ABSTRACT
The role of art can be contested at at least two levels: the more general theoretical or sociological level on the one hand and rooted case studies on the other, the latter illustrating the intimate connections between art, modernity and colonialism. The transformation of art and the transformation of society, then, go hand in hand. This has many implications for culture in general, and here we can mention at least three of them. The first is the dissolution of the entirely artificial boundary between the so called "fine arts" and craft or "folk arts". The second implication is the coming together of art and ecology as our world-wide environmental crisis deepens and expands. The third issue is the recognition of a plurality of aesthetic possibilities: that not only have conceptions of beauty and ideas about the nature and role of the arts changed over time, but that this is also true cross-culturally today.
