Non-Western Art Traditions
Non-Western art traditions encompass the rich visual cultures of Asia, the Islamic world, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania, studied increasingly within a global art history.
Definition
The branch of art history concerned with the visual cultures of the non-European world and with the comparative, global frameworks needed to study them without imposing Western categories.
Scope
This area studies the art and architecture of cultures outside the European tradition, including East, South, and Southeast Asian art, Islamic art, the arts of Africa and Oceania, and Indigenous American art, along with the methodological challenges of writing a genuinely global art history.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- How do the aesthetic systems and functions of non-Western art differ from Western models?
- How can art history be written globally without privileging Western categories?
- How did exchange along trade routes shape art across Asia, Africa, and beyond?
- How have colonialism and museum collecting affected the study and display of these traditions?
Key theories
- Toward a global art history
- The reflexive inquiry, exemplified by James Elkins's collection, into whether art history as a Western discipline can be applied worldwide and what a truly global, multicentered art history would require.
- Critique of the primitive
- The interpretation, central to postcolonial art history, that labels such as 'primitive' and 'tribal' reflect Western projections rather than the values of the cultures that made the works.
History
For much of its history the discipline of art history centered on Europe, treating other traditions as ethnographic or 'primitive.' From the late 20th century, postcolonial critique, the expansion of global surveys such as Gardner's, and debates over whether art history can be global reshaped the field toward comparative, decentered, and culturally situated study of world art.
Debates
- Universal categories versus cultural specificity
- Scholars debate whether Western art-historical concepts such as 'art,' 'style,' and 'artist' can be applied to other traditions, or whether doing so distorts their meanings and uses.
Key figures
- Suzanne Preston Blier
- Oleg Grabar
- James Elkins
- Partha Mitter
Related topics
Seminal works
- kleiner2020
- ettinghausen2001
- elkins2007
Frequently asked questions
- Why is the term 'non-Western art' contested?
- It defines diverse traditions negatively against the West and can flatten their differences; many scholars prefer 'global art histories' or specific regional terms.
- What is global art history?
- It is an effort to study the art of all world cultures in a connected, comparative way, without treating European art as the universal standard.