Art

Global art embraces any type of art, including paintings, sculptures, photography, cinema, video art, digital Internet art, as well as conceptual, installation, and performance arts, that participates in the international art world through cultural exchange or commerce. The exchange is not limited to one-directional transfers from dominant art cultures to indigenous sources. Rather, there exists a pluralism of active sources contributing to the reciprocal flow and mutually enhancing stream of art and its support systems, including art institutions, art publications, art criticism, and educational support. Contemporary art, as well as the traditional art forms of national and local cultures, have been influenced by globalism. The discussion here provides an examination of the changes brought about by global art as it relates to the art market and to cultural institutions such as museums and art biennales. Although the history of global art began with trade among the major civilizations in Asia, Europe, India, and the Ottoman Empire, this history is not repeated here.

Unlike the situation in the colonial era and during the period of 20th-century modern art, the global exchange of cultural influences today is no longer hegemonic. This means that the main currents of influence no longer flow from a dominant art-rich center such as Paris or New York to supplant or suppress the art in other regions. On the contrary, global art centers across the world, such as Beijing and New Delhi, compete successfully with European and American art centers as well-springs of artistic innovation. However, instead of thinking and acting as cultural imperialists, the artists in the global era seem more content to share their art-producing strategies and their ideas with artists working in other cultures.

Cross-cultural exchange of art practices is not an entirely new development, as Western modern art has attracted the attention of Asian artists throughout the 20th century and before. For example, throughout the 20th century, artists, whose training might have begun with the study of Chinese traditional art forms, found in Western modern and contemporary art, such as Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art, ways of developing their own art in new directions. At the same time, there exists a well-established tradition of Western artists, including avant-garde artists John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg and others in the United States, who look to Eastern art and philosophy for inspiration. The Guggenheim Museum's 2009 exhibition, The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989, which showed the works of 110 artists, offers ample evidence of this development.