Art History Supplement, vol. 4, no. 1, January 2014

Manuscripts due to December 15, 2013

Art world victims

There are images today, which are not considered as art; they are artefacts, or just secondary sources for art history. There had been images too that were not considered as art even in the recent past. Video games graphic design, fashion design or fashion shows, medical X-rays or possibly CT scans, for instance, outside a museum context are primarily being investigated for their functionality. Why a common strigil is to be found in a “classical” art museum? The same could be proposed for a casual medieval shoe, a sixteenth century wooden repository box or an ordinary eighteenth century lace when it comes to their introduction into an art museum.

Is the museum – gallery context still today a dominant citation for characterising something as art, in academic discourse ? Could it be challenged ? Is the approval of the so-called an art world very much needed for something to be coined as art or as artefact ? Do we study only what an art-world each time over the ages perceives as art ? Are we all victims of an art world, in the end ?

Manuscripts are more than welcome to explore the shift between the notion of art and artefact in images and material objects through a certain case study.

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