Bursting the bubble

The conventional history of modern art was written on the busy Paris-New York axis, as if nowhere else existed. For a while, nowhere else did. People wondered, for example, whyever the mercurial Whistler volunteered for the unventilated backwaters of Britain. But London was eventually allowed into the international conversation following successful pop eruptions that began in the Fifties. Germany followed.

Now, perhaps as a response to a wired and borderless planet, where images can be instantaneously transmitted and sacred cows may be frivolously slaughtered, there is a revisionist and more inclusive policy for entrance to art’s pantheon. The braided cord has been lifted. Everyone can join the club.

New York’s Museum of Modern Art is showing an exhibition called Transmissions, which illuminates neglected art from Eastern Europe and Latin America. And the event of the season at London’s Tate Modern is The World Goes Pop, an account of pop art beyond SoHo lofts and Chelsea studios.