World Art

By Kathleen I. Kimball

World Art Defined

The enormous and emerging field of World Art includes art made by human beings from the dawn of the species to the present era and across the entire globe, from Africa to Oceania and from Eurasia to the Americas. Art has many definitions, but in this article it refers to objects and techniques that human beings create and use, especially to those which produce an aesthetic response and which have left some trace of their existence in the archaeological or historical record.

In addition to conventional historical theories and methods, World Art may use interdisciplinary approaches in allied fields such as archaeology, anthropology or art history. Traditionally art history focused on ‘fine art,’ especially that created by known individuals from the cultures of the west and anthropology concentrated on ‘crafts’ from ‘non-western’ cultures and anonymous ‘artisans.’ Now these studies and efforts are united in the field of World Art.

World Art Sub-Disciplines

The media and subjects included in World Art are diverse. Thus, World Art encompasses: performance arts, such as drama, dance and music; literary arts of language and literature; installation and environmental arts; electronic arts; visual arts such as painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, jewelry, or textiles. This article emphasizes visual arts because items made from permanent materials provide the evidence which reaches furthest back in time.
 

Each of the many different arts may be further refined into sub-disciplines. For example, textile arts might include many categories of fiber arts, such as costumes, wall hangings, quilts, tapestries, rugs, ropes, nets, and so forth. Methods of (fiber) manipulation and construction (such as spinning, various looms, knitting needles, patterns of braiding or twisting), materials used (such as cotton, silk, hemp, or flax) purposes of the items (fishing, daily or ritual clothing, trading) particular times, places, and occasions of use are each specialties within themselves for each of many different media and arts humans have generated around the world for thousands of years.

Importance and Uses of World Art

World Art is an important field of study for many reasons. First, since it occurs everywhere in the world, World Art demonstrates the universality of our pan human neurology and nature. These involve our sophisticated hand-eye coordination and our ability to symbolize, i.e., to have one thing ‘stand for’ another. Historian David Christian is among those who have observed that accumulated collective learning via symbolic representation is a driving variable in the human dominance of the planet. World Art is the study of this multi-media symbolic record.

Second, World Art provides evidence of the particularity and diversity of our many societies, cultures, individuals and artists. This in turn supports specific studies of comparison and contrast. For example, one might consider the use of perspective in the second century of the common era by looking at both paintings from the Han Dynasty in China and wall mosaics in RomeThird, since humans made objects long before the relatively recent time of written records, World Art extends our world historic understanding into antiquity by tens of thousands of years. This provides a longer and more complete story of humanity. Fourth, World Art records evidence of human endeavors in modalities other than text, so these other media may be used as evidence to augment and enhance our understanding of any given historic period, to support studies of patterns over time and between and among various human groups, and to test various historical hypotheses.

Fifth, World Art has personal, social, and biological aspects. For example, it is used to represent (cultural, social, gendered) identities, to communicate individual self expression, to display wealth, to convey aesthetic experience, to teach values, to protest social norms, to aid memory, to present narratives, and generally to establish, maintain and/or demonstrate relationships.

Any of these reasons or functions may be expanded for particular historical studies. For instance, among the many ways to approach the subject of historic relations in World Art are relationships between and among: resource allocations and technologies employed; various cultures as they borrow ideas and trade raw materials or finished goods; kinship groups of humans; humans and the natural, ‘spirit’ or ancestor worlds, etc.
In addition to these individual and social reasons why humans make art, evolutionary psychologists have offered that artistic forms originally grew from within the body and humanity’s need to survive. They suggest, for example, that the widespread desirability of the hourglass female figure derives from its suggestion of fertility and hence the possibility of offspring to perpetuate the species. In their analysis, over time the original context of the human body was transferred to other materials, such as clay figurines with this hourglass form. Others dispute the idea of female fertility, for example, in prehistoric figurines, and instead see models of animal brains. (Hagens).

Sixth, historians may use World Art to support many kinds of teaching or research, such as chronological, geographical, area, or gender studies. Historians might look at how a specific art form or object changed over time in a certain location, or perhaps how ideas, techniques, materials or forms of representation were transmitted, preserved, or transformed. For example, the evolution of the Buddha image shows how Roman representations of deities were imported into the Gandaran region of India in the second through the sixth centuries in the common era. This influenced the formation of a standardized (international Gupta) Buddha image. This image was then modified as it subsequently traveled through Asia, so that in different countries and at different points in time, the Buddha image also reflected individual Asian cultures and styles. 

Finally, historians are able to use genres of art to compare or contrast human groups in time and space. For example, portraiture in general or ritual death masks in particular might be used to compare African civilizations such as those in Benin or Egypt to tribal societies such as the Yoruba. Historians may also use World Art to support special area or period studies. For example, a historian studying the year 1000CE might compare Islamic and European medieval calligraphies by considering variations in surfaces to which the calligraphy was applied, calligraphic styles, purposes of the writing, colors used, attitudes toward creation and divinity, etc.

