Questioning the Illusion/Materiality Polemics in a Transcultural Art History

Ever since the establishment of the perspectival system in Western art, pictorial illusion has been pitted against materiality. Seminal works such as Erwin Panofsky’s Perspective as Symbolic Form and Hubert Damisch’s A Theory of /Cloud/ have helped to solidify this dichotomy. Panofsky’s Eurocentric perspective may have prevented him from engaging with non-Western examples, while Damisch’s limited references to Chinese painting, though commendable, lack historical rigour.

More recently, scholars have begun to challenge the perspectival paradigm by addressing the so-called ‘ground’ problem—arguing that the material ground of a picture often contradicts the illusionistic space constructed by linear perspective. However, these scholarly interventions have been largely confined to the European examples so far, with only a few specimens from the East, which, nonetheless, are not in critical dialogue with their Western counterparts. Not to mention the lack of three-dimensional art or the absence of African art, Islamic art, ancient American Art and the art from the rest of the world. Rather than upholding an unexamined dichotomy between illusion and materiality, it is urgent and necessary to re-address this question in a global and transcultural framework.

This panel welcomes proposals that actively forge connections, confrontations, or convergences between European and non-European examples in addressing the relationship between illusion and materiality. Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, the figure/ground, background, and surface of paintings and beyond.

Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:

Ang Li, China Academy of Art, 0124032@caa.edu.cn

Sumihiro Oki, Kyoto University, iplayski@gmail.com