International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2024

 

Elkins’s Question: Reflections on Critical Perspectives of Global Art History

(Abstract)

 

Qu Kangwei

 

Taking Chinese landscape painting as an example, American art historian James Elkins explains why all local art history will eventually be reduced to the context of Western art history in the process of globalization. “Elkins’s Question” unfolds the fact that institution, theoretical tools, and issue of art history all come from Western ontology, and without recognizing and critiquing this metaphysical pitfall, native art history and decolonizing global art history will be nothing more than a mirage. There are two kind of approaches to respond to Elkins’s question, namely paradigm change and global cooperation. If native art history, including China’s, wants to be actively involved into this process, it needs self-explanations and to generate issues in local research. At the same time, it needs to apply their interpretation of non-local materials to conduct the test of “compatible universalism.”