Tag: orientalism

  • Less is More

    Unknown Flemish artist, Triumph of Fortitude, ca. 1535 Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco In explaining how his practice of writing history operates, historian Carlo Ginzburg turns to architect Mies van der Rohe’s adage: “Less is more.”[1] He explains his method using the metaphor of the dilation of a camera lens: “By knowing less, by…

  • Keyword: Primitivism

    For a fictional volume called Keywords for Southeast Asian Studies         Abstract This article focuses on the historiography of Primitivism in Southeast Asian Studies, understood as the interest shown in non-Western cultures by the European avant-garde. Emerging with the development of anthropology, this movement instigated a protracted debate between ethnology and aesthetic studies. I present examples…