via New Mandala, 19 April 2021: Readers may be interested in this talk by Prof. Adrian Vickers at the Australian National University on 27 April. Online registration link below.
As a historian researching modern Southeast Asian art, the field has presented me with three key problem areas: first, how to track art history as the history of styles deriving from influences; secondly, the history of modernism and its relationship to modernity; thirdly, the question of whether there is art that links Southeast Asia as a region. In addressing these problems, we are faced with a series of missing evidence and disjunctions that is indicative of the newness of the field. Some of these disjunctions are also related to significant historical breaks in the histories of different parts of the region. Solutions lie in two areas: empirical research requiring work in archives across many continents and in different languages; and a theoretical approach that takes account of interactions throughout the region in terms of inter-referencing