Abstraction distinctly shaped European and American modernism in the twentieth century but also left its mark in Latin America, the Arab world, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Thus, its narrative as a purely western phenomenon requires a closer examination. The largely Eurocentric approach results in a distorted value system in which some works are more authentic than others. Such thinking, with respect to western primacy in artistic creation further enhances notions of primary vs. secondary, influencing vs. influenced, center-periphery and other “western vs. the others” dichotomies in modernist and avant-garde art.