Vastness and excess. Neurotic personality of art history, i. e. art history and its discontents

The problem of the place of art history in contemporary globalised world has not yet been analysed in the Polish scholarship. However, this seems to be a problem in need of a discussion in the face of changes which take place in the humanities as a whole, influencing also the shape of art history as an academic discipline whose status as a leading expert on visual works (images) seems to be undermined by other disciplines, especially visual culture studies and its interpretative strategies. The article addresses these problems by analysing the relationship between art history and visual culture studies as evoking such basic terms as multiculturality, transnationalism, interdisciplinarity, centre and the peripheries, and postcolonialism, presently the most active methodological strategy which allows for the profound revision of the local art history and exposure of its relations with the cultural centre.