RG Coordinator

Integrated Researchers

Collaborating Researchers

Non-PhD Researchers

Keywords

Ornament and Decorative Arts

Cultural Transfers

Social Life of Objects

Reception and Meanings

Description

Pre-MODERN results from the fusion of 2 former groups: Artistic Horizons of Hispania and Medieval and Modern Art Studies. It articulates with the Thematic Line “Cultural Transfers in a Global Perspective” focusing on the networks that connected distant regions and facilitated transfers. The research carried on by its members (including 8 Post-Doc fellows) concentrates on the movement of objects and people, materials and models, as well as intangible culture (knowledge, technical skills, literature). It covers a wide range of geographic areas (from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific) and periods (from the 1st century A.D. to the 18th century). This broad range allows for novel approaches and transcultural comparisons, breaking down traditional stylistic divisions, and looking to the social, political and economic realities of each period to better understand its cultural production.

Pre-MODERN studies the dynamics that surpass individual cases. More specifically, it focus on questions regarding the reception, appropriation, adaptation, rejection and/or resistance towards imported artistic models and concepts; the mobility of artists, merchants, diplomats and other agents that have disseminated these models and concepts through traveling and working in various environments; the movement of objects, studied not only for their artistic worth, but as material objects that transmitted new values to different cultural environments and initiated cultural sequences of great importance (such as the azulejo or talha dourada transplanted in the colonies); and the circulation of ideas, concepts, and texts that played a fundamental role in implementing practices, such as in the case of architectural treatises.
Its members, including Post-Doc fellows and PhD students, articulate with NOVA FCSH’s Art History Department through mobility programmes and Seminars’ offer for students and a more general public (teachers and tourism professionals).