Non-Western and Global Art Traditions
What this domain tests
Art beyond Europe and the United States, with emphasis on function, belief, materials, and local categories rather than imported style labels.
Core traditions
- China: ink landscape and handscroll viewing; literati ideals; calligraphy as high art; Buddhist cave sculpture.
- Japan: Zen ink painting and dry gardens; ukiyo-e woodblock prints and their export influence.
- India: Buddhist stupa and circumambulation; Ajanta painting; Hindu temple sculpture; Mughal miniature painting blending Persian and Indian conventions.
- Islamic world: aniconism in religious settings, calligraphy, arabesque, hypostyle mosques, mihrab indicating qibla, iwan and dome.
- Africa: Nok terracotta, Benin bronzes, masquerade and ritual performance, textiles with coded meaning.
- Americas: Maya stelae and urban planning, Aztec sculpture, Inca masonry.
- Oceania and Australia: Moai, Aboriginal dot painting and ancestral landscape.
Worked example
A mosque interior has a columned hall, a decorated niche, and no figural images. Reasoning: the columned hall is a hypostyle prayer space; the niche is the mihrab marking the qibla, the direction of prayer; the absence of figures reflects aniconism in sacred space, while calligraphy carries divine word. Calling it "decorative" misses function.
Traps
Judging non-Western work by Western realism; using "primitive" (never acceptable); assuming anonymous makers had no individual agency; and ignoring that masks or figures may be activated by performance, not displayed as sculpture.