ABSTRACT
Vertical: hierarchical, Western, power flows mostly top down, narrowly, then outwards to the rest. In the West, art serves, evades, or opposes that power. Elsewhere, art is always already Othered. The same goes for art historians, in both domains. Horizontal: every place is a centre and also decentred, power is shared widely, equitably, agency is for all. There are no Others. Cosmopolitanism rules. Art flourishes. Art history also. A simple distinction, with many resonances. A desire with a long history. This author is interested in why it appeared in the years around 2000, as a proposition for the kind of art historical inquiry called for by the times, promulgated by Piotr Piotrowski. He also is interested in comparing Piotrowski’s art historical methodology to several other art historical approaches that, since the 1970s, have had similar aims. These include centre–periphery or metropole–province theory, art geography, comparative regionality, world art, global art and contemporaneity and planetarity theories. Of particular interest are the potentialities and limitations of such attempts to locate the temporal and spatial specificity of artmaking within the world-scale forces evoked by these generalizing names. Locations: Orientations to them, between them, around them, beyond them. Allegory might have something to do with it.
