Art and its Global Histories – serie

The reader Art and its global histories represents an invaluable teaching tool, offering content ranging from academic essays and excerpts, new translations, interviews with curators and artists, to art criticism. The introduction sets out the state of art history today as it undergoes the profound shift of a 'global turn'. Particular focus is given to British India, which represents a shift from the usual attention paid to Orientalism and French art in this period. The sources and debates on this topic have never before been brought together in a satisfactory way and this book will represent a particularly significant and valuable contribution for postgraduate and undergraduate art history teaching.

Inspired by recent approaches to the field, the book reexamines the field of Renaissance art history by exploring the art of this era in the light of global connections. It considers the movement of objects, ideas and technologies and its significance for European art and material culture, analysing images through the lens of cultural encounter and conflict.

The book examines how increasing engagement with the rest of the world transformed European art, architecture and design. It considers how commercial activity and colonial ventures gave rise to new and diverse forms of visual and material culture across the globe. Drawing on a wide range of recent scholarship, it offers a new perspective that challenges Eurocentric approaches.

The book explores British art in relation to British India. It examines the aesthetic interactions initiated by the Anglo-Indian colonial encounter across the disciplines of painting, print-making, design, photography and architecture. It also considers the display of Indian artefacts at exhibitions in Britain and in India and presents the art of urban elites alongside popular arts and artefacts.