The history of Asian art includes a vast range of arts from various cultures, regions, and religions across the continent of Asia. The major regions of Asia include Central, East, South, Southeast, and West Asia.
Central Asian art primarily consists of works by the Turkic peoples of the Eurasian Steppe, while East Asian art includes works from China, Japan, and Korea. South Asian art encompasses the arts of the Indian subcontinent, while Southeast Asian art includes the arts of Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. West Asian art encompasses the arts of the Near East, including the ancient art of Mesopotamia, and more recently becoming dominated by Islamic art.
In many ways, the history of art in Asia parallels the development of Western art. The art histories of Asia and Europe are greatly intertwined, with Asian art greatly influencing European art, and vice versa; the cultures mixed through methods such as the Silk Road transmission of art, the cultural exchange of the Age of Discovery and colonization, and through the internet and modern globalization.
Excluding prehistoric art, the art of Mesopotamia represents the oldest forms of art in Asia.
Art of the Upper PaleolithicMal'ta–Buret' culture and Venus figurines of Mal'ta
The first modern human occupation in the difficult climates of Northeast Asia is dated to circa 40,000 ago, with the early Yana culture of northern Siberia dated to circa 31,000 BCE. By around 21,000 BCE, two main cultures developed: the Mal'ta culture and slightly later the Afontova Gora-Oshurkovo culture.
The Mal'ta culture culture, centered around at Mal'ta, at the Angara River, near Lake Baikal in Irkutsk Oblast, Southern Siberia, created some of the first works of art in the Upper Paleolithic period, with objects such as the Venus figurines of Mal'ta. These figures consist most often of mammoth ivory. The figures are about 23,000 years old and stem from the Gravettian. Most of these statuettes show stylized clothes.