Modernism Beyond the West: A History of Art from Emerging Markets

Over the last decade Asian art has gone from relative obscurity to exceeding prices obtained by European Old Masters. But while the market is thriving, the historical and cultural circumstances which led to this are underdiscussed. The description of artists from particular regions as ‘emerging’ renders these works ahistorical, affecting a divorce from context. This publication challenges this by attending to the development of modern and contemporary art from these regions in an extended historical and global perspective. Unprecedented cultural dialogue during the early twentieth century facilitated modernism; a modernism that in the West depended on a critical reassessment based on ‘primitive’ cultures, and that outside the West was dependent on the importation of Western art. It is this reciprocity of influence that provides fertile ground for revision, allowing a shift away from a binary West/non-West narrative, to a global model of mutual global exchange. The art histories of individual nations in Asia and South America – particularly China, Japan and Brazil – are becoming well known, but the possible links and similarities between these non-Western modernisms have not yet been interrogated. This publication unites expertise developed within regional case studies, in order to forge a collective framework appropriate to the demands of an international audience and market for contemporary art. How mutual is the dialogue between West and non-West in the development of modernism, and what are the impacts of these trans- and inter-cultural dialogues for today’s globalised art world?