“Byzantine Art” without Borders

What is “Byzantine” Art? Is it artistic production undertaken within the geographic boundaries of the “Byzantine” Empire? Or is it an artistic style – a set of formal principles and qualities – untethered to a particular place or time, to a particular cultural or political group? Historians have devised persuasive arguments for abandoning the term “Byzantine” as a cultural-historical designator in their discipline, yet art historians face particular challenges in following suit. If scholars were to call art produced in/for the so-called Byzantine Empire by another term – perhaps “(very) late Roman” or “medieval Roman” or simply “Roman” – might the term “Byzantine art" be retained for aesthetic styles that emerged from “Byzantium” but were used more widely? Might “Byzantine art” persist as a set of formal properties that evoke “Byzantium” but without adherence to a particular geographic or even temporal boundary? How might debates surrounding other conventional terms employed in the fields of history and art history (for example, “medieval,” “late antiquity,” “the Middle Ages,” “Islamic art”) offer caveats and possibilities for the current crisis in terminology for the study of things “Byzantine”?