Shifting Reflections – A Swiss-Indian Research Project on Transcultural Art History

We are all surrounded by images nowadays, independent of the culture we live in. Historical paintings, devotional sculptures, portraits, book illustrations, TV transmissions, and, last but not least, the present digital overrun of visuality in the worldwide social media—these are only a few areas of imaginary presence which tend to influence and control our lives. Art history as an academic discipline that deals with what can be called the ‘power of images’ has been observing this complex phenomenon of increasing visual mediality already for more than 30 years. Especially within the present broad perspective of ancient to (post) modern thought. It devoted itself not only to the issues of iconography, mastership, or style but mostly to the investigation of how images work, how they simulate ‘presence’, how they work remotely, how they enlarge, steer and format our mental archives of imagination. Also the question of to what extent do they let us reconsider the past and anticipate the future becomes an issue of high social and political relevance today. Our research project arises from the conviction that in the realm of historical diversity of cultural backgrounds, we can put, again, the prominent question: ‘What is an image?’

In this context, we started to question ourselves whether we mean the same when we talk about images, historical and contemporary, and try to estimate the potential of their sovereignty? These questions which accompany our research were particularly prevalent during recent international art history congresses in 2018-19 organized in India and those devoted to Indian art and culture in the global context. Global and transcultural art history is, of course, already an established discipline that investigates issues like historical and contemporary migrations of works & artists, intersections of cultural agency & patronage across different continents, and the (post) colonial realms of art-related discourses. But is there the one history of art, the one history of images? In the last years in which the ‘globality’ of art phenomena has been elevated to one of the main paradigms of our discipline, it became clear that even within the present networked community of researchers, we still have very diverging ideas of what images actually are, despite our shared tools of description, analysis, and reconstruction of visual meaning.

This is where our Swiss-Indian ZHAW Bridging Grant on transcultural art history is located: with Naman Ahuja from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and several project associates. We aim to investigate how intercultural differences in understanding images can be practically reflected in our present debates on the nature of images, visuality, and imagination. Do the Western notions of representation, similarity, and agency, so prevalent in how we judge upon images today, have a universal value? How far can we also reflect i.a. the Indian philosophical issues of illusion, apparition, and aspect while talking about the ‘power of images’ in art history at its global momentum? What do we actually mean when we talk ‘globally’ about visual metaphors, symbols, and allegories? Moreover, what can we learn from the ancient theories or practices of imagination and embodiment in the present world dominated by the endless flow of images? We hope to investigate those seminal issues through a series of meetings and common publications. At the time being, a book edition concerning introductory essays on those topics and the application for a comprehensive research project which would involve experts and PhD candidates from both countries are in preparation.

To read more about his project, click here.