Radical WAS: The Sense of History in World Art Studies

Abstract

This essay engages David Hulks' account of World Art Studies as a ‘radical proposal’ for a practice that could replace the ‘New Art History’ developed in the 1970s and 1980s. Suggesting that both a ‘world art history’ that was well established by the 1960s and the New Art History remain preconditions and precursors of World Art Studies, it considers how World Art Studies might relate the ontology of art – questions of ‘defining art’ – to the parameters of history in ways that could have ‘radical’ outcomes. The diversity of proposed identity conditions for art probably reflects the actual diversity of world art, and World Art Studies probably best functions as a space for considering criteria of art rather than stating solutions. In this regard, World Art Studies might further consider the ‘historicality’ of art – the possibility that most art ‘was’ and therefore cannot be discovered by World Art Studies, no matter how global. In turn, this emphasizes the need for prehistoric studies, not only at a substantive level (the investigation of ‘prehistoric arts’) but also in theoretical terms (the implications of accepting the ‘pre-historicality’ of any art posited as a historical phenomenon in the world).