ASKiIMAN™ REALM 18 / ARTS
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The World Art Atlas

Global Art • Civilisations • Indigenous Traditions • Heritage

The Central Question

How have different peoples and civilisations imagined the human being, nature, divinity, society, power, death and beauty through visual form? There is no single universal artistic timeline. We must build a world map of traditions without treating European art as the default history of everyone else.

PLACE & PEOPLE → ENVIRONMENT → MATERIAL → BELIEF & STORY → SYMBOL → ART & ARCHITECTURE → SOCIAL LIFE → HERITAGE

The Global Matrix

Ontology of World Civilisations

Foundation & Environment

18.01 - 18.03

Art, Geography & Material

  • Different societies developed different visual systems under different historical conditions.
  • How does environment influence material and artistic practice?
  • Comparing regions through locally available materials (stone, wood, clay, bamboo).

Africa & West Asia

18.05

Africa

  • Do not treat Africa as one artistic tradition.
  • Regional branches: North, West, Central, East, Southern.
  • Individual cultures, materials, and historical contexts.
18.06 - 18.07

Ancient Egypt

  • Pyramids, temples, tombs, relief, funerary art.
  • Visual Language: Composite representation, scale hierarchy, hieroglyphs.
  • Prioritising symbolic clarity over naturalistic perspective.
18.08 - 18.09

Mesopotamia & Persia

  • Mesopotamia: Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, Assyria (Ziggurats, cuneiform, seals).
  • Persia: Achaemenid art, Persepolis, palace architecture, decorative systems.
18.17 - 18.21

Islamic Art & Architecture

  • Not a single style. Spans architecture, calligraphy, geometry, arabesque.
  • Architecture: Mosque, dome, muqarnas, courtyard, tilework.
  • Calligraphy & Miniature: Script as rhythm; Persian narrative manuscripts.

East & Southeast Asia

18.22 - 18.27

China

  • Ink Painting: Brush, wash, landscape. Empty space carries meaning.
  • Calligraphy as visual art (rhythm, balance, stroke).
  • Ceramics (porcelain, celadon), jade, silk, architecture.
18.28 - 18.35

Japan & Korea

  • Japan: Ukiyo-e (woodblock prints), ink painting, timber architecture, gardens.
  • Korea: Ceramics (celadon, porcelain), painting, calligraphy, Buddhist art.
18.36 - 18.40

Southeast Asia

  • Khmer/Angkor: Temples, relief, cosmology, monumental planning.
  • Indonesia: Borobudur (stupa, narrative relief), batik, shadow puppetry.
  • Distinct histories across Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, etc.
18.42 - 18.43

The Silk Road

  • East Asia ↔ Central Asia ↔ Persia ↔ India ↔ Mediterranean.
  • Transmission of motifs, materials, religions, and manuscripts.
  • One of the most important connecting concepts in world art.

Europe & The Mediterranean

18.10 - 18.14

Greece & Rome

  • Greece: Idealised human form, proportion, contrapposto. Orders (Doric, Ionic).
  • Rome: Engineering aesthetics, arch, vault, dome, portraiture, mosaics.
18.15 - 18.16, 18.44 - 18.45

Byzantine to Gothic

  • Byzantine: Icons, mosaics, gold backgrounds.
  • Gothic: Pointed arch, rib vault, flying buttress, stained glass, verticality.
  • Illuminated manuscripts and cathedral architecture.
18.46 - 18.52

Renaissance to Realism

  • Renaissance: Humanism, linear perspective, naturalism, anatomy.
  • Baroque & Rococo: Drama, illusionism, ornament, theatrical light.
  • Neoclassicism to Realism: Idealised order vs emotion vs ordinary life.
18.53 - 18.60

Modernism & The Avant-Garde

  • Impressionism: Light, colour, visible brushwork.
  • Cubism & Expressionism: Fragmentation, multiple viewpoints, emotional distortion.
  • Dada, Surrealism & Abstract: Dreams, geometric/gestural non-representational form.

The Americas & Oceania

18.62 - 18.67

Indigenous Americas

  • Mesoamerica (Maya/Mexica): Architecture, codices, monumental sculpture, stelae.
  • Andes (Inca, Nazca): Stonework, textiles, geoglyphs, urban planning.
  • North America: Do not treat as one culture. Weaving, pottery, carving, ceremony.
18.68 - 18.72

Oceania

  • Aboriginal Australian: Rock art, bark/dot painting, Dreaming traditions, country.
  • Māori & Polynesia: Carving, meeting-house art, tattoo traditions (body as surface).
  • Navigation Art: Canoes, maps, and environmental relationships.
18.73 - 18.76

Latin American & Global Indigenous

  • Mexican Muralism: Public art, political/social narratives, monumental scale.
  • Global Indigenous: Understand art through the community's worldview, not outsider generic categories.
  • Land, ancestry, ceremony, story, material, identity.

Themes & Global Exchange

18.77 - 18.78, 18.84 - 18.87

Sacred & Built Worlds

  • Sacred Art: Do not treat as one universal category. Compare traditions (Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, Indigenous).
  • Architecture: Temple, Mosque, Church, Stupa. Spatial organisation and ritual movement.
  • Vernacular: Built through local climate, materials, and community needs (not just elite monuments).
18.88 - 18.89, 18.96

Colonialism & Heritage

🎭
  • Cultural exchange, appropriation, museums, collecting, and export markets.
  • Heritage: Provenance, displacement, restitution, repatriation.
  • Cultural Ethics: Who made it? Who owns it now? What context is lost?
18.90 - 18.95

Contemporary & Diaspora

  • Installation, video, social practice, digital art.
  • Diaspora: Artists working between homeland, migration, and host culture.
  • Globalisation, Biennales, and the international art market.
18.102 - 18.104

Parallel Timelines

  • Do not use one straight line. Create parallel timelines (Africa, Europe, East Asia, Americas).
  • Show connections: trade, migration, religion, technology.
  • Avoid pretending all art history happened along one European sequence.

Realm 18 Doctrine

THERE IS NO SINGLE WORLD HISTORY OF ART.

THERE ARE MANY HISTORIES.

MOUNTAIN CHANGES MATERIAL.
RIVER CHANGES TRADE.
CLIMATE CHANGES FORM.
BELIEF CHANGES SYMBOL.
POWER CHANGES PATRONAGE.
TECHNOLOGY CHANGES PROCESS.
MIGRATION CARRIES IDEAS.
TRADE CARRIES MATERIALS.
PEOPLE TRANSFORM WHAT THEY RECEIVE.

DO NOT ASK: "WHAT IS THE UNIVERSAL ART?"

ASK: "WHO MADE THIS? WHERE? WHEN? WHY? WITH WHAT MATERIAL?"

AND "WHAT WORLD DOES THIS ART BELONG TO?"

Knowledge Progression

14 — DANCE
15 — THEATRE
16 — CRAFT & MATERIAL CULTURE
17 — INDIAN ART MANDALA

18 — GLOBAL ART ATLAS
Proceed to REALM 19 → HISTORY OF THE BEAUTIFUL