Hiller - The Myth of Primitivism. Perspectives on Art - Esoteric Online

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From primitivism to ethnic arts 137 seems therefore that we cannot continue sweeping the issue <strong>of</strong> racism under the carpet <strong>of</strong> Marxism, and we really need to look specifically into all those ideas in western culture to see how these ideas have underpinned a world-view <strong>of</strong> which racism is an important part. We ought to pay more attention to the emerging Third World scholarship 7 in which it is reiterated that classical Marxism alone is inadequate in the understanding <strong>of</strong> the relationship between racism and imperialism both in its historical and contemporary sense. However, I would now like to draw your attention to some <strong>of</strong> the beautiful African sculptures 8 I saw in the MOMA exhibition. I have chosen these works for their extraordinary formal qualities. I am aware that I might be accused <strong>of</strong> reducing these works to only aesthetic qualities and perhaps seeing them with the eyes <strong>of</strong> a western observer. <strong>The</strong> reason for this limited treatment, is only to prove a point which is very relevant in our context. I am aware that I am being very selective about these works, and I am also presenting these works out <strong>of</strong> their social contexts and without much historical information. By whom and for whom are these works produced and under what socioeconomic conditions? I do believe that we cannot understand the full significance <strong>of</strong> art works without taking into account the socio-economic and political conditions under which they are produced. <strong>The</strong> difficulty here is that we do not have this information. (And even if we did have this information, it would not have been possible for me to go into a full analysis within the scope <strong>of</strong> this chapter.) What I therefore propose, contingently, is that we should look at these works as we would do in the case <strong>of</strong> any other work in an exhibition or museum, and try to respond to them—ignoring their anthropological interpretations. <strong>The</strong> intricate and complex formal and spatial qualities <strong>of</strong> these works tell us that these works are the products <strong>of</strong> highly sophisticated and intellectually engaged minds. At this point, I have deliberately not concerned myself with their sensuous qualities in order to avoid the pitfalls <strong>of</strong> that discourse which attributes sensuousness to irrationality. However, these works debunk the western myth about them, <strong>of</strong> being produced by an unconscious and irrational mind. <strong>The</strong>y might have been produced for some ritual purposes. But so are many works in western culture which are made for religious purposes. Do we reduce the works <strong>of</strong> western culture only to religious meanings when we look at them or analyse them? Why do we have a different attitude towards the works <strong>of</strong> non-European cultures? Why do we not accept that African artists were able to transcend the imposed specific function (whatever that may be) <strong>of</strong> their roles as artists and were able to produce works which were multilayered in terms <strong>of</strong> concerns, functions, and meanings resulting from their own individual creative imaginations? It is commonly believed that African peoples themselves were not aware <strong>of</strong> the aesthetic qualities <strong>of</strong> what they were producing and that it was the west which ‘discovered’ these qualities and gave the African ‘objects’ the status <strong>of</strong> art. It is true that Africans did not write books on aesthetics, plasticity, or formalism (or whatever relates to art), but to deduce from this that African artists were not aware <strong>of</strong> what they were doing is to indulge in the kind <strong>of</strong> stupidity which can only result from a mental blockage or an intellectual dishonesty. Even a cursory study <strong>of</strong> various world cultures shows us that ritual itself does not demand the kind <strong>of</strong> formal complexity and perfection we find in many African works. Let us here take the example <strong>of</strong> a Mumuye sculpture from Nigeria,
<strong>The</strong> myth <strong>of</strong> primitivism 138 illustrated on page 43 <strong>of</strong> MOMA’s catalogue: the way the human body is transformed into small geometrical spaces, and then interrelated to form a whole does not display either an expressionistic Angst or a ritual concern. It is more likely to be the result <strong>of</strong> a fascination and highly concentrated engagement with space, to create a sculptural space which is formally independent <strong>of</strong> naturalistic human form and yet at the same time represents the human body. I have yet to come across such a spatial complexity in a figurative sculpture in the west, even in the twentieth century. My above comments do not deny other aspects <strong>of</strong> African sculpture, which may be religious, ritualistic, ceremonial, or whatever. <strong>The</strong> point is that we cannot reduce it to one particular aspect and certainly not to those aspects which are attributed to primitivism. African sculpture is pr<strong>of</strong>oundly complex, which is the result <strong>of</strong> rational minds, and not to recognize its complexity would be not to understand its true achievement. What I am trying to say here is not altogether new. Modern anthropology tells us that what we used to think <strong>of</strong> as simple phenomena or structures <strong>of</strong> so-called ‘primitive’ societies are in fact highly complex projections <strong>of</strong> rational minds in no way less developed than the contemporary/modern mind. However, the ideas <strong>of</strong> modern anthropology have made no