Geoffrey Batchen

Guest Editorial: Local Modernisms

Despite all the talk of a global art history, the history of modernism continues to be a story told in terms of Europe and the United States. In the usual version of this story, modernism is presented as something that is transmitted to the provinces from these centres – sometimes quickly, sometimes more slowly, but always arriving late and second-hand. But what if we were to see modernity differently – as a dispersed experience based on exchange rather than transmission, happening everywhere simultaneously, even if to different degrees and with different effects? How does this shift the ground of art history? Can we imagine presenting a history of modernity as a general phenomenon based on a perspective specific to the provinces? Through a discussion of so-called ‘inversion theory’ as it has been debated in Australian art circles, this essay proposes a focus on modernism as a phenomenon that is simultaneously local and global.