Anglo-American: Artistic Exchange between Britain and the USA

This collection of essays, like the 2009 conference on which it is based, sets out to analyze art’s role in shaping, examining and challenging the nature of the relationship that the term Anglo-American implies. We discuss a broad current concern with the possibilities of a trans-national art history, which goes beyond the study of artistic influences and reception and is therefore capable of addressing more fully the forms of transmission, migration, affiliation and repudiation that occur between cultures. We survey some of the relevant contemporary scholarship and discuss the important historiography of the Atlantic. Throughout, we consider particular historical and artistic examples via some of the categories of analysis – feeling, commerce, conflict and community – to which the scholarship gives rise. Finally, we posit that Anglo-American requires a comparative methodology to yield fully its insights. The Introduction also presents the individual essays in this context and that of the collection as a whole.