Radical reduction of form in defiance of naturalistic norms; all-over composition; ironic distortion of anachronistic styles — these are all common features of modernist art. Yet all such formal and artistic strategies can be found in works dating to before the eighteenth century, often within artistic traditions labelled as "non-Western." We might also add to the list conceptual strategies, participatory practices (painting as event), or eco-criticality.
The distinguishing feature of all such practices is their transgressive nature. In every case an individual artist openly defies well-established norms. But if this is so, then there is no purpose to treating such practices as fundamentally different from Euro-American examples other than to restrict the modernist rubric to the West.
What might happen if we put different iterations of these practices into dialogue with one another? Might we discover resonances more fundamental than chronology? This issue of Artology: Studies in the Arts will be devoted to that task. We welcome submissions reconsidering the nature and origins of transgressive artistic practice from all periods and regions.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Formal transgression before the eighteenth century, in any tradition: reduction, abstraction, all-over composition, deliberate awkwardness or "clumsiness" (拙), the refusal of naturalistic norms;
- Ironic, parodic appropriation of earlier styles (fanggu 仿古 and its analogues elsewhere);
- Conceptual and dematerialized practices: the work as proposition, instruction, or inscription;
- Painting and calligraphy as event: performance, improvisation, intoxication, and participatory or collaborative making;
- Ecological and site-responsive practice avant la lettre: gardens, landscape intervention, the artwork subject to weather and time;
- The social conditions of artistic defiance: open art market, artistic autonomy, guild and academy norms as objects of disdain, censorship, and the figure of the maverick;
- Comparative and cross-regional studies placing two or more traditions of transgressive practice in dialogue;
- Historiographical and methodological reflection on the modernist rubric, its boundaries, and the work it performs in art-historical writing.
Submission details
- Deadline: March 1, 2027
- Language: English
- Length: research articles 6,000–9,000 words; visual essays, critical interventions, and scholarly commentaries 2,000–4,000 words (inclusive of notes)
- Style: Chicago 18 (notes and bibliography)
- Review: double-blind peer review
- Formats accepted: research articles, visual essays, critical interventions, and comparative analyses
- Submission portal: https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/artology/about/submissions
- Inquiries: Prof. Martin J. Powers, 2506149196@pku.edu.cn
Artology: Studies in the Arts is a diamond open access journal: there are no fees for authors or readers.
About the Guest Editor
Martin J. Powers (包华石) is Professor in the Department of Art History at Peking University and formerly Sally Michelson Davidson Professor Emeritus of Chinese Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan, where he also served as Director of the Center for Chinese Studies. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1978 and taught at UCLA before joining Michigan in 1988. His research examines the role of the arts in the history of human relations in China, with particular attention to questions of social justice.
He is the author of Art and Political Expression in Early China (Yale University Press, 1991) and Pattern and Person: Ornament, Society, and Self in Classical China (Harvard University Press, 2006), both awarded the Joseph Levenson Prize for best book in pre-20th century Chinese Studies, and of China and England: The Preindustrial Struggle for Justice in Word and Image (Routledge, 2019), published in Chinese as 《西中有东》 (Shanghai People's Press, 2020). With Katherine R. Tsiang he co-edited Looking at Asian Art and the Blackwell Companion to Chinese Art. Along with Shuchen Xiang, he has edited How China Shaped the Enlightenment: A Transcultural History of Modern Thought (London: Routledge, 2026). He has held awards and fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Getty, and the ACLS, and was a resident fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.