With this welcome and introduction speech, Hannah Baader (Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices/Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz/Max-Planck-Institut) and Atreyee Gupta (Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices Fellow 2015/2016) opened the Annual Conference on “Global Modernisms: Contiguities, Infrastructures and Aesthetic Practices”.

Welcome and Introduction

Taking the years between 1905 and 1965 as the temporal frame, this conference sought to rethink Global Modernisms from a transregional perspective. Current conceptualizations of avantgardism and formal innovation often related to places like Paris, New York, Weimar or Moscow continue to inform Global Modernisms’ intellectual field. Global Modernisms are often presented as a symptom for new Westernism that masquerades as the universal. This conference sought a more constitutive conceptual vision.