Contents

Subject  Journals Books 

Art History: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn)

Dana Arnold

Contents

CHAPTER

3 p. 48 C3 A global art history? 

Dana Arnold

https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198831808.003.0003
Published: January 2020

 Split View  Cite  Permissions  Share 

Abstract
Are the practices of Western art history appropriate for the study of art from cultures outside its geographical
boundaries and conventional timeframe? The bias in this interpretation of the subject opens up the questions of the
importance of the canon in art history and how we view non-figurative, primitive, and naive art. ‘A global art history?’
considers a range of different examples of artistic practice from around the world, including the sculpture of the Dogon
people of Mali and the calligraphy of Wu Zhen, who was active during the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368). It also discusses
what is meant by the ‘primitive’ arts of Oceania, Africa, and North and South America.

Keywords: calligraphy, Eugène Delacroix, Roger Fry, Paul Gauguin, Gentile da Fabriano, Clement Greenberg, Master of, Erwin
Panofsky, Pablo Picasso, sculpture
Subject: History of Art, Social and Cultural History
Series: Very Short Introductions
Collection: Very Short Introductions

C3.P1Global art, by which I mean art objects produced across cultures, geographies, and time, certainly has a past. But does it
have a history, and if so what kind of history is this? I ask this question because so far we have looked at how the discipline of
art history developed in the West. As we have seen, this field of study benefits from a long tradition of describing works of art
from Pliny onwards. And there is no doubt that Giorgio Vasari, often credited as being the first art historian, was influenced by
this kind of approach whilst using the biography of each artist as the historical framework for his chronological survey. But
the beginnings of art history as we might think about it now came about in 18th- and 19th-century Europe with the work of
writers such as Johann Joachim Winckelmann. This mode of art historical writing that focused on and grew out of the Western
tradition can be traced through the subsequent work of Heinrich Wölfflin, Alois Riegl, Erwin Panofsky, and Ernst Gombrich.

C3.P2The focus of all these art historians remained European art, especially that born of the Graeco-Roman tradition, and the
approach to writing its history was very much intertwined with the subject matter itself. Art history concentrated on
European traditions such as naturalism and classicism and themes such as iconography as a means of reflexive self-analysis.
At this point we should remind ourselves that art history is not a monolithic p. 49 discipline within the Western tradition of
scholarship. For instance, the methods and approaches to art history as practised in North America stand distinct from those
we might find in Europe. And there are national differences within these European traditions themselves. My point here is not
to survey the many differing approaches to art history, but rather to emphasize the fragmentary and localized nature of its
production, which frequently inflects on its subject matter. All of the above lead me to pose the question: are the practices of
Western art history appropriate for the study of art from cultures outside its geographical boundaries and its conventional
timeframe? In other words, is the discipline valid as a means of interrogating visual traditions beyond the West? If we accept
that Western art history and its subjects are intricately intertwined then surely art from elsewhere is also founded on long-
standing cultural and intellectual assumptions. These predicates must then prompt different kinds of methods and
approaches. Yet, histories of global art are constructed using Western narrative frames and I am interested in the interplay
between these art objects from the past and the histories they tell to present-day viewers.

C3.S1 Encountering the East

C3.P3Western attitudes towards the art of the Middle East, Asia, and North Africa have been critiqued as patronizing in tone
and outlook. This challenge to Western art history, and more broadly the cultural attitudes of the West to the East, found its
first voice in Edward Said’s Orientalism, published in 1978. The term Orientalism was not new but had been used previously to
refer to the work of Western artists, particularly those working in France in the 19th century, who either travelled in the East
carefully recording the scenes they encountered, or fabricated Orientalist scenes from the comfort of their studios. The Orient
was stereotyped as exotic and sensual, as evident in the work of French artists such as Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-
Dominique Ingres. Indeed, in his pictures of lounging odalisques Ingres p. 50 combined the academic traditions of painting
the female nude with the ‘otherness’ of the East to produce images that equated Orientalism with salacious, if not
pornographic, art.

