‘Dialogic art history’. Review of: Vessels: The Object as Container, edited by Claudia Brittenham, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, 196pp, 78 col. plates, 23 b. & w. illus., £38.49 ISBN 9780198832577; Conditions of Visibility, edited by Richard Neer, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, 168pp, 66 col. plates, £24.99 ISBN 9780198845560; Figurines: Figuration and the Sense of Scale, edited by Jaś Elsner, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020, 208pp, 77 col. plates, £36.49 ISBN 9780198861096; Landscape and Space: Comparative Perspectives from Chinese, Mesoamerican, Ancient Greek, and Roman Art, edited by Jaś Elsner, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, 208pp, 95 col. plates, £65.00 ISBN 9780192845955. Visual Conversations in Art and Archaeology Series.

Abstract

This review discussed four volumes under the Oxford University Press’s series ‘Visual Conversations in Art and Archaeology’: Vessels: The Object as Container, Conditions of Visibility, Figurines: Figuration and the Sense of Scale, and Landscape and Space: Comparative Perspectives from Chinese, Mesoamerican, Ancient Greek, and Roman Art. It assessed the extent to which what the authors of this series termed ‘comparativism of method’ could be a viable approach to tackle long-grained epistemic asymmetries in art-historical methodologies and productively advance a global art history. The volumes succeed in relativising and revising presumed universality of Eurocentric concepts such as ‘figurine’ and ‘landscape’ for a more inclusive discussion in the future, while offering constructive, multidirectional dialogues across regional specialisms. The review further pointed out several limits to the comparativism proposed by the series: specifically the boundary between method and personality in scholarship, the danger of intensifying inequalities of academic resources and infrastructures between the Global North and the Global South, and the need to further open up such dialogues to practitioners outside of ancient art and archaeology.