Issues in the Field of World Art

There are many issues within the field of World Art. Some of these issues are similar to those within the field of World History, including the appropriate use of language, the challenge to move beyond a Euro-centric ‘western civilization’ framework, conceptual coherence of the field, and problems of data.

English and other Eurasian languages dominate World Art scholarship. Too, ‘World Art’ may be confused with term ‘non-western’ art, thus perpetuating the mistaken idea that World Art is limited to ‘non-western’ human beings. Even what constitutes language and literacy is contested. For example, in 1450CE the Incan empire extended for three thousand four hundred miles and functioned, not with a phonetic writing system, but with a language of tied colored threads called quipu. Meanings were communicated via methods of twisting, knotting, and manipulating the strings as well as their colors and how they were placed in relationship to one another. Scholars debate whether the art of quipu as a communication system is a form of literacy or numeracy as they compare and contrast its functions with the languages of Europeans who vanquished the Incan Empire.

The world historian’s challenges to determine an appropriate scale of study and locate pan human threads of inquiry are aided by World Art, which offers a long time line in the visual historic record and many objects for study. This ancient and ongoing evidence of human material cultures and technologies includes diverse methods and purposes of art making as well as objects themselves. The art as fact (art-i-fact) is ongoing evidence of multivalent symbolic behavior and meanings generated and contextualized over time and space. World Art as visual history serves world historians whether they are pursuing traditional historic inquiries and themes, such as war, urbanization, empire, and migration, or more recent patterns and developments, such as environmental or ‘big history.’

Data problems include both the difficulty of dating material remains and the typically European emphasis on ‘western’ culture. Material culture may be dated physically or chemically. Physical dating relies on finding objects ‘in context’ which means in stratigraphic layers or contiguous to other excavated remains. Often there are no trees for dendrochronology (tree ring dating). Carbon dating of objects has recently needed to be recalibrated while chemical analysis may destroy at least a part of the object and is often costly. For these reasons, many sites and objects are without firm dates.

Other questions often surfacing for various aspects of World Art involve ideas about development. For instance, to what extent do people borrow ideas (diffusion) vs. independently invent them? We might try and answer this by looking at any number of specific art objects or their constituent parts, such as by considering the relations between image and text in medieval religious documents (e.g., Insular Gospels in western Eurasia and Buddhist sutra scrolls in eastern Eurasia).

Other developmental questions include: How reciprocal are the borrowings between groups? Are there progressive developmental stages that arts move through in both individuals and/or societies? The work of Kellogg, Lowenfeld and Gowan suggests that children move through progressive stages (e.g., from scribbles to shapes to using ground lines) in illustrating their ideas. However, what happens to an individual does not necessarily mirror what happens on the level of the entire society (ontogeny-phylogeny) and ideas of social Darwinism in the arts were abandoned long ago.

Historiography and World Art

Thus far the emerging field of World Art has relied mostly on the work of anthropologists and art historians, so the interests and particular biases of these fields have influenced scholarship to date. In the late 1980’s the anthropologist Rubin related World Art to technology, but visual anthropology is largely about using video instead of text to document ethnography. Recently the art historian Onians edited the comprehensive work World Art Atlas (2004), a monumental landmark and the first such work of its kind. While to date there are no journals of World Art as such, there are relevant journals, such as res (anthropology and aesthetics) from Harvard and Third Text (critical perspectives on contemporary art and culture) from Routledge. The most rapidly growing World Art resources are online databases of image and text that museums and academic institutions are making available, such as the collection and timeline of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, www.met.org. For information about specific areas, scholars often turn to their regional organizations and journals. For example, to learn more about the Arts of Oceania, one might turn to the Pacific Arts Association or the Association of Social Anthropologists for Oceania.

Appreciating World Art

Among the many ways to appreciate World Art are: through analysis of its formal elements and design; via direct aesthetic experience and; by pursuing relevant questions and answers. Formal and design elements lead to the articulation and understanding of a particular style. Formal elements include line, shape (two dimensions), form (three dimensions), texture, space (types of perspective and negative spaces); colors (tints, tones, shades) and values (degrees of light and dark). Design principles include: balance (bilateral or asymmetrical); figure-ground relations; texture; composition; pattern (repetition); rhythm; movement; contrast; emphasis; harmony and unity. Degrees of reality vs. illusion and naturalistic rendering vs. abstraction may also be included in a formal analysis of style.

