Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization

In this account of what globalisation means for contemporary art, David Joselit argues that the creative use of tradition by artists from around the world serves as a means of combatting modern art's legacy of Eurocentrism. Joselit analyses not only how heritage becomes contemporary through the practice of individual artists but also how a cultural infrastructure of museums, biennials and art fairs worldwide has emerged as a means of generating economic value, attracting capital and tourist dollars.

Joselit traces three distinct forms of modernism that developed outside the West, in opposition to Euro-American modernism: postcolonial, socialist realism and the underground. He argues that these modern genealogies are synchronised with one another and with Western modernism to produce global contemporary art. Joselit discusses curation and what he terms ""the curatorial episteme,"" which, through its acts of framing or curating, can become a means of recalibrating hierarchies of knowledge—and can contribute to the dual projects of decolonisation and deimperialization.

82 black and white illustrations

Hardcover

344 pages

Dimensions: height 22.9 x width 17.8 cm

ISBN: 9780262043694

Publisher: MIT Press

Published March 2020