‘The Centre is Nowhere’: British Art and the Global

Abstract

What does it mean for art history to conjoin the terms ‘British art’ and ‘the global’? What is carried by the liminal space of the conjuncture? And what is forsaken? This special issue seeks to think through the pressures placed on British art since the mid‐nineteenth century as a national category of enquiry in the wake of unstable definitions of post‐colonialism, neo‐colonialism, globalization and the decolonial. Drawing on recent scholarly debates about the role and definitions of British art, the co‐authors explore some of the tensions inherent in trying to operate within a nationally and geographically defined field, the artificial borders of which are porous, malleable, and subject to regular political and cultural change. Acknowledging the shortcomings of both the global and the national as frameworks for art‐historical enquiry, we suggest different ways of steering a path between the two.