In different times and places ideas of aesthetic experiences have varied. In the first century of the common era, Longinus’ On the Sublime offered that aesthetics was the experience of beauty. Contemporary descriptions of aesthetics now include any emotional response to art and emphasize empathy between those who make the objects or participate in events and those who more passively view them. In many cases using multi-modal arts supports a range of aesthetic experiences. For example, to maximize the aesthetic experience and understanding of aboriginal Australian dot paintings, one might listen to didgeridoo music while first viewing images of such paintings and then make a painting oneself.

In addition to asking what the aesthetic or other effects of the art are, other questions one might ask to appreciate World Art include: what is made or done; how is it done (e.g., techniques, methods, materials, preparations, epistemology); by and for whom is it made; when and why is it made, used, performed; how long does it last and what is its ultimate disposition (e.g., buried, destroyed, placed in museum); how did the people in the time and place being investigated view the object, its uses and makers; are there similar items in one’s own time and space

Prehistoric Art

Humans used available materials to make art as permanent symbolic evidence of their presence for tens of thousands of years before the era of written history. These materials included bone, stone, ivory, antlers, amber, shells, teeth and red ochre, which is a form of red iron oxide that is widely available across the planet. This art was sometimes portable, as in beads or figurines that could be carried or traded and thus moved from place to place. Alternatively it was parietal, literally ‘on the wall’ but generally meaning permanently attached as in a rock or cave painting. Pictographs (paintings) and petroglyphs (marks that are carved, etched or pecked into rocks) likely came after many tens of thousands of years of art making with less permanent materials, which are prone to decomposition and thus leave little trace in the archaeological record. These materials include skin, wood, grasses, feathers, and hair.

The oldest petroglyphs date from 43,000BCE and are located in Panaramitee, Australia. These include symbols of circles, dots and crescents. Most scholars accept the theory of African genesis, i.e., that humans first evolved in Africa before 100,000BCE. Therefore, it is not surprising that this is also where red ochre paint and painting tools have been found which are dated as far back as 77,000BCE.

Interpreting Prehistoric Art

During different eras people have offered different interpretations of what prehistoric art might mean. These ideas are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they often reflect the time period in which they are offered. For example, prior to 1900CE, prehistoric art, like ‘fine art’, was thought to be art as art for art’s sake. Since 1970CE, when space travel and the ‘drug culture’ became prevalent, it has been widely suggested that prehistoric art related to shamanic trance, sympathetic magic, and archaeoastronomy.

Ice Age Art 40,000 – 10,000BCE.

Prehistoric arts include both parietal and portable arts. The oldest prehistoric paintings, also in Africa, show zebra and rhinoceros in black and red and date from 26,000BCE. Techniques include finger marking, engraving, low relief sculpture and carvings, outlined and shaded drawings, but no ground lines. The more recent and more well known European cave paintings of large animals in Lascaux, France and Altamira Spain are dated to 17,000BCE and 14,000BCE respectively. Red ochre handprints of varying dates are found all over the world, including Africa, Eurasia, the Americas, and Oceania. The oldest handprints located to date are from 13,000BCE and are in Tasmania. Portable arts during this period include thousands of fired clay figurines from central Europe date from 22,400BCE, which seem to have been intentionally exploded in the fire.

Post Glacial Art 10,000 – 5,000BCE

From about 10,000BCE the last ice age ended and the glaciers which dominated the northern hemisphere began to melt and recede. In this milder climate between 10,000BCE and 5,000BCE, people became more sedentary as hunter-gatherers and herding agriculturalists. In other words, they began to domesticate plants and animals. During this period in western Asia there is the first appearance of sun dried bricks used as a building material and widespread baking of clay in open fires to make vessels. Thus, the shift to more fixed locations marks an increased use of clay in general and fired clay in particular. By 6,000BCE the potter’s wheel had been invented in Mesopotamia. The dates for shards from clay vessels vary with locations. The oldest found thus far are located in Japan and date from about 12,000BCE. This Japanese tradition of fired clay vessels is called Jomon, (meaning rope impressed design) and it continued for over ten thousand years, ending in 300BCE.
 

5,000 – 500 BCE

In general, from 5,000BCE to 500BCE growing sedentary populations often produced urbanization, monumental architecture, formalized writing systems (the beginning of history), increased trade and new materials, such as bronze with which to make objects. The occurrences of these phenomena vary with specific locations and dates. For example, Egypt developed hieroglyphics by 3,000BCE and built the great pyramid at Giza during a twenty year period around 2650BCE. England’s Stonehenge was constructed in phases dated from 2950 to about 1600BCE and writing did not occur there until it was brought by the invading Romans in the first century of the common era.