C3.P4Said redefined the term Orientalism to describe the West’s tendency towards prejudiced outsider-interpretations of the
East. This cultural viewpoint grew out of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries that exploited underdeveloped
countries not least by the extraction of wealth and labour. As part of this process, Said accused Western scholars of fabricating
a view of the Orient as being a monolithic culture, which can be studied and represented without attention to regional or
temporal difference. The static and undeveloped nature of the Orient as constructed by the West was in turn a way for the
West to assert its superiority through its comparatively fluid, highly developed, and nuanced culture. This view of the art of
the East affirmed and was in turn affirmed by the processes of Western imperialism. It is arguable that this exoticizing of the
East still exists in Western art histories that look beyond European and recent American artistic production. But whether this
is the case or not it does raise the question, how can we analyse a culture from the outside?

C3.S2 World art history or global art history?

C3.P5At first glance this question might appear slightly arcane but it does pinpoint some important issues. Let’s start with
World art history—the way in which the discipline has attempted to broaden its purview. This is now commonly seen as an
approach that entangles geographically dispersed art, for instance, European, Islamic, Indian, and Chinese, into an art history
that is based on European pretexts. I use the word entangled rather than intertwined to stress the potential for intellectual
indigestion. Moreover, this process has risks as it can lead to a kind of cultural imperialism where Western values and modes
of thought are transposed onto other subjects and objects. Whereas Western art history might privilege painting above all
other art forms, focus on p. 51 provenance and authorship, and establish a canon of great artists, these historical criteria
might well be of less importance or indeed irrelevant to other cultures and epochs.

C3.P6If, then, we accept the recent global turn in our modes of thinking, art history should seek to find new models of
comparativist argument in order to attempt to include art from across cultures. In this way art from outside the West can be
considered equally and a fresh set of non-European perspectives may well shed new light on the Eurocentric viewpoint that
has dominated our understanding of art in a global context. Importantly, this also allows us to explore the efficacy of Western
art history when applied to Western subjects.

C3.P7The trend in the discipline of history, particularly from the 1990s, was to take a worldview that was decentred from
Europe and in which the West was no longer the fulcrum of historical progress. Western art history attempted to follow this
line of thinking but European art remained at its core and when compared to it other traditions were found wanting. Crudely
put, it was as if a few non-Western artists were thrown into the mix but no fundamental changes in thinking took place. In
many ways this is similar to the point made by feminist art historians that the tendency to ‘add a few women’ means the
masculinist canonical structure of art history remains undisturbed. These processes of apparent inclusion work to normalize
European academic traditions. Responses to this conundrum with regard to art from outside the West have included the
development of interdisciplinary approaches to artefacts. For instance, World Art Studies combines art history with
archaeology and anthropology. More recently, neuroscience, or more precisely the way the brain responds to visual stimuli
including art, has been used as a means of moving away from the logocentric preoccupations of Western art history.

C3.P8We have already seen how in the 1960s and 1970s—a generation before the global turn—the way we write about art was
p. 52 re-evaluated by authors such as Linda Nochlin and Clement Greenberg. And it is clear that writing art history is as much
a process of exclusion as inclusion, and these choices are usually formulated on the canon of Western art. I want to stay with
the idea of exclusion and think about how art from other cultures or groups has been omitted from art history. And mindful of
the caveats I have outlined above, I think about how these artworks can be placed within our field of enquiry.

C3.P9But perhaps I am asking the wrong question. For instance, both African and Chinese art have histories that go back
around 5,000 years—far longer than the art of the West. Western narratives usually begin with the ancient Greek world so,
although reference is sometimes made to ancient Egypt and earlier periods, the main focus is on the last 2,500 years. But do
we think of the art of China or of Africa as having a history in the same way as Western art? I am afraid not, as centuries of
misconceptions about the sophisticated nature of African art show—African art is often described as ‘primitive’ or ‘naive’,
especially in relation to canonical art. We tend to forget that Egypt is part of the African continent, as the art of ancient Egypt
is usually discussed in isolation. Sub-Saharan Africa has strong indigenous traditions that continue to the present day—the
carved female figure from Mali dates from the 18th or 19th century (Figure 10). And it is important not only to acknowledge
the appeal of African art, but also to restore it to its original social and historical context.

