Globalization in the contemporary world

Globalization & the Contemporary World

Has globalization changed the way artists see the world and society? If so, how has globalization changed artists' view of culture? What place does diversity occupy in the world of art, and are there concerns based on nationalism that are expressed by artists? Should ethnicity and/or nationality determine what an artist creates? These questions and issues will be reviewed and critiqued in this paper.

Globalization and Art

Pushparajah and M. Manobavan explain in the Daily News (Sri Lanka's national newspaper) that globalization survives by "…controlling information flows" and globalization has a "profound impact on the human populous as it controls the pathways of information." While this is certainly accurate to some degree, the question to address in this context is, has globalization (with it's control of the flow of information) affected the world's prevailing "appreciation of beauty" and has it affected what we know as art? (Scholte, 2000, p. 200). Jan Aart Scholte admits that beauty has gone through some changes in "supraterritorial spaces," but more fundamental ideas of constitutes are "have not disappeared in the process" (p. 200).

In fact, Scholte continues on page 201, globalization has actually helped "certain art forms to obtain worldwide currency," due to the digital mass media that has emerged, and some art forms (like Andy Warhol's images and "tinted-glass office blocks) have become "marks of beauty" across borders and they are not "unconnected to any specific country." Indeed, Scholte goes on, there has been a "hybridization in collective identities" with globalization; but on the other hand, the shrinking of the globe has provided what the author calls "increased possibilities for intercultural combinations in the arts" (201).

As to diversity in the art world, the three trends that are mentioned by Scholte -- who is professor of politics and international studies at Warwick University in the UK -- include: importations, combinations, and new creations. These three trends have "…arguably brought greater diversity and flexibility appreciations of beauty" (201). The art that is generated today vis-a-vis globalization can be seen as celebrating "…difference, ephemerality, spectacle, fashion, and the commodification of cultural forms" (Scholte quoting David Harvey).

Ali-Asghar Gharebaghi writes in Tavoos Art Quarterly that "Art needs to be free from nationalities, political barriers, selfishness and self-centeredness; it requires the oneness of the creators of art," the author explains. "Artists of all nationalities, unite! Art must become global, or else it will perish!" Gharebaghi asserts (Gharebaghi, 2008). Lynn Anne's 2010 pages called Art & Globalization shows a number of interesting artworks, including an image with dozens of airplanes of all shapes and sizes heading in multiple directions, looking confused and even sinister. The proponents of globalization see art as a "counterbalance to nationalism" and as an expression of the "diversity of cultural expression"; the opponents, according to Lynn Anne, see globalization as the "increased disparity between rich and poor nations" (Lynn Anne Blogspot).

Museums are part of the story of globalization, according to a book by Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Alvarez. "Our major national museums represent their countries' histories with respect to colonialism and economic power" through their sometimes patriotic and occasionally nationalistic exhibits (Holo, et al., 2009, p. 80). Even the smallest museums in some of the most out-of-the-way locations "can and do participate in the globalized arena," Holo explains. The leaders of these remote museums, for example the "indigenous communitarian museum leaders in the remote mountains of Oaxaca," who have zero staff, somehow go to meetings at very obscure locations, just to link up with others in the world of art (Holo, 80).

However, when globalization becomes what Holo calls "conventionalized homogenization," that is, everything in museums in remote places in the world become mirrors of "the Western perspective of modern art," there is a necessary response to that negative dynamic. That's not to say that militant nationalism automatically comes into play in this situation, but as Holo explains, globalization can bring "negative baggage" and when it does, as Manuel Borja-Ville explains (he is the director of the Reina Sofia, Spain's national museum of contemporary art), something has to change. In Borja-Ville's instance, he did not want to continue spreading Western reflections of art so he embraced "alternate art histories from Latin America and Africa." He also believed that globalization should truly be an embrace of other cultures, especially those cultures that have not been fully recognized or displayed (Holo, 81).