Global and Cross-Cultural Traditions

The story of art is far larger than the Western canon. Every culture has produced visual art, often with aims, forms, and standards very different from those of Europe. Studying art from a range of cultures is both an intellectual necessity and a requirement of the Visual Arts course, which asks students to look beyond a single tradition. This lesson introduces the breadth of global art and how to approach it respectfully.

Beyond a single canon

For much of its history, Western art history treated European art as the standard and other traditions as marginal or "primitive." This view is now widely rejected. The visual traditions of Asia, Africa, the Islamic world, the Americas, and Oceania are each sophisticated, long, and internally diverse. A single continent contains many distinct cultur