Subproject C

Heir to the Hybrid Moment: from Tradition to Modernity in Non-Western Visual Arts

​Project leader: Wendy M. K. Shaw, assistant professor

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In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the parameters through which art outside the Western tradition could be perceived changed. On the one hand, in regions as disparate as the Ottoman Empire, Japan, India, and Latin America, European and local scholars and artists began to recognize aspects of local visual traditions that could be contextualized and historicized under the rubric of art. On the other, artists studying in Europe and newly founded art academies in the non-West began to produce art in the Western modality, particularly oil painting and sculpture, over much of the globe. Although generally, the birth of non-Western art histories and that of non-Western modern art have been conceived as disparate phenomena, their historical covalence and their reliance on the same community of scholars and artists suggest that together, they represent what might be called a hybrid moment: a temporally delimited position that can take place at various historical times in which the problematic hybrid of modern non-Western culture emerges, and in the process enables the differentiated perception of modernity and tradition through the definition of their mutual alterity. This research module will investigate the social and political implications of arts produced at this hybrid moment through interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and cross-temporal perspectives. It proposes that, far from antagonistic, the possibility of creating local modern and contemporary art relies on the covalent historicization of traditional forms through art historical writing.