Over the centuries, art has been a prominent form of cultural exchange between the East and the West - a role that has become even more prominent in the last three hundred years. Western painting and music introduced by European missionaries have shaped the tastes of the Chinese imperial courts since the 17th century. The "Chinoiserie" styleinspired by Chinese aesthetics contributed a great deal to the dynamics of the 18th-century European art-world. Japanese Ukiyo-e - the art of the "floating world" - is believed to have had a significant impact on the Impressionists.It therefore comes as no surprise that contemporary artists from the East and the West have formed a collaborative creativecommunity. While more and more art historians are shifting part of their research interest to the Eastern art traditions, lookinginto them in their own right or investigating art history in a greater trans-cultural context, many philosophers of art still remain relatively reluctant to either philosophize about art from a cross-cultural perspective, or try to conceptualize its central issues by drawing on diverse cultural experiences and studies of non-Western art history.This issue of Rivista di Estetica aims to offer some grounds for rethinking the fundamental philosophical questions about art within a cross-cultural context.