Primitivism, Africa, and World History of Art
The purpose of this essay is to interrogate the notion of ‘primitivism’ and its connotation in reference to ‘Negro art’ as a marker of inherent inferiority.1 To achieve this, the essay will analyse characterisations of Negro art as primitive and attempts to combat such characterisations. It will evaluate the implications of such characterisations for African art, artists, and culture, ending with examples of and suggestions for moving beyond the primitive.
John Fleming, author of the seminal art historical textbook A World History of Art gives a remarkable description of primitivism:
Fig.1. Installation view of the exhibition, "'Primitivism' in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern"
September 19, 1984–January 15, 1985. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. IN1382.8. Photograph by Katherine Keller.
Artists increasingly turned away from civilised ‘fine art’ in favour of the supposedly primitive, especially ‘Negro’ sculpture … By 1915 African Sculpture was being claimed among the greatest ever created. As Braque… confessed ‘Negro masks also opened a new horizon for me. They permitted me to make contact with instinctive things, direct manifestations that ran counter to a false traditionalism which I abhorred’ 2
This text describes primitivism in its most positive context as a movement characterised by European artists’ encounters with African indigenous sculpture. The most pejorative definitions of Negro art take the contention that such objects are mere artefacts of a peripheral culture as premise.3 From this perspective the charge of cultural inferiority embedded in the primitivist connotation is far easier to justify. This is alluded to even in A World History of Art, where the writers note Negro art is ‘seen only in ethnographical and anthropological museums, not in art galleries.’4 Negro sculpture’s categorisation as primitive despite the indelible impact of African indigenous artwork to World art history, to European art history, points to an erasure within historical and cultural memory of the continent’s contribution to the global art industry. In this sense, categorisation as primitive necessarily strips artists of their agency, ascribing work elemental and meritless characteristics.
Primitive connotations have also come to justify the utter lack of historical (and art historical) inquiry into Negro art and the socio-cultural context of its creation.5 In the Western art world one exhibition best demonstrates this point, “Primitivism” in twentieth Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (1984) at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York. Fig. 1 shows the installation methods used by the curators of the exhibition. Specifically, it shows Picasso’s Guitar (1914) alongside still unidentified masks (the pink icon found on MoMA’s website provides descriptions of objects defined as ‘artwork’. It is telling these masks to date do not warrant such description.) The purpose of this exhibition appears to lay either in paying homage to the fruits of modernity’s ‘affinity’ with the ‘tribal’, or in overvaluing the culture of opportunism and appropriation prevalent in the twentieth century European primitive art. Regardless, it is a curatorial failing that neither purpose recognises the makers behind this evidently revolutionary Negro sculpture. The ‘Primitivism’ exhibition established a precedent which is still reinforced in the museum, best observed in moments of juxtaposition between African and European art. In ‘Primitivism’ as in subsequent exhibitions which featured non-Western artists, prevailing categorisations as ‘primitive’ permeated interpretations of artwork by Africans and artists of other non-Western nations. As with Primitivism, the treatment of Negro artists and their respective national artistic traditions renders ‘Negro’ art in servitude to its contribution to European art. Thus, artists who claim such works as a part of their artistic lineage and call on such work for inspiration – artists born and raised in Brazzaville, or Lagos, or Kumasi – are unable to reengage local artistic traditions without referencing or being subsumed under the European canon.
On the surface, the solution lies in greater inquiry into African and Oceanic pre-colonial art. But Africa and its nations have seemingly independent histories. With this premise it follows that European art institutions deem African creative produce as relevant exclusively for its contribution to Europe. Social, cultural, and political contexts are irrelevant to the interpretation of Negro art or even contemporary African art in the Western art-historical sphere. The MoMA exhibition of 1985 serves as an exemplary manifestation of this. However, a failure of this premise lies in the fact of colonial rule, under which many of Africa’s nations were necessary constituents of European sovereignty. In the cultural realm, this underscores a responsibility of the European art industry to partake in recording the history of these objects.
It is worth noting there have been attempts to produce exhibitions which move beyond characterisations as primitive. Magiciens de la terre (Paris, 1989) is one well-remembered example, and others such as Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art (New York, 1991) and Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa (London, Sweden, New York, 1995-1996) demonstrate the general will to shift prevailing narratives. Over a decade earlier in Africa The World Festival of Black Arts (FESMAN) in Dakar (1966) marks an earnest effort to reclaim the authenticity and agency of Negro arts. Fig. 2 shows Senegalese stamps created to commemorate the month-long festival and demonstrates the will to claim Negro art as part of a national and continental cultural lexicon.
Fig.2. Senegalese stamps released in honour of FESMAN 1996.