10.

Open in new tab Download slide

C3.F1 Female figure (Dege Dal Nda), 18th–19th-century, Master of Ogol, Mali.

C3.P10The sculpture of the Dogon people of Mali is an example of the rich artistic traditions of West Africa, where artworks
were integral to religious beliefs and practices. These kinds of sculptures are known as dege dal nda (sculptures of the terrace),
and were primarily used only on certain occasions. For instance, as part of the funeral of a rich man, these figures were
dressed and displayed on the rooftop terrace of the deceased. Their function was then quite different from other sculptures
that were placed on permanent display on a family’s ancestral altar. It is also possible p. 53 p. 54 that figures such as this may
also have been part of altars established for women who had died during childbirth.

C3.P11This female figure is part of a group of a dozen works that have been attributed to the same Dogon artist, identified by
art historians as the Master of Ogol. Ogol is a village where some of these works were collected but no more is known about
where they were made or by whom. Western art historical methods have led art historians to group these figures by their
formal qualities: works created by the Master are distinctive for the helmet-like head and the unique horizontally stacked
mouth–nostrils–chin ensemble, closely framed by the strong vertical nose and cylindrical lip ornament. (These aspects have
been described as the artist’s ‘signature’—a key element of Western artworks.) Despite the invention of the Master of Ogol, it
is not known if these figures are the work of a single artist. In a culture where oral traditions are dominant it appears the focus
on these kinds of artefacts is in the telling of how they were used rather than who made them. The need to attribute these
works to a single artist through their stylistic similarities recalls the beginnings of art history in the writings of Vasari where
the mapping of artworks against the biographical subject (that is to say the notion of the artist) adds validity. All that said, the
information about the figure that these methods allow us to gather helps us understand more about the ways in which this art
was produced, used, and received. But more importantly, it also shows that we may need to write (and think) about it in quite
a different way.

C3.P12As in Western cultures, art in China had a variety of functions in society to do with death, court life, and religion, as well
as being a signifier of wealth and pre-eminence and a tradable commodity. The essential thing to remember here is that the
values that we may place on a certain object may be different from those applied by the society that produced it. The same is
true for the hierarchy of importance we might accord certain media over others.

p. 55 C3.P13The art of China includes an enormous variety of images, objects, and materials—jade objects, painted silk
handscrolls and fans, ink and lacquer painting, porcelain, sculptures, and calligraphy. Here again, Western prejudices are
brought to bear on surveys and histories of Chinese art. The West tends to give prominence to sculpture at the expense of
other art forms. And it is hard not to be impressed by the vast scale of the ‘terracotta army’ with its 7,000 or so life-size
figures, which were funerary art buried with the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang (210–209 BCE ). They were buried in a
vast underground necropolis that was only unearthed in 1974, when it was accidentally discovered by farmers who were
digging a water well. Equally, the delicacy of a piece of carved jade, in terms of the artist’s skill and the quality of the material,
can capture our attention. But it is important to take into account traditional Chinese definitions of what art is. Perhaps
appropriately for a chapter on writing about art history, the Chinese consider calligraphy as one of the most important art
forms.

