Collectivity, Communities, Connectedness: Decolonizing Art Colonies

What to do with the problematic category of the art colony? On the face of it, this question might seem anachronistic for a special issue of ARTMargins. The term art colony conjures up an image of artists retreating from urban centers in the 19th and early 20th centuries to find respite, inspiration, and the support and company of peers in areas of natural beauty. Underpinned by a zurück zur Natur (“back to nature”) philosophy and a desire to paint fisherfolk and farm laborers, rather than professional models posing as such in city ateliers, artist colonies mushroomed in coastal and rural villages of Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Russia, and the United States between the 1870s and 1914. These are well documented in landmark surveys by Michael Jacobs, Nina Lübbren, and Brian Dudley Barrett, among others, who situate their histories as alternatives to modernist narratives centered on Euromerican art academies and metropolitan art markets.¹¹

ARTMargins, Volume 14, Issue 3, pp. 3-13.

doi:10.1162/ARTM.e.2

https://direct.mit.edu/artm/article/14/3/3/133842/Collectivity-Communities-Connectedness

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