The German Century? How a Geopolitical Approach Could Transform The History of Modernism
Résumé
Geopolitics provides a model for studying power relations within the art
world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,7 when the concept of national
identities strongly influenced the history of art.8 The geopolitical approach, as
we define it, follows the three levels of analysis Fernand Braudel distinguished
in his Mediterranean: the longue durée of history and geography, the cycle of
socio-economical fluxes and transnational circulations, and the finer scale of
events, crisis, and artworks.9 Within those three levels, the geopolitical method
understands as object what Pierre Bourdieu would call the international field
of arts; that is to say, the social, transnational space polarized and regulated
by values and institutions accepted or contested within the field,10 as well as
the discourses—in the Foucauldian sense—that populate and define it. In the
international field of modern art, people, objects, and ideas from various origins
circulate, engage in dialogue, and compete, crossing over many national fields.
It is in these intersections between national and international fields that the
trajectories of artistic movements and artists’ careers fall or flourish. Our current
representation of the art world (hierarchical and centralized) and of the history
of modern art (evolutionist and diffusionist) results from this very system.
To study those trajectories in the context of longue durée of cycles and
events, we rely on different methodological tools ranging from cartography
and statistics to prosopography and close readings of texts and artifacts. Such
a comprehensive approach provides the foundations for a global history
of modern art that is circulatory and inclusive, instead of hierarchical and
exclusive. By throwing a new light on the very objects of modernist stories,
artworks, artists—be they avant-garde or not—, and innovation, a geopolitical
study of the modern/modernist field finally challenges and enriches our
understanding and knowledge of artists’ oeuvres and individual artworks.
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