Redefining Aesthetics in Relationship to Today's Multiculturalism

Even as Picasso saw the beauty in Western African sculpture and incorporated this aesthetic into his own personal abstraction, traditionalists (for lack of a better word to describe individuals who won't accept any deviation from the already established and accepted ideas and norms of aesthetics in their own society)...traditionalists failed to equate the beauty created by the anonymous African sculptor with the new perspective developed by Picasso. And, of course, Picasso was not the only "modern" artist to be influenced by what has been flippantly described as "primitive" art. And, I can never quite understand how anyone can relegate any creative endeavor to the status of primitive, especially when primitive behavior conjures up visions (in my mind) of unsophisticated brutes who wouldn't be able to carve a fish...and even less would be able to conceive of the making of a seemingly non-utilitarian object - like a sculpture or a painting. My point is that this type of mental stagnation is precisely what is hindering the progress of talented artists of African American, Latino, Asian, and multicultural backgrounds. Furthermore, the art market (or art world) is sustained, just like any other business, by the money that collectors spend on the art that is exhibited. Of course, this artwork usually only consists of aesthetics that "tow the line" and does not regularly include those artists with visions outside of the mainstream perspective. If art (any art) is to fulfill its primary objective of defining beauty, then beauty itself has to also be allowed to be identified in the different forms that culturally, racially, and socially diverse artists interpret this concept.