Page 176 - Katalog Beyond the Box 820 final.indd

‘non-European” are still compared with European concepts of art,
despite recognition of their individuality. Today, when international
galleries look for innovative works of art, they usually start out from
Western ideas about aesthetics and Eurocentric ideals with which
they compare their finds. New art from a non-Western context
should not contradict classical ideas of Western art history or, if it
does, should fulfill an enhancing function. This particularly White
gaze consistently adheres to the model of a centralised network
that describes the West as the global centre of cultures, while not
reflecting on or simply ignoring its imperial nature. Although the
canon of Western art history is no longer dominantly exclusive, it is
also not really inclusive (for that it would have to change itself), but
mostly just integrative. As long as the familiar world order of Euro-
centric art is only supplemented, but not significantly disturbed or
changed, non-Western views will continue to be colonially ordered. centralised (A), decentralised (B) and distributed (C) networks according to Paul
Baran, 1964
Source: www.bkb.eyes2k.net/udk09/lessons.html, accessed 12.1.2020.
In order to break down dichotomous thought patterns such as ‚the
West and the Rest‘, Christian Kravagna suggests examining „ex- events of cultural exchange and artistic networking in their inde-
change relations and interactions between modernities and mo- pendence from the West. Practically speaking, this needs to be
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dernisms in different regions of the world, taking into account their negotiated. A global art history that disperses Western modernity‘s
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colonial and postcolonial power relations.“ This would first require homogeneity must separate itself from essentialist notions of art
the dissolution of existing art geographies. Art history would have and culture, such as are implied for example in the sense of spe-
to be decentralised and reoriented in order to grasp the frequent cifically national arts. Susanne Leeb even sees, in the model of a

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