Call for Papers:
Decentering Art of the Former East

Session sponsored by the Society of Historians of East European,
Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA)

Panel co-chairs: Masha Chlenova, The Museum of Modern Art; and Kristin
Romberg, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Whether conceptualized in terms of a periphery or an alternative center,
narratives of Russian and Eastern European art have long been organized
around a binary of East and West, shaped both by art history's
disciplinary biases and by the politics of the Cold War and "fall of
communism." This panel takes Partha Mitter's argument in "Decentering
Modernism" (2008) as a point of departure in order to rethink how art of
these regions can be understood in an increasingly global art history.
Can we find ways of rereading the default evaluation that western
references to the Russian avant-garde's monochromes and constructions
are art-historically savvy, while Russian and Eastern European
references to internationally known practices are derivative? What is
the difference between naïve appropriation and creative misreading, and
to what extent are these procedures also fundamental to the work of
stably central figures of Western European and North American art? How
do Byzantine and Eurasian histories and forms ground or inflect these
artistic formations? Can the widespread opposition between a western
artistic center and eastern periphery be productively undermined not
through the lens of nationalism but through that of global modernism and
art history? What do the critical lenses developed in the process of
working on Russian and Eastern European topics reveal about western art,
global art, or art history as a discipline? How do we interpret these
practices in ways that are not just specific, but that also speak to and
shape art-historical inquiry more generally? This panel seeks
historically grounded case studies of Russian, Eastern European, and
Eurasian art from any period that productively explore these issues.

Please send a paper title, abstract (200-300 words), and 2-page
curriculum vitae to Masha Chlenova (masha_chlenovamoma.org) and Kristin
Romberg (kristin.romberggmail.com) by August 1.

Note that panelists must join SHERA to participate, but do not need to
be members of CAA or to register for the conference.