The Art Historical Canon

When I think of “great artists” or perhaps “genius artists”, the names that pop into my head are ones such as Matisse, Picasso, Caravaggio, and Praxiteles. To be frank, they are all white, old men who have for centuries been praised by scholarly thinkers. So being a person of Korean-Chinese descent and raised in the United States, I sense a greater structural problem of what art history scholars consider to be of genius status in addition to a sort of embarrassment from not knowing my own culture’s greatest artists.

Where is my culture in the canon of genius artists? Why do I lack knowledge of the Arts of Asia, more specifically the arts of East Asia, South Asian, and Southeast Asia? Do I blame the institutions for not expanding their course options? Or, do I blame Art History as a whole of being a discipline that is simply exclusionary and outmoded? Or even, do I blame myself for not taking more of an initiative to learn? Maybe a combination of all three?

In my own self reflective questioning, I ask myself to realize the term genius is only applied for older European men, of course with some exceptions such as a woman here and there and even a person of color here and there. But, here and there lies the exact problem. As humans, we are all created equal, but not treated equally. The discipline of Art History is just an extension of this inequality. Do ‘geniuses’ exist outside of the Western world? Yes. Of course. They just are not as recognized as those who are. The focus on geniuses in Art History reinforces the Western ideal while ignoring other cultures and peoples.

To their loss, the past critics and scholars of art history deliberately excluded non-Europeans from the canon for the simple reason of ignorance, entitlement, and superiority. This begs the simple question as to why? Why do we humans always look for inequality? To take advantage and put down others? The answer will forever unknown to me.