Early on in Eurasia, the Americas and Africa, states often used writing and visual imagery to maintain records, (such as grains owed for tribute), for political propaganda, (recording victories and rulers) and to create and decorate objects for ceremony, war, and burial. During this time individual artists are rarely known. As more varied materials were used there was a corresponding diversity of techniques. For example weapons such as swords and shields became stronger thanks to more sophisticated bronze and iron metallurgy and lapis lazuli was inlaid into gold.

500BCE-600CE

Although hunting and gathering societies continued throughout this time, empires also grew and increasingly demonstrated human dominion of the planet. This produced ever greater displays of beauty, power and wealth by ruling elites and the rise of world and state religions provided considerable content for World Art. Around the world, humans became more powerful in their development and deployment of technology. For example, in Africa the use of iron expanded in the Niger river valley along with terra cotta figures (Nok), while in northern Europe the spreading Celtic culture created abstract representations in gilded bronze, silver and gold jewelry for use in trade and burials. Writing surfaces changed and portable writing surfaces improved. Vellum (scraped animal skin) in Europe and paper (invented in China in the first century CE) allowed texts (such as official orders from rulers or religious tracts) to spread along the silk road. In Oceania the pottery tradition that began by 3,000BCE (and later became Lapita pottery) had disappeared by 1500BCE, but Lapita designs continued in other materials, such as bark cloth (tapa) and tattoos.

600-1500CE

In this era contact between people significantly increased. Religious beliefs (such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism) spread, trade expanded and wealth accumulated. As political and religious power increasingly fused, improved technologies brought more powerful weapons, bigger buildings, more lavish pictures and sculptures. Meanwhile, in North Americas human groups remained relatively small as they exploited a range of ecological niches, making diverse arts from available materials. There are complex (art) histories for many village cultures and empires that flourished in varying degrees throughout Central (Maya and Aztec) and South America (Inca), leaving a rich legacy of carved stone, architecture, metal work, textiles and ceramics. African groups also used many materials, from the great stone walled city of Zimbabwe (1000CE), to Ife cast copper masks, Ibo bronze open weave altar stands and Dogon ancestral wood carvings. Migrating groups increasingly inhabited Oceania, including the Maori, who arrived in New Zealand around 1200CE.

1500 - 1800CE

During this time change accelerated to the point of revolution. Improved transportation (better ships and navigation) brought faster trade of more goods and ideas; competition grew between Eurasian rulers to display wealth, (for example, to build larger buildings and cities such as in Paris, France, Istanbul, Turkey, or Edo, Japan.) For ordinary people there were also changes; where the wealthy could buy original oil paintings, prints (wood block and moveable type) afforded large numbers of people access to images for a wide range of purposes, from devotion to secular wall decorations. Social, political and industrial revolutions were reflected in changing arts. Optics (perspective drawing, telescopes, eye glasses, etc.) suggested the world was being seen in new ways. These new views were reinforced by the discovery and exploitation of both people and resources in the Americas, Africa, and Oceania as Europe colonized the rest of the world and divided the spoils of conquest.

1800-2000CEC

Increasingly mechanized (re-)production of goods and communications media relied on advancing technology and redefined human experience, identity and art for an ever expanding population. For example: commonplace use of photography made portrait painting largely obsolete and emails often replaced handwritten letters; museums, which first became culture barns filled with objects from around the world, often become electronic image databases as well; scientific methods supported the development of electricity, combustion engines, new communications technologies, (e.g., computers, fax, film), new materials (e.g., concrete, steel, polyester), etc. Boundary questions, such as international vs. national, regional and ethnic styles were widespread.

Various reactions to these changes included many artistic ‘-isms,’ i.e., styles such as symbolism, impressionism, cubism, futurism, modernism and post-modernism. These and other movements each offered a slightly different comment on the human condition. For example, the arts and crafts movement elevated work done by the human hand, ‘earthworks’ emphasized human relationships with nature, performance artists re-valued the subjective moment, feminism argued for female equality by raising awareness of patriarchal western art traditions and pop art glorified the mass produced commonplace items of everyday life. Within cultures that had been colonized by the Europeans, questions rose about how to preserve authentic traditions even while seeking access to contemporary materials, tools, galleries, collectors and connoisseurs.

World Art Today

Inspiration for World Art as expressive communication and/or information movement are accelerating and expanding through both widespread tourism moving molecules and computers moving bits and bites. Visual and auditory global exchanges are commonplace and new art fields, such as ‘visual culture’ and World Art, are growing. Art education, organizations, and techniques are spawning around the world as public art (art in public places) community art (art made collaboratively within and by communities of people) and individual artists in their studios increase their use of machines into the twenty first century. As World Art supports teaching diversity and accommodates multiple intelligences (Gardener); it has the potential to become an educational axis mundi. In the meantime, the growing field of World Art symbolizes the spectrum of human creativity and provides a treasure trove for World historians.

Kathleen I. Kimball, Independent Scholar

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