Decolonial Introduction to the Theory, History and Criticism of the Arts

This book provides, from a critical perspective, a first contact with the key debates and authors who, over the last 2,500 years, have tried to define, study and evaluate the arts in the west, as well as tell their stories so as to highlight Europe’s outstanding achievements and supposed civilizational mission. It shows and deconstructs how the western theories and stories on different media – theatre, sculpture, literature, painting, photography, performance art, contemporary art, etc. – repeat and vary certain fixed ideas in diverse disciplines – from philosophy to media studies – so as to deal with and often repress arts’ power. By drawing on texts from recent picture and image theory, as well as on present-day Amerindian authors, anthropologists and philosophers, this introductory panoramic survey argues for the need to question the power structure inherent in Eurocentric art discourses and to decolonise art studies, using Brazil’s arts, its theory and history as a case study to do so.