The Art Historical Canon and the Transnational

CIHA, for better or worse, started as a Eurocentric organization in the nineteenth century. It has come a long way since, but the issue of Eurocentrism has not gone away completely and is still something we need to tackle. This paper will try to find a way forward through the examination of the concept of the canon in art history. Scholars, such as Harold Bloom, has defended the notion of the Western canon for the literary studies, whereas for art history Griselda Pollock has presented a more sophisticated argument by introducing the term ‘differencing’ the canon in order to combat the immediate problems of existing canon and explored the possibilities for the displacement of the opposition between inside and outside. More recently Anna Brzyski has proposed the notion of ‘partisan canons’ for the examination of the canons in art history. She identified not a single canon but multiple and competing ones and argued the need for historicising the production of art canons and canonical values. This paper will follow and develop further the arguments provided by both Pollock and Brzyski by introducing the notion of the transnational within the debate of the canon studies. By examining British and Japanese canon formations and their interaction with each other, it is hoped that this paper will be part of our reflection on the past that will lead to new futures.

This paper is for the 33rd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art.