Berlin Symposium on Post-culturalist Art History

Abstract

Post-culturalist art history' doesn't take for granted the ontological fact of culture as the context and content in dealing with the concrete material things and aesthetic practices which make up the putative 'objects' of art history. And therefore it doesn't take for granted the epistemological primacy of cultural history in interpretation and explanation of its objects. It means offering a nontautological analysis of the social emergence and partial consolidation of visual culture, including traditions of pictorial art. What this analysis claims and does in its terms and details is less important than the very fact of a strenuous effort to provide it. Precisely because post-culturalist thinking doesn't take for granted the fact of culture and the primacy of cultural history, potentially it can situate itself in productive and practical ways in relation to non-cultural inquiries in art history and in studies of art.

What Is Evolutionary Aesthetics? Three Waves

“…23 Whitney Davis talks about 'postculturalism' but I take him to endorse a similar view, given that his preferred approach builds on the premise that explanations about art may also engage contexts other than cultural history. 24 Bioculturalism is based on the ongoing mesh of nature-culture interaction. 25 The third wave attempts to avoid wilder adaptationist speculations while not shying away from the potential usefulness of the evolutionary framework.…”

Closed Doors to Open Minds: Refugee Policies, Crossing Frontiers, and Émigré Art History

“…What struck me were not so much these possibilities of a post-formalist or post-culturalist return to holistic art history, but rather Davis' insistence on Panofsky's humanism, to a certain degree extracting the idea from the historiographical context in which it was formulated. 4 Davis scarcely recalled that Panofsky's "History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline" was published amid the most consequential humanitarian crisis of the first half of the twentieth century. Tens of thousands of persons -Erwin and Dora Panofsky amongst them -were affected by closing borders, emigration policies, and profound violence towards the idea of humanity and freedom itself.…”