Which label fits better: 'Arab art' or simply 'art'?

Few artists or gallery owners dispute that there is an aesthetic that colors daily life here that could be called Arab. A cultural reverence for the swoops and swooshes of Arabic calligraphy - found in mundane advertising as well as framed Koranic verses hanging in homes - is one example. Other visual idiosyncrasies include an Islamic belief that God should not be represented as a human figure (a boon to abstract art), a tradition of Eastern Christian iconography, and legends and myths from the ruins of civilizations that passed through here.

But Mr. Moualla and Mr. Darwich criticize artists who draw too literally on these sources in the name of national or regional identity. Worse, others say, such efforts feed foreign stereotypes.

Market demands don't help. Mayssa Chehab is an art dealer in Damascus who sells a lot of Syrian work to foreigners. "You have to know very well what to pick," she says. What sells are usually paintings with an obvious Eastern flair: scenes of Bedouin life, Arabic letters, and long, dour female visages.

Some artists have turned defiant. "I hate the idea that my art would be [considered] Iraqi or Arab or even European," says Monkith Saaid, an Iraqi sculptor who has lived most of his life in Damascus but studied in the Netherlands. "The most essential thing is that I am an artist," he says.

Yet even Mr. Saaid's work is a product of place. Saaid's studio, in a suburb of Damascus, is peopled with weightless and soaring human forms in bronze - and when pushed he cannot deny that the theme of escape (from dictatorship, from poverty, from a region in turmoil) is intrinsic to some of his sculptures.

Buthayna Ali, an installation artist and a professor at the University of Damascus, is frank in her belief that an artist can't and shouldn't deny his or her local roots. "I am not against art with the name of 'Arab art' because the lives we are living are different from the lives of [artists in] other places."

These differences are exactly why Beirut gallery owner Saleh Barakat says it's time for Arab artists to forget the West and the prevailing feeling that real success comes only with international recognition. After nearly a decade of trying to sell the work of Arab artists in the US, Mr. Barakat is convinced that it takes another local person to fully appreciate a piece of art. "This is our art, it talks to us, and whether it is appreciated by the US, it doesn't change anything," he says.

The lack of art museums, critics, historians, and books to help foreign curators narrate shows by Arab artists compounds the situation.

Yet Ms. Ali, who has worked a lot with Bedouin images and scenery, says it's critical to instigate dialogue with the West. She did an installation of a nomadic tent, which was on display in Paris, where she studied. The tent's exterior was a strict, traditional replica and prompted many Parisian passersby to ask Ali whether all Arabs live in such nomadic dwellings. But inside, Ali editorialized with paintings and decorative twists.

What she offered viewers - other than a blunt "no, not all Arabs live in tents" - was a more detailed glimpse into the lives of those who still do.

International symposiums, on the rise in the Middle East since the first one hosted in Aswan, Egypt, a decade ago, can similarly break down misconceptions. Artists at the symposium here in Lattakia, readily admit that they've come not just as sculptors, but as cultural tourists. Most of them have never been to Syria.

Sculptor George Dan Istrate, from Romania, grows philosophical. "When you go deep into your own realities, you become international.... When you [try] to understand your own values, it will send you to other cultures."

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