Transcultural Things and the Spectre of Orientalism in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania

(Hardback)

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Transcultural things examines four sets of artefacts from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: maps pointing to PolandLithuanias roots in the supposedly Oriental land of Sarmatia, portrayals of fashions that purport to trace Polish culture back to a distant and revered past, Ottomanesque costumes worn by Polish ambassadors and carpets labelled as Polish despite their foreign provenance.

These examples of invented tradition borrowed from abroad played a significant role in narrating and visualising the cultural landscape of Polish-Lithuanian elites. But while modern scholarship defines these objects as exemplars of national heritage, early modern beholders treated them with more flexibility, seeing no contradiction in framing material things as local cultural forms while simultaneously acknowledging their foreign derivation.

Reviews

Debates over originality and cultural distinctness have been studied outside art history for more than forty years, yet have still barely made a dent in the national culture model of the discipline. Grusiecki's intervention is especially welcome at the scale of a book-length study for its nuanced critical framing and the depth of his knowledge of a rich body of material evidence.
Claire Farago, Professor Emerita, University of Colorado Boulder

Author Bio

Tomasz Grusiecki is an Assistant Professor of Early Modern Art and Visual Culture at Boise State University