The Wall Street Journal throws a twist into all of the talk about Qatar’s new museum of Contemporary Modern art or Mathaf. Nada Shabout, who curated an exhibit there, and  artist Kamrooz Aram point out the limitations of the term Arab art:

“At different times in art there is a Zeitgeist when a different group of people come together or a cultural shift happens,” Mr. Aram continued. “You could say the Bauhaus movement was a general historical advance even if there were different types of work within it. I don’t think there is a cohesive Middle East art culture that can be labeled in the same way, but I do think that there are people forcing it, and I think the motivation behind that is not so much cultural as economic or financial. To categorize something as Middle East art or Arab art is dubious. It doesn’t make sense because it is a very diverse art world.”

Ms. Shabout would agree with that. She says: “Most contemporary artists of the Arab world reject the term ‘Arab’ because they are convinced that they belong to a global world that accepts them as artists per se, a category in which identity is not a factor.”

Painting the Middle East with Too Broad a Brush? (Wall Street Journal)