International Conference Before Europe: The Classic Avant-Gardes in the Longue Durée, University of Leuven, org. Sascha Bru and Leanne Rae Darnbrough — MDRN Research Lab, 9-10 December 2021

Santos, M. D. L. P. D. (Speaker)

Instituto de História da Arte (IHA)

Activity: Participating in or organising an event › Participation in conference

Description

presented paper: “‘Feeling primitively’ in the twentieth century: the case of the Benin sculptures in the Portuguese modernist narrative”

Period	9 Dec 2021 → 10 Dec 2021
Event type	Conference
Location	Leuven, BelgiumShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International

Documents & Links

This symposium seeks to further our understanding of the historical avant-gardes by reconsidering their outer temporal parameters. The European avant-gardes located the founding moment of dominant “European” culture in the Renaissance marriage of European Antiquity and Christianity. Part of their working assumption was, accordingly, that sources for rebooting European culture had to be located in periods before the Renaissance, if not, before the arrival of Classical Antiquity. If we follow this logic, then cultures belonging to pre-European periods abound, both on the European continent (from the Minoans and Mycenaeans to the Etruscans, Celts and Illyrians) and beyond (from what is generically called “prehistory” to Ancient Egypt and pre-Columbian times). Which of these or other pre-European cultures did the classic avant-gardes revisit and enter into meaningful dialogue with? How and why? And which of these cultures did it by and large neglect and why? In a global context, which historical moments did exo-European avant-gardes invoke? Papers will explore these issues in avant-gardes launched either from the European continent (Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaism, Vorticism, Ultraism, Surrealism, Constructivism, Neue Sachlichkeit, …) or other from other continents (Mavo, Art and Freedom, Anthropophagia, Estridentismo, Muralism, …) during, roughly, the first half of the 20th century.

Related content

Projects
Modernismos ibéricos e o imaginário primitivista
Project: Research