C3.P14Painting and calligraphy, which both use brushes and ink, emerged simultaneously in China about 3,000 years ago. But
calligraphy was valued as a fine art long before painting. And it was only during the Song dynasty (c.960–1279 CE ), when
painting became closer to calligraphy in terms of its techniques, form, and purpose, that its status changed from craft to fine
art. Already we can see that the value system the West might impose on these two art forms is inverted. Indeed, the superior
status of calligraphy is due to the importance of the written word in China. This was a culture devoted to the power of the
word rather than the image as means of asserting power and authority. However, the Chinese written language is very visual,
comprising individual, unique characters instead of an alphabet or phonetic system of signs. As such each word has to be
learned separately through a process of repeatedly writing it using established strokes to ensure it is written exactly the same
way each time. Words are arranged in vertical columns read from right to left and there is no p. 56 punctuation, nor are proper
nouns made distinct from other words. To give us some idea of the complexities of calligraphy, there are over 50,000
characters of which a well-educated person might perhaps know 5,000.

C3.P15Each abstract character has a specific meaning, but in addition its form should be a moral exemplar, a demonstration of
the energy of the human body and of nature itself. A counterbalancing of order and dynamism is manifested in all aspects of
Chinese writing. In this way, the physical gestures produced by the movement of the brush reveal the writer’s control over his
medium. Despite its abstraction and control, calligraphy perhaps more than any other Chinese art form conveys something of
the individual artist. The brush becomes an extension of his arm and hand. And it is for this reason that we look for ways in
which the rules and rhythm and control are broken in order to reveal the personality of the artist. Perhaps Western art
historians are encouraged in this pursuit as 20th-century American Abstract Expressionists felt a kinship to Chinese
calligraphers. Here the West’s preoccupation with the self comes to the fore as the bold canvases of Abstract Expressionists
such as Jackson Pollock were experienced by large numbers of the viewing public in art museums. These artworks were seen
almost as extensions of the artists themselves. By contrast, viewing Chinese art was a private experience as many artworks
were scrolls that were unrolled for certain occasions. The expression of the personality of the artist is not of paramount
concern.

C3.P16The work of Wu Zhen provides us with an example of how calligraphers were seen by subsequent generations in China
itself. Wu Zhen was active in the 14th century CE during the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) and lived as a recluse with no apparent
employment. Perhaps then his Fisherman, c.1350, is about his own existence, as his inscription speaks of the solitary
experience of evening sunlight and thoughts of a return home after fishing (Figure 11). Wu Zhen does not appear to have
enjoyed fame during his lifetime. But in the Ming period (1368–1644) he came to be p. 57 considered as one of the Four Great
Masters of the late Yuan Dynasty. His distinctive way of representing the landscape was influential for Ming painters
including Shen Zhou (1427–1509). This may indicate how the importance of the word in Chinese culture helped the
formulation of the notion of history within artistic production.

11.

Open in new tab Download slide

C3.F2 Wu Zhen, Fisherman, c.1350, handscroll, ink on paper. Chinese Yuan dynasty (13th to 14th century CE ).

C3.P17Wu Zhen and the Master of Ogol provide us with rather different examples of artistic practice in a global context. The
varying ways in which these art forms are understood and used point to their discrete cultural contexts. Indeed, like Western
art history, there is a divergence between the approaches to art and its history in cultures from outside the West. That said,
despite the civilizations of China, Japan, or India having long-standing traditions of literacy, the extent to which Western art
historians seek out accounts of art written from these internal perspectives, whether translated or not, is questionable. Other
cultures, for example from Africa or Australasia, have long-standing traditions of oral communication, and reflection on how
Western ways of thinking can accommodate this is valuable. All of this is important for p. 58 Western art historians as we
learn that art from outside the Eurocentric bubble cannot be seen as a homogenized mass without temporal or geographic
distinction.

C3.S3 What do we mean by primitive?

