Avant-gardes, Empires and Otherness (1910s–1940s) - Lessons 1 to 4
How did the European avant-garde shape the modernist canon and contribute to defining the “Other”? The module examines the New Negro Movement and other forms of Black cultural nationalism, alongside artistic practices in South and East Asia, to show how artists reclaimed and reworked modernist languages to resist colonial domination, assert identity and agency, and negotiate between imposed frameworks and local traditions.
This module examines how European avant-gardes contributed to the shaping of modernity, while critically addressing their role in constructing hierarchies of cultural value. Attention is given to the New Negro Movement and other expressions of cultural nationalism in the Black diaspora, highlighting the ways in which artists reclaimed modernist languages to assert identity and agency. The module also explores art in South and East Asia, showing how creative practices resisted colonial domination, fostered political awareness, and navigated tensions between imposed cultural frameworks and local traditions.
Course Lessons
Jan 17, 2026 at 2:00PM GMT+1
European Avant-gardes and the construction of Modern Art
What if the avant-garde’s radical break with tradition concealed another kind of continuity, that is the persistence of Eurocentric power? From Fauvism to Constructivism, this lesson traces how avant-garde ideals of progress and universality were built on acts of appropriation, revealing modernism’s contradictions and its construction and relation with the “other.”
Jan 21, 2026 at 5:00PM GMT+1
Art, Anticolonial Activism and the Struggle for Independence in South Asia
Exploring South Asian modernisms born amid anti-colonial struggles, this lesson traces how artists from the Bengal School to Santiniketan redefined aesthetics, weaving freedom, identity, and cultural renewal into a shared visual language of resistance.
Jan 24, 2026 at 2:00PM GMT+1
The New Negro Movement, Cultural Nationalism, and Modernism in the Black Diaspora
From Harlem to Havana, this lesson traces how artists of the African diaspora transformed modern art into a language of identity, resistance, and belonging, bridging the New Negro Movement and Caribbean cultural nationalism through visionary forms and politics.
Jan 28, 2026 at 5:00PM GMT+1
Birth and Decay in Sites of Flux: Agentive Traces from Art of mid-20th Century in East and South-East Asia
Across East and Southeast Asia, modernism is neither imitation nor rejection but an active reorientation. Through acts of translation and resistance, artists from China to the Philippines recast aesthetic modernity as a space of decolonial possibility, where inherited forms are unsettled, renewed, and made to speak otherwise.
Professors
Curator, writer, and museum director
Charles Esche
Charles Esche is a curator, writer, museum director, and educator whose work has significantly shaped contemporary art discourse and institutional practice. Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven from 2004 to 2024 and Professor of Contemporary Art and Curating at the University of the Arts London, he is known for experimental exhibition models and socially engaged approaches to collections, biennials, and public programs.
Art historian, critic, and curator
R. Siva Kumar
R. Siva Kumar is an internationally recognized art historian, critic, and curator, known for his pioneering research on early Indian modernism and the Santiniketan School. He has authored influential books, contributed to major reference projects such as Art Journal, Grove Art Online, and The Dictionary of Art (Oxford University Press), and curated landmark exhibitions including Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism and The Last Harvest: Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, as well as retrospectives of key modern Indian artists.
Associate Professor of Art History and author
Samantha A. Noël
Samantha A. Noël is Associate Professor of Art History and Hawkins Ferry Endowed Chair in Modern and Contemporary Art at Wayne State University. Her research focuses on the art, visual culture, and performance of the Black diaspora, and she is the author of Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism (Duke University Press, 2021). Her work has appeared in journals such as Small Axe, Third Text, Art Journal, and Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, and has been supported by institutions including the Terra Foundation and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Art historian, curator, educator, and writer.
Eileen Legaspi Ramirez
Eileen Legaspi Ramirez is an art historian, curator, educator, and writer. Now Associate Professors at the University of the Philippines Diliman Department of Art Studies. His research focuses on art as a means of collective memory, forms of historiographical criticism from below, and the reactivation of “contested” spaces. She presently serves as editorial collective member of the journal Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, and as Research Advisory Committee member of The Flow of History collaborative project.
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