What does it mean to think and act radically, and how does this relate to forms of radicalism connected to earlier moments, for example, in the 20th century? What can be the role of radical art and scholarship under the conditions of late capitalism? More generally, how can art and artists serve the ongoing struggle for social justice and the agendas of emancipatory social change? Finally, what kinds of art criticism and art historical scholarship are necessary to address the great challenges of our uncertain future?

Change in the history of art has many causes, but one often overlooked by art historical institutions is the complex, unequal set of relationships that subsist between art centers and peripheries. These take many forms, from powerful penetration of peripheral art by the subjects, styles and modes of the relevant center, through accommodation to this penetration to various degrees and kinds of resistance to it. Mapping these relationships should be a major task for art historians, especially those committed to tracing the reception of works of art and the dissemination of ideas about art. This lecture, delivered by Nicos Hadjinicolaou in 1982, outlines a “political art geography” approach to these challenges, and demonstrates it by exploring four settings: the commissioning of paintings commemorating key battles during the Greek War of Independence; the changes in Diego Rivera's style on his return to Mexico from Paris in the 1920s; the impact on certain Mexican artists in the 1960s of “hard edge” painting from the United States; and the differences between Socialist Realism in Moscow and in the Soviet Republics of Asia during the mid-twentieth century. The lecture is here translated into English for the first time and is introduced by Terry Smith, who relates it to its author's long-term art historical quest, as previously pursued in his book Art History and Class Struggle (1973).

Published in the September 1974 issue of Artforum , my article “The Provincialism Problem” argued that a world art system, centered on the New York artworld, condemned artists elsewhere to misleadingly perceive their situation as necessarily subservient, and their art as lesser, secondary, and dependent. In fact, this system condemned all involved, including New York based artists, to a vicious cycle of mutual inequity. The article called for artists, critics, and curators to radically reimagine these relationships. Often cited in the decades since then, in recent years it is frequently used as a foil to demonstrate how, within the international artworld, the situation has improved significantly. In this essay, I review the acute awareness of these issues in the Australian artworld during the 1960s and 1970s, and the situation in New York in the early and mid-1970s that lead me to write the article in concert with other members of the Art & Language group. I note some of the critical responses to the article since its publication, explore key aspects of center-periphery theory, and conclude by arguing that the provincialism problem has not been solved—it has, rather, been globalized then neoliberalized, and thus remains problematic.