Taking the local seriously

Abstract

This commentary discusses essays by Geoffrey Batchen, Tatiana Flores, Sunanda Sanyal, Alexandra Seggerman and Damian Skinner appearing in a special issue of World Art on Local Modernisms. It argues, along with the contributors, for the need for emic perspectives in evaluating global modern arts that have been excluded from established canons as belated or imitative. It also argues that the failure of the discipline to develop narratives of modernism adequate to its own aspirations to become a world discipline are inconsistent with art history's own fundamental methodologies of iconographic analysis and social contextualization. Neglect of the substantial literature on world modernisms that is now available further exposes the current situation as hegemonic and neo-colonial.