ABSTRACT

This book maps key moments in the history of postwar art from a global perspective.

The reader is introduced to a new globally oriented approach to art, artists, museums and movements of the postwar era (1945–70). Specifically, this book bridges the gap between historical artistic centers, such as Paris and New York, and peripheral loci. Through case studies, previously unknown networks, circulations, divides and controversies are brought to light. From the development of Ethiopian modernism, to the showcase of Brazilian modernity, this book provides readers with a new set of coordinates and a reassessment of well-trodden art historical narratives around modernism.

This book will be of interest to scholars in art historiography, art history, exhibition and curatorial studies, modern art and globalization.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

Toward a New Understanding of Globalism in Postwar Art

chapter 1|12 pages

Prologue

Art History’s Work-in Pro(re)gress – Reflections on the Multiple Modernities Project

part 1|85 pages

Crossings and Encounters: Retracing Artists’ Itineraries

chapter 2|16 pages

Expression for All

Ferlov, Mancoba, Tajiri and the Art of Cobra

chapter 3|14 pages

Origins and Brinks

Multiple Modernisms in Postwar London

chapter 4|13 pages

Multiple Resistances to the Concept of Modernism

The Emergence of Artistic–Poetic Networks between Eastern Europe and Latin America in the Late 1960s and 1970s

chapter 5|12 pages

Urban Folklore

Marta Minujín’s Postwar Assemblage and the Modern City

chapter 6|14 pages

Yayoi Kusama as a Migrant Artist

An Artistic Trajectory as a Model for Understanding Postwar Art

chapter 7|14 pages

The Overworked Ground

Franz Erhard Walther in New York

part 2|79 pages

Against the Norm: Decentering and Resisting the Canon

chapter 8|14 pages

Blinded by Mao

The Challenge of Seeing Modernism in Art of the People’s Republic

chapter 9|11 pages

“Iranian Modernism ” and the Idea of Indigenous Art

Translations, Adoptions and (mis)interpretations

chapter 10|11 pages

Camouflaged Dissent – A Plastic Umbrella and Transparent Balloons

“Happenings” in South Korea, 1967–1968

chapter 11|15 pages

A Postcard from Addis

Ethiopian Modernism(s) in the World

chapter 13|12 pages

An Index of Modernity

Feminist Furniture by Teresa Burga and Beatriz González

part 3|53 pages

Collecting Modernisms – Exhibiting Modernisms

chapter 14|15 pages

Traveler’s Tales

Alfred Barr, the Soviet Union and International Modernism in the Postwar Period

chapter 15|12 pages

Displaying Whose Modernity?

The Bardis and the Museum of Art of São Paulo

chapter 16|12 pages

Cosmonaut Paintings as Contemporary Art

The Soviet Union at the Venice Biennale, 1956–1968

chapter 17|12 pages

All That Jazz

Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna and the Rise of Abstraction in Postwar Italy