Widening the art canon
The canon is the group of artworks and artists that museums, critics, schools and books treat as the "great" ones. Someone chose them, so the list reflects who had power, money and a voice. For centuries it mostly showed male artists from Europe and North America, and left out women, working people, village and tribal makers and most of Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas.
Widening the canon means adding the missing makers and also asking why they were missing: lack of access to art schools, art seen only as "craft", or simply not being collected. In 1985 a group of women artists called the Guerrilla Girls used posters to point out how few women had work in big museums. Today many museums rewrite labels, buy work by new artists and show folk, craft and community art next to "fine art".
Orientalism and primitivism questioned
Orientalism is the name of a way of seeing. In the 1800s many European painters showed the Middle East, North Africa and Asia as dreamy, lazy, mysterious or backward, often without visiting or listening to the people. These pictures were one-sided and fitted ideas of empire. In 1978 the thinker Edward Said wrote a famous book that explained how such images create stereotypes.
Primitivism is another old idea. Early 20th-century European artists admired masks and sculptures from Africa and Oceania and borrowed their shapes, but called them "primitive", as if they were earlier or simpler than European art. This is wrong. These works were made by skilled artists, with deep meaning and long traditions. They were also often taken from their communities without consent.
Today we question both: Who is looking? Who is being shown? Did they have a say?
Art worldwide
Art has always travelled. Japanese woodblock prints influenced European painters, Indian textiles and Chinese porcelain shaped design across the world, and African music and visual forms shaped modern art in many lands. Today artists live in several countries at once, and biennales and online galleries bring world art to everyone.
A fair view of art is two-way: ideas and styles move in all directions, and every region is both teacher and learner. When we study world art we ask about context: who made it, for what purpose (religion, celebration, daily life, protest) and what it meant to its community.
How to look critically: three questions
- Who made it? Name, place, time, training.
- For whom? A king, a temple, a village, a market, the artist's own people?
- Who is missing? Which makers, voices or stories are not on the wall?
Use the same questions on a photo, a poster, a film or an app icon.
Try it
In the 3D: step 1 shows the old wall (one colour) and then the wider wall. Count the colours. In the last step tap three frames and answer the three questions for each in your notebook.
At home: choose any art book or website. Count how many artists are women and how many are from outside Europe. Write one sentence on what you notice.
Key formulas and definitions
- Canon = the works museums, schools and books treat as most important
- Orientalism = a one-sided outside view of the East that creates stereotypes
- Primitivism = calling non-Western art simple or earlier; this is questioned today
- Three questions: Who made it? For whom? Who is missing?
- Fair view of art = two-way exchange, with context
Worked examples
1. A school art book shows 30 artists: 28 men from Europe and 2 women. What does this tell you about its canon?
The canon is narrow. It leaves out many women and non-European artists. A wider canon would add them and explain why they were missing.
2. A 19th-century painting by a visitor shows a market in another land with sleepy, smiling people and golden light. Why might a modern critic call it Orientalist?
It shows the place from an outsider's view, with stereotypes (sleepy, mysterious) and little real life. The people had no say in how they were shown.
3. A museum labels a carved mask as "primitive art". How can the label be improved?
Name the maker's community, say what the mask was used for (for example a ceremony) and call it by what it is: skilled art with a purpose. Remove the word "primitive".
4. Give an example of art travelling both ways.
Japanese woodblock prints inspired European painters; later, artists in Japan also studied European painting. Both sides learned and changed.
Common mistakes
- Thinking the canon is a fixed list of the "best" art. People chose it and it keeps changing.
- Thinking Orientalism only means "painting the East". The problem is the one-sided, stereotyped view.
- Using the word "primitive" for traditional or tribal art. These works are skilled and meaningful.
- Judging non-Western art only by Western rules of beauty instead of by its own context.