C3.P18At this point I want to think about the Western canon and its influence on writing art history in a global context. The idea
of the canon has already been mentioned in our consideration of feminist art history, particularly in terms of the prejudices
and preferences we are inclined to bring to this field of enquiry. My focus here is on how we write about what is described as
primitive or naive art. There are two main ways to look at and write about ‘primitive’ art. The first is Primitivism as a style of
art that refers to the reuse and reinterpretation of non-Western forms by Western artists. We can trace the historical
evolution of the notion of ‘primitive’ and the associated Primitivist phenomena from their first appearance in Western art as
early as the 18th century right up to the present day. The second is ‘primitive’ as a value judgement applied to non-Western
art, which can be seen as pejorative. In response to this, we can try to establish a theoretical definition of primitive art
conceived as an autonomous manifestation of art, one that is not linked to Western cultural constructs. I am interested here in
the contradictions implicit in the imposition of our values on to non-Western art when these art forms have longer-standing
traditions. In fact, the art of China or Africa shows us that there are histories of art that exist independently of the Western
canon.

C3.P19Western views on the primitive have come from both artists and historians. Perhaps most famous amongst these are
Matisse, Picasso, and Roger Fry, who did much to promote Primitivism as an artistic style in the early part of the 20th
century. The encounter between Western artists and writers and what has historically been called primitive art—the
traditional, indigenous arts of Africa, Oceania, and North America—began with the p. 59 ‘discovery’ of that art by European
artists and writers early in the 20th century. These art forms were a vital catalyst that made artists rethink their relationship
to the world. We can compare it to the discovery of perspective in the Renaissance, when artists developed the technical ability
to accurately represent space. It is hard to overestimate the profound effect of primitive art. But we must remember that there
was an intrinsic interest in primitivizing representations in modern art itself, as artists sought to break with the academic,
canonical norms of artistic practice. There are many reasons why works by non-Western artists attracted modern painters
and sculptors. And it is important to identify the different strands within Primitivism. First there is the romanticism of Paul
Gauguin, whose images of life on Tahiti present a vision of an idyllic non-industrial society. There is also what might be
termed emotional primitivism, exemplified by the Brücke and Blaue Reiter groups in Germany, in which abstract forms are
used to express mood. By contrast, the primitivism of Picasso and Modigliani draws on direct quotations from non-Western
art. In his Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), which is often seen as the beginning of modern art, Picasso paints the faces of the
demoiselles as African masks. Finally, there is the idea of the primitivism of the subconscious that we see in Surrealism. Here,
basic human impulses are associated with the notion of our primitive selves, reinforcing my point about the pejorative
connotations of the term.

C3.P20Primitivism is, then, a notion crucial to 20th-century art and modern thinking rather than a specific movement or group
of artists. But is Primitivism one more example of Western colonial appropriation—or is there evidence of cross-cultural
influence? It is true that the encounter between the West and primitive art took place at the height of Western colonialism. As
a result, we must be aware that a number of racial and political questions come into play, either overtly or implicitly, in
writings about both the art and the people who produced it. Recently, the notion of primitivism in the arts has troubled art
historians, who have begun to question p. 60 the formal, anthropological, political, and historical issues that have influenced
the study of the arts of Oceania, Africa, and North and South America. But this does not necessarily result in a group of
societies stripped of meaning; instead the interactions between these cultures and Western traditions have created entirely
new identities.

C3.P21Until recently, the tendency in the West has been to view the art of Oceania as primitive. But it is important to consider
the meaning and significance of art for the people of the Pacific. These art forms are part of the social rituals and cultural
practices of these peoples, for instance the ancestral carvings of Maori and Sepik ceremonial houses, or body art in Polynesia;
and women’s art forms, such as bark cloth. And here we see the close connection between art history and anthropology—
indeed some anthropologists see the word ‘art’ as too much of a Western term.

C3.P22If we move out of the European arena to countries such as Australia to which large numbers of Europeans migrated,
resulting in the dislocation of native peoples, we see that indigenous art traditions have been used to assert the presence of
native peoples and their prior claim to the land. The interaction between First Australians and European Australians includes
art forms from bark art to photography, rock art to sculpture, all of which show the rich texture of Australian art traditions.

