{"product_id":"9780271097169","title":"Facing Images : Medieval Japanese Art and the Problem of Modernity by Kristopher W. Kersey","description":"If we want to decolonize the history of art, argues Kristopher Kersey, we must rethink our approach to the historical record. This means dispensing with Eurocentric binaries-divisions between Western and non-Western, modern and premodern-and making a commitment to artworks that challenge the perspectives we build upon them. In Facing Images, the question takes elegant and intriguing form: If the aesthetic hallmarks of \"modernity\" can be found in twelfth-century art, what does it really mean to be \"modern\"?Kersey's answer to this question models a new historiography. Facing Images begins by tracing the turbulent discourse surrounding the emergence of Japanese art history as a modern field. In lieu of examining canonical works from the twelfth century, Kersey foregrounds the elusive and the enigmatic in artworks little known and understudied outside Japan; the manuscripts he selects defy traditional art-historical narratives by exhibiting decidedly modern techniques, including montage, self-reference, reuse, noise, dissonance, and chronological disarray. Kersey weaves these medieval case studies together with insights from a wide range of interdisciplinary scholarship, using a methodology that will prove important for historians: Facing Images produces a history of non-Western art in which diverse and anachronic works are brought responsibly and equitably into dialogue with the present, without being subsumed under Eurocentric formalisms or false universals.   A timely intervention in the history of medieval Japanese art, art historiography, and the history of global modernism, Facing Images redefines the relationship of the \"premodern\" non-West to \"modern\" art. It will be of particular interest to scholars of medieval Japanese art and of modernism.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Hardback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56231585710453,"sku":"9780271097169","price":99.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780271097169.jpg?v=1762270123","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9780271097169","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}