Elisa Durán-Ballén

That the masses might mock avant-garde art is so familiar today it’s hard to believe no one had bothered to do it before modernism (though it had happened in the rarefied air of the French and English salons). But why would anyone have bothered before? Until modernism, no art movement had ever made anything as totalizing and threatening as the... See more

In the field of art history, the white Western male viewpoint, unconsciously accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian, may--and does--prove to be inadequate not merely on moral and ethical grounds, or because it is elitist, but on purely intellectual ones.

But, what, if anything, is specific about the current moment's demands to reassess how universities, museums, and galleries teach, research, collect and exhibit? How can art historians, curators, collectors, museum directors, artists and writers respond to the call to decolonize art history?

Estas suposiciones, conscientes o inconscientes, unen a superestrellas tan inusuales como Miguel Ángel, Van Gogh, Rafael y Jackson Pollock bajo la rúbrica de “grandiosos” —un honor constatado por el número de monografías eruditas dedicadas al artista en cuestión— y el gran artista es, por supuesto, concebido como aquel que tiene “genio”; el genio,... See more

At a moment when all disciplines are becoming more self-conscious, more aware of the nature of their presuppositions as exhibited in the very languages and structures of the various fields of scholarship, such uncritical acceptance of "what is" as "natural" may be intellectually fatal.

Tal como lo señaló John Stewart Mill hace más de un siglo: “Todo lo que es usual aparenta ser natural. El sometimiento de las mujeres por los hombres es una costumbre universal, naturalmente cualquier desviación de esto no parecería natural.”

Aunque adquiramos todos los conocimientos del universo, todo se reduce a una cosa: práctica. Se reduce a regresar a casa y llevar a efecto paso a paso lo que hemos aprendido. Tan a menudo como sea necesario, durante todo el tiempo que se pueda o siempre, según los casos.

Things have come a long way since the Armory Show of 1913 — that’s the true genesis of all that might be called modern art in America and the first in-depth look Americans got at European modernism. In New York, 85,000 people attended; in Chicago, attendance was 188,000. American salon impresario Mabel Dodge wrote to Gertrude Stein that in New... See more