Digital Commons Network^™

Digital Art History “Beyond The Digitized Slide Library”: An Interview With Johanna Drucker And Miriam Posner, Miriam Kienle

Artl@s Bulletin

Johanna Drucker and Miriam Posner were two of the organizers of the Getty/UCLA Summer Institute in Digital Art History “Beyond the Digitized Slide Library” that took place in the summers of 2014 and 2015. With their extensive expertise in the field, they developed a program that challenged participant to think about the broad theoretical implications of their respective projects and to gain practical tools in digital art history. In this interview, they will describe some of their thinking behind the institute and the state of the field of digital art history, including a discussion of the impact of network visualizations …

“What You See Is What You Get: The Artifice Of Insight”: A Conversation Between R. Luke Dubois And Anne Collins Goodyear, Anne C. Goodyear

Artl@s Bulletin

The metaphorical relationship between sight and knowledge has long been recognized: the double-entendre of “illumination” promises both light and understanding; “I see” signifies that one “gets it” intellectually. This conversation between R. Luke DuBois and Anne Collins Goodyear addresses how data accrues meaning through pictorial structures that represent it. An artist, DuBois has consistently played with conventions for depicting information visually, revealing the intersections between data and desire they represent. Reexamining the interfaces through which we view the world, DuBois and Goodyear consider what our filters threaten to hide.

La relation métaphorique entre la vue et la connaissance a longtemps …

Enriching And Cutting: How To Visualize Networks Thanks To Linked Open Data Platforms., Lea Saint-Raymond, Antoine Courtin

Artl@s Bulletin

Networks are developing very quickly in the social sciences, and they are beginning to emerge in art history. This paper explores the making of network visualizations, from the building of the dataset to the analysis of results. Starting from an initial corpus regarding the Parisian auction sales for modern paintings, we developed a methodology to enrich it, thanks to linked open data platforms and technologies for realigning datasets. We then call into question the visualization of networks. Although it brings about an overview of the market and allows a very close reading, the best is the enemy of the good: …

The Computer As Filter Machine: A Clustering Approach To Categorize Artworks Based On A Social Tagging Network, Stefanie Schneider, Hubertus Kohle

Artl@s Bulletin

Image catalogs containing several million reproductions of artworks still pose a costly or computationally intensive challenge if one tries to categorize them adequately, either in a manual or automatic way. Using crowdsourced annotations assigned by laypersons, this article proposes the application of a clustering algorithm to segment artworks into groups. It is shown that the resulting clusters allow for a consistent reclassification extending the traditional categories (history, genre, portrait, still life, landscape), and thus enable a finely-grained differentiation which can be used to search in and filter image inventories, among other things.

Network Analysis And Feminist Artists, Michelle Moravec

Artl@s Bulletin

This article examines the benefits and drawbacks of using social network analysis to study feminist artists’ networks. Looking at two of the author’s digital humanities projects, it explores the systemic and structural barriers that limit the utility of social network analysis for feminist artists. The first project on the social network of artist Carolee Schneemann analyzed her female circles through a correspondence network. The second project attempted to trace the circulation of feminist art manifestos in American feminist periodicals. Three factors are identified as constraining network analysis in these case studies, the lack of feminist artists’ archives, an insufficient amount …

Keeping Our Eyes Open: Visualizing Networks And Art History, Stephanie Porras

Artl@s Bulletin

Network visualizations have the potential to translate messy archival work into clouds of connection, powerful maps of relations that can reveal hidden agents or nodes of production. But network visualizations must also be understood as artifacts of our own visual culture, laden with the biases and limits of both past and present knowledge systems. Rather than seeing networks as uniform webs of connection, social network analysis must productively interrogate how biopolitical, cultural and social power are manifested within these visualizations, reinforcing the biases and lacunae of the archive.

Continuity And Disruption In European Networks Of Print Production, 1550-1750, Matthew D. Lincoln

Artl@s Bulletin

Computational analysis of the potential historical professional networks inferred from surviving print impressions offers novel insight into the evolution of early modern artistic printmaking in Europe. This analysis traces a longue durée print production history that examines the changing ways in which different regional printmaking communities interacted between 1550 and 1750, highlighting the powerful impact of demographic forces and calling in to question narratives based on single key individuals or the emergence of specific national schools.

Between Nodes And Edges: Possibilities And Limits Of Network Analysis In Art History, Miriam Kienle

Artl@s Bulletin

This article examines a number of prominent network analysis projects in the field of art history and explores the unique promises and problems that this increasingly significant mode of analysis presents to the discipline. By bringing together projects that conceptualize art historical networks in different ways, it demonstrates how established theories and methods of art history—such as feminist and postcolonial theory—may be productively used in conjunction with quantitative/computational approaches to art historical analysis. It argues that quantitative analysis of art and its networks can expand the qualitative approaches that have traditionally defined the field, particularly if theorizing is not positioned …

Art History And The Global Challenge: A Critical Perspective, Paula Barreiro López

Artl@s Bulletin

The challenge of globalization and the “decolonization” of our way of thinking have become a major concern for most art historians. While it is still too early to assess the impact on the discipline of the “Global turn”—a turn that is all the more timid that it materializes more slowly in public collections and public opinions than in books—we nonetheless wanted to probe scholars who are paying close attention to the new practices in global art history. Coming from different cultural milieus and academic traditions, and belonging to different generations, they agreed to answer our questions, and to share with …

L'Histoire De L'Art Au Défi De La Mondialisation: Une Position Critique, Paula Barreiro López

Artl@s Bulletin

Le défi de la mondialisation et de la “décolonisation” de nos pensées est désormais une préoccupation quotidienne pour la majorité des chercheurs en histoire de l’art. Il est trop tôt pour faire le bilan du fameux « Global turn », tournant d’autant plus timide qu’il se concrétise plus lentement dans les collections publiques et dans l’opinion que dans les livres. Mais nous avons voulu interroger, un peu partout dans le monde, des acteurs à l’écoute des nouvelles pratiques mondiales en histoire de l’art. Issus de milieux culturels et de traditions universitaires variées, de générations diverses, ils ont accepté de répondre …

Art History And The Global Challenge: A Critical Perspective, Nuria Rodríguez Ortega

Artl@s Bulletin

The challenge of globalization and the “decolonization” of our way of thinking have become a major concern for most art historians. While it is still too early to assess the impact on the discipline of the “Global turn”—a turn that is all the more timid that it materializes more slowly in public collections and public opinions than in books—we nonetheless wanted to probe scholars who are paying close attention to the new practices in global art history. Coming from different cultural milieus and academic traditions, and belonging to different generations, they agreed to answer our questions, and to share with …

L’Histoire Mondiale De L’Art, Au Défi D’Un Grand Récit, Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel

Artl@s Bulletin

Pour proposer une « histoire mondiale », et pour faire honneur à toutes les productions issues de tous les continents, en particulier ceux qu’on avait méprisés, l’idéal serait d’articuler un récit lui-même mondial. Il nous faut un récit émancipé non seulement des hiérarchies propres au canon (ancien/moderne, beaux-arts/décoration, kitsch / classique), mais aussi un récit qui aille plus loin que la production de hiérarchies dont même le récit postcolonial a du mal à sortir (dominants/dominés). Comment produire un récit qui, en outre, connecte des collections « locales » et des collections « internationales » en gardant du lien entre les …