Western Art and the Wider World

Paul Wood is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the Open University, England. He has published widely in the field of modern and contemporary art, and is co-editor, with Charles Harrison and Jason Gaiger, of the landmark three-volume collection Art in Theory: An Anthology of Changing Ideas.

• List of Illustrations viiiAcknowledgments xIntroduction 11 Renaissance and Old World 122 Enlightenment and New World 523 Modernism and Modern World 1004 Avant-Garde, Contemporary, and Globalized World 1855 “World Art History” and “Contemporary Art” 253Index 292

"Western Art and the Wider World is certainly a timely myth-buster in terms of current anxieties and panics about the demise of the West’s supposed cultural and economic place at the centre of things. Wood traces a long history of admiration and indebtedness to the East – in terms of knowledge, art, commerce and governance. He also asserts that the history of western ‘cultural dominance’ has been relatively short – less than 200 years in his reckoning. Western Art and the Wider World tells stories of exchange, parity and mutual curiosity between the West and rest." (The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, 1 March 2014) "A cautious, open-minded attempt to write about the history of Western Art form the Renaissance through the early and late modernist era, as it encountered, and was encountered by, the rest of the world." (Art Review, 1 March 2014)