Why Horizontal Art History Cannot Escape Computation

Abstract

Since the postcolonial and decolonial posture has become widespread in art history, it is surprising that the canon of art history has not been replaced by a convincing story. The centre–periphery model, which is at the heart of the modernist canon especially, remains like a dogma. Without it, the decolonial approach has no place – but it prevents the very narrative of the canon from being called into question, beyond just being a negative reference. Is it impossible to escape from this paradigm? A horizontal history of art may help to break the deadlock. Some come to horizontal history with their historical, artistic, and political experience, as did Piotr Piotrowski; others come to it through the need for a more representative history, which only the distant and global computational approach can satisfy. The final objective of this chapter is to show how the gathering of sources on a global scale and their “distant reading” contribute to disorganizing our relationship to art history – our preconceived ideas about the global geopolitics of the arts, and our traditional hierarchies among artists, styles, and trends. It then remains to construct new narratives, of which digital horizontalization can only be the starting point.