Reactionary Art Histories
<p>This special issue of Selva is dedicated to examining “Reactionary Art Histories.” At a moment when global Far Right movements are once again turning to the history of Western art for their iconography, when avowed “respect” for both art and history provide rhetorical protection for the monuments of racial capitalism, when art museums in Poland are being purged of “neo-Marxism” and “gender ideology,” this collection aims to hold a disquieting mirror up to the discipline of art history, to reconsider its moments of complicity and outright collaboration. By no means a comprehensive survey of conservative art history nor strictly centered on Nazism, “Reactionary Art Histories” instead offers a series of cases in which the discourses of art were mobilized against democratization in its most radical sense. Focused on the years leading up to World War II and its immediate aftermath, this issue of the journal examines moments when art history broadly conceived—academic art history, aesthetic theory, art criticism, museum collecting and curating, and architectural planning—lent itself enthusiastically to Far Right politics and the preservation of hierarchy. The issue, as a whole, is thus geared to reckoning with the many ways in which the history of art as a discipline historically accommodated Fascist regimes, while this introductory essay dwells on the ongoing necessity of this task for our contemporary moment…</p>
Editors: Daniel Marcus, Jennifer Nelson, Daniel Spaulding
Issue Editor: Rachel Silveri, Trevor Stark
Contributors: Rachel Silveri, Trevor Stark, Evonne Levy, Hans Sedlmayr, Rudolf Wittkower, Shawon Kinew, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Emilie Anne-Yvonne Luse, Waldemar George, Ian Balfour, Tatiana Senkevitch, Laura Moure Cecchini, Ana Gonçalves Magalhães
Translators: Daniel Spaulding, Trevor Stark, Emilie Anne-Yvonne Luse
Designer: Aaron Gemmill
Part of: Selva
ISSN: 2770-4831