundos Eslavos y Chinos, Universidad Nacional de San Martín
Developed since the 1990s by Latin American thinkers, decolonial theory became an effective tool to teach East European art. Concepts, such as “border thinking” (Walter Mignolo) and “transmodernity” (Enrique Dussel), which dealing with bicultural identity in Latin America and postulating a non-hierarchical, inter-epistemic dialogue between cultures, offer a new framework to reconsider transatlantic artistic exchanges and cultural polarizations within the European continent. The paper will analyze how transmodern and decolonial approaches could shed new light on East European art and its dialogue with non-Western cultures. Quotations of customs and rites from Polish folklore by the Polish/Mexican artist Marcos Kurtycz were the result of his biculturalism, as well as an artistic strategy aiming at distinguishing himself on the Mexican scene. Self–identification with African cultures and politics by the Polish artists of the 1980s (Marek Sobczyk, The Luxus Group) could be explained as proof of the artists’ criticism of the Non-Aligned Movement, the symptom of their “radicalized utopian inclusivity” (Boris Groys), and as their critical comment on the late Socialist societies in the processes of Westernization.
Images of Guru Nanak: Locating Patterns of Words in Images
Nadhra Shahbaz Khan, Lahore University of Management Sciences
Traditional arts in the Indian subcontinent are strongly allied to oral traditions and to written text including both folklore and literature. Examples of these abound in secular and religious realms and are manifest in a large body of miniature paintings and murals showing the Hindu stories of Heer-Ranjha, Sassi-Punnoo and Dhruv Bhagat and relief panels illustrating Buddhist jataka tales and Hindu epic poems such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata. This paper maps the depiction of Guru Nanak, the first of the ten Sikh gurus, and their dependence of the Indian visual vocabulary taken from folklore, literature and cultural practices. He is usually painted with a fixed set of attributes, each laden with references to cultural practices and beliefs: some long forgotten, others have remained current until this day. Modern interventions however, have obscured meanings of many of these concepts and practices making it difficult today to fully understand their significance in their iconographic program. Refreshing the forgotten relationship between the word and image promises to lead to creative pedagogical possibilities where realms of imagination, rendition and performance can be navigated to connect not only with the creators and viewers of art but also the ones who dwell in it.
Cross Cultural Encounters through Creative Pedagogy in Teaching Art History
Sarena Abdullah, Universiti Sains Malaysia
This paper explains and discuses my recent and first Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) with an American university within the context of students’ cross-cultural encounters imbedded through Art History subject(s). In the 15 weeks of Malaysian Modern Art (VHS 202) and Selected Topics In Asian Art (ARTH 294) class, my American collaborator and me, designed and aligned our art history classes pedagogy cross-culturally taking in various considerations of Malaysian and American context into our teaching outcome. This paper will discuss how we have adopted and adapted the COIL module in our own classes, and innovate our collaborative engagements using Facebook as our main platform. From tasks such as personal introductions of students from both Malaysian and American classes, group videos of their cultural/national background, to producing group videos on artworks and /or material culture from local institutions, to completing cross collaboration group work tasks—this pedagogical approach had managed to expose students to different cross-cultural realities and encounters (and even time zones) weaved into their learning experiences. This paper will discuss the context of such creative pedagogy in the context of how Art History can also be a platform to disseminate creative knowledge today.