Rethinking Materiality in Modern and Contemporary Art

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to revisit materiality as a methodologic approach and as a theme in modern and contemporary visual culture. The past two decades witnessed the implementation and application in visual culture studies of the discourse on materiality, beginning with the adoption of Latourian approaches and ‘thing theory,’ and continuing with more recent critical accounts of its horizons and limits. Throughout this time, materiality came to be understood more as a ‘matter’ than as related to a ‘material’ – a process that paved the way for analyzing artworks outside the context of the physical object, concentrating on the effect of art through concepts derived from its conception and reception.

In this Special Issue, we wish to reevaluate materiality from a scholarly perspective, considering the making and reading of modern and contemporary art under current aesthetic, political and economic environments. One example of how such approaches can be substantially extended and developed is contextualizing them in the virtual age, as the term “things” becomes increasingly dematerialized, and digital platforms breed and nurture innovative ways of production, transportation and consumption. Other possibilities might include studies that seek new ways of engaging with materiality through a discussion of forms of objecthood, the agency of art, mobility and exchange, the eco-power of art and more. We welcome both theoretical writings and qualitative studies that offer a current and new understanding or practice of materiality.

Dr. Ronit Milano
Dr. Nissim Gal
Guest Editors

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