The European Canon and Contemporary Artists’ Moving Image

The discourse on decolonizing the European art canon and challenging its “gatekeepers” is growing in scope and intensity. This monograph attends to the unrest around the Western European canon, yet from a different and yet unaddressed vantage point. To take on Jill Bennett’s succinct phrasing (2011 120), this study focuses on “the particularity of what art does.” The book thus offers a view on contemporary contestations of the canon from the perspective of contemporary artists’ moving images. The book’s five chapters tap into the vortex of longings, resistance, and anxieties whirling around the core of Western European art, arguing that this maelstrom has yielded a steadily growing corpus, yet unstudied as a distinct body. This monograph acknowledges a current in early 21st century artists’ moving images that seems to have been overlooked in the critical literature.