C3.P23Let’s now turn the question of cross-cultural influence on its head and think about the impact of migration and diaspora
by which non-Western traditions have been brought to Western societies. Here I am thinking in particular about slavery and
African-American art. African-American art has made an increasingly vital contribution to the art of the United States from
the time of its origins in early 18th-century slave communities. It includes folk and decorative arts, such as ceramics,
furniture, and quilts, alongside fine art—sculptures, paintings, and photography—produced by African-Americans, both
enslaved and free, throughout the p. 61 19th century. African-American art shows that in its cultural diversity and synthesis
of cultures it mirrors American society as a whole. We need to think about the influence of galleries and museums, and of the
New Negro Movement of the 1920s, the Era of Civil Rights and Black Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s, and the emergence
of new black artists and theorists in the latter part of the 20th century.

C3.P24We need to look closely at the canonical works of those who built the empire and see how colonial subjects have been
treated, whether they be slaves, descendants of slaves, or those whose lands were taken. Like women, these groups had
largely been dismissed in the writing of art history as having no influence on or importance in ‘mainstream’ European art.
This endorsed the idea that high art was the presence of artists practising in the Western tradition with its accompanying
notion of genius. As we have seen, this comprises an orthodoxy of material, subject matter, and approach—and of course it
requires a white male artist. Non-Western art has largely been judged by a Western yardstick—it is ‘primitive’ but becomes
Primitivism when adopted and adapted by Western artists.

C3.P25But in recent years there has been a shift in attitude and an awareness of the colonial frame placed on non-Western art.
This is evident in the way non-Western art is now being written about as having its own history—although this history is
usually written by Westerners. Africans and First Australians, for instance, see their modern art as having evolved out of their
own traditions and being ‘given’ to them by Westerners. Indeed, is it not possible that Western art, whether modern or not,
possesses its own ethnic peculiarities? This is the case not just in form but also in subject matter. Right at the beginning of
this book we looked at Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration (Figure 5) as an example of Christian art. This is a benign image, but
many Christian images are of the violent deaths or martyrdoms of saints, or indeed Christ’s own crucifixion. To those who
stand outside the Western Christian p. 62 culture, these images can appear really quite shocking. Inevitably writing about art
will always be influenced by the cultural circumstances of the historian, as well as the producer and viewer of the work. It is
also important to think about the politics and aesthetics of the major museum exhibitions that gained acceptance for art that
had been both ridiculed and marginalized.

Metrics
View Metrics

Recommended
The Museum of Primitive Art, 1940–1982
Jennifer C. Lena, Princeton University Press, 2019

The ‘primitive’ and the modern in Der Blaue

Reiter almanac and the Folkwang Museum
Katherine Kuenzli, Manchester University Press,
2020

John Warne Monroe. Metropolitan Fetish:

African Sculpture and the Imperial French
Invention of Primitive Art.
Peter J. Bloom, The American Historical Review,
2021

Female representation in intensive care

medicine: Challenges and perspectives from
China
Xuelian Liao et al., Journal of Intensive Medicine,
2022

Large Room-Temperature Magnetoresistance in

van der Waals Ferromagnet/Semiconductor
Junctions
Wenkai Zhu et al., Chinese Physics Letters, 2022

COVID-19 and earlier pandemics, sepsis, and

vaccines: A historical perspective
Jean-Marc Cavaillon et al., Journal of Intensive
Medicine, 2021

Powered by

Related content
Introduction in Art Theory: A Very Short
Introduction

Consumerism and co-option in The Avant

Garde: A Very Short Introduction

The avant-garde and revolution in The Avant

Garde: A Very Short Introduction

Thinking about art history in Art History: A Very

Short Introduction

More from Oxford Academic

Art Arts and Humanities History

History of Art Social and Cultural History

Books Journals

About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Authoring Get help with access Oxford University Press Oxford University Press is a department
of the University of Oxford. It furthers
Open access Accessibility News
the University's objective of excellence
Purchasing Contact us Oxford Languages in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide
Institutional account management Advertising University of Oxford
Rights and permissions Media enquiries

Copyright © 2023 Oxford University Press Cookie settings Cookie policy Privacy policy Legal notice