World art studies and the need for a new natural history of art

• Autores: John Onians
• Localización: Art bulletin, ISSN 0004-3079, Vol. 78, Nº 2, 1996, págs. 206-209
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Part of a symposium providing a range of critical perspectives on rethinking the art historical canon. The writer discusses the value of the concept of world art studies. Perhaps its greatest immediate advantage is that everyone can contribute to the definition of the concept of world art studies because no one knows what it is. It raises basic questions about future developments in the study of art, requiring the mapping of new areas of inquiry and the formulation of new ways of examining them. Issues that need to be addressed include art's basis in human physiology and psychology, the human relation to the natural environment, and the reasons for the origin of artistic activity and for its abiding importance throughout various times and places. A history of art that explores such issues will inevitably be more a natural than a cultural history. If the field of world art studies provides the context for writing a new natural history of art, it will only be continuing what should be a canonical tradition.