impact on art historical scholarship, on art criticism, or on western consciousness in general about the people who have been explicitly primitivized in the past. <strong>The</strong> ideas <strong>of</strong> nineteenth-century Europe are still with us today and they are being used to define and fix the positions <strong>of</strong> non-European peoples in such a way that they are deprived <strong>of</strong> their active and critical functions in contemporary cultural practices. This is particularly true in relation to the development <strong>of</strong> modern art in the twentieth century. If African/Asian cultures have not produced (or are not known to have produced) great artists in this century it is not because Afro/Asian peoples lack mental or intellectual ability or/and modern consciousness. <strong>The</strong> reasons are different and they are to do with the colonial primitivization <strong>of</strong> the non-European world, and this primitivization continues today in the form <strong>of</strong> ethnicization <strong>of</strong> non-European cultures globally as well as within western societies. Edward Said describes orientalism ‘as a system <strong>of</strong> knowledge about the Orient, an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness…the idea <strong>of</strong> European identity as a superior one in comparison with all non-European peoples and cultures’. 9 We can easily replace the word ‘orientalism’ with ‘primitivism’, particularly when we know that the word ‘primitive’ was in fact used frequently for all non-European cultures up to the end <strong>of</strong> the nineteenth century, notwithstanding that orientalism does have its own specific boundary in the same way as primitivism now exclusively refers to African/Oceanic cultures. William Rubin <strong>of</strong> MOMA refers to it as modern primitivism. Mr Rubin is perhaps right in also saying that ‘<strong>Primitivism</strong> is…an aspect <strong>of</strong> history <strong>of</strong> modern art’, but then to imply that this does not mean to reflect upon the status <strong>of</strong> the cultures and peoples primitivism refers to is to add insult to injury. However, I shall leave this matter here as my real intention is to go beyond the context <strong>of</strong> the twentieth century and show that primitivism as an idea or perception was already there as part <strong>of</strong> western consciousness before it entered into its modernist phase. I am therefore using the term ‘primitivism’ in a much broader and more general sense to reflect upon Europe’s attitude towards all non-European cultures as part <strong>of</strong> the development <strong>of</strong> its art historical scholarship or discourse since the mid-nineteenth century.
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PART I Contents List of</st
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Illustrations Display case, Berlin
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10.2 A blend of sa
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Display case, Berlin Ethnographical
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little pictures inserted me neatly
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10 Christian Metz (Fall 1985) ‘Ph
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assumptions of the
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PART I
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Outsiders or insiders 19 Th
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Outsiders or insiders 21 content it
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Outsiders or insiders 23 honoured i
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Outsiders or insiders 25 If the con
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Outsiders or insiders 27 of
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Outsiders or insiders 29 free-range
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Editor’s introduction The
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5 Emil Nolde’s ‘ethnographic’
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Art and meaning 187 anthropologists
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Art and meaning 189 and visited Mus
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Art and meaning 191 ultimate ‘oth
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Art and meaning 193 10.5 Jah Hut me
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Art and meaning 195 The</st
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Art and meaning 197 without models
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11 Dark continents explored by wome
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PART IV
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14 Unsettled accounts of</s
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15 Locality fails IMANTS TILLERS Al
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16 Aboriginal representation and ki
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17 Born from sharp rocks Edgar Heap
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Notes on contributors 294 P.S.122.
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Index aboriginality, as Australian
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Brecht, Bertholdt 53, 56 Breton, An
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Index 300 Eurocentrism 14-15, 21, 8
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Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig 99, 144, 240
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School Museum Committee 204 mutilat
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Index 306 ‘soft
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Tower monument 126 technology, and
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Hiller - The Myth of Primitivism. Perspectives on Art - Esoteric Online

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