This too was successful in part, for it achieved the conflation of Negro arts with newly (in some cases, soon-to-be) independent African nations like Senegal and, importantly, was able to garner a reception which saw some critics make use of words like ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’.6
In numerous postcolonial African nations there are instances of optimism in the pursuit of pride and merit for the Negro arts. In Ghana, for instance, President Kwame Nkrumah employed a host of cultural policies which have, for most of the state’s history, defined Ghana’s national self-image. A decision of importance to this essay is his appointment of a state artist. Kofi Antubam was responsible for defining the national self image in the realm of arts.7 His legacy provides important warnings for addressing primitivism. In his chronicle Ghana’s Heritage of Culture Antubam retells the story of the nation’s art tradition from a “degenerate” [pre-colonial] to “classical” [colonial] to a ‘Romantic [Modern]’ period.8 He advocated for Ghanaian artists to aspire ‘to the Romantic Stage after leaving behind a degenerate Archaism’, adopting revivalist tactics to depict idyllic African life using, in part, pedagogical strategies and artistic techniques acquired in the West. 9 He writes, ‘with the material appearance of independence there comes the challenge for Ghanaians to change their attitude in art, and be prepared to accept the wisdom that the word assimilation bears’.10Although Antubam recognises the need for an indigenous lineage of stylistic development, it is this lineage which undermines the agency of Ghana’s artists under Antubam. What nation’s cultural produce might be assumed equal to its coloniser, if what is produced in a pre-colonial period is internally considered ‘degenerate’ and that produced under colonial supervision considered ‘classical’? I feel that Antubam believes Ghanaian artists must be able to adopt and appropriate the artistic traditions of their coloniser. In his struggle to justify this contention he asserts his own inferiority. At best, his lineage of national development amounts to an attempt at re-appropriating the history and journey of ‘art,’ reconstituting conventional international art-market structures by placing Ghana and Africa at the centre of a universal discourse. At worst, ‘Antubam’s thesis, like Goebbels’ in the Third Reich, was aimed at censoring a deskilled avant-garde on a consensual charge of degeneracy’.11 After Nkrumah’s deposition and the coups which thereafter ensued many artists abandoned Antubam’s nationalist art in favour of characterisation as international artists, the likes of which were featured in Magiciens. Although in principle these categorisations are correct, they remain vulnerable to interpretation as a façade for the same imperialist connotations of inferiority associated with primitivism. Indeed, this was the general criticism of internationalist exhibitions like Magiciens, even in 1989!12
In the lineage of European art, the “myth of the primitive’…[is] the belief that a superior spontaneity, energy and sincerity reside in the ethos of indigenous peoples’13 It would be too simplistic to posit that such a myth derives from racist predispositions of Africans, or that it reflects the implicit and generalised assumptions of non-western civilisation in the mind of the westerner. One need not argue nor justify such a claim, many have referred to the colonised people of Africa and Oceania as primitive, savage, and backwards. The myth of primitivism has a more complex affinity with a Western desire to make sense of its own primitive history, given it is so far alienated from its ancient customs in modern times.14
By asserting the primitivism of non-western people, the Westerner can look upon present foreign customs as a manifestation of local (western) primitive past. Thus, in an apparently primitive nation today one might observe phenomena similar in kind to that of a modern nation in the past. Should we adopt this contention of underdevelopment it becomes necessary to interpret encounters with non-western art as cultural artefacts. The result of such an approach is the denial of any self-determination for the Negro artist. By contrast, European artists who depict ‘primitive’ scenes or people such as Paul Gauguin or Henri Rousseau, the avant gardes of the early twentieth century, do so from the precipice of the present and are bolstered by a long and established heritage of culture – their work is a necessary manifestation of modernity. In other words, they are self-primitivizing, not primitive. Antubam recognised this and advocated assimilation to claim Ghana’s rightful part in such heritage, in doing so he had hoped to claim agency for Ghana’s artists, and rid its artistic tradition of primitivist connotations. His colonial art education (both in Ghana and England) and status as a former citizen of the British Gold Coast made it impossible to produce work which did not at least lean on the European artistic tradition.15 The irony is of course, had Antubam’s agenda been brought to fruition, several Ghanaian artists might have been of little repute today, for their work might reflect his limited (and self-undermining) lineage. It is perhaps because of his assertion of stylistic individualism that artists like Ablade Glover, who importantly diverged from Antubam’s strategy, still make art today.16
Such autonomy exists in multitude within the continent today. Much of the credit for this is owed to institutions such as the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). Work done by pioneering educators has steered KNUST away from reinforcing primitivist narratives towards a pluralistic contemporary art institution. A revolution instigated by Dr kąrî’kạchä Seid’ou aptly named ‘emancipatory teaching’ has conceptually progressed KNUST’s production beyond ‘the authority of [human-centred] European traditional and early Modernist media, genres and formats’ to include ‘photography, time-based media, local artisanship, new materiality, curating, text, performance, post-humanist media, robotics, video gaming, site specific and community practices’. 17
This is testament to the progression of Kumasi’s artistic practice from a school founded for improving hand-eye coordination to a platform for creative experimentation. The move beyond colonial legacy towards institutional self-determination produced an institution unconcerned with previous perceptions of itself. His readers will note there is seldom a romantic reference to ‘traditional African art’ in Dr kąrî’kạchä seid’ou’s writing.
I agree with Antubam, albeit partially. The evolution of African art beyond characterisation as primitive lies in the notion of assimilation. Not to say that Ghana must assimilate further to Britain or vice versa, but all must acknowledge the assimilation which has occurred as a fact of history. In their text Honour and Fleming note that it was a curiosity in the art of ‘indigenous peoples’ of Africa and Oceania which elevated the status of Negro sculpture from mere artefact to artwork.18 When a world history of art is next written, it is my hope that the author might acknowledge their indelible ties to African art, and might find in it a common spirit uniting artists who share a cultural lineage. The time has come to acknowledge and exalt the shared artistic tradition from which artists situated in art’s historical centres, and its peripheries, draw inspiration.
ENDNOTES1 Wherever used, ‘Negro art’ refers to African and Oceanic precolonial artefacts characterised by acquisition through colonial force, often first encountered by Westerners in ethnographic museums. 2 Hugh Honour and John Fleming. A World History of Art, (London: Lawrence King, 2009), p.769. In the seventh edition of their seminal work A World History of Art, on the tail end of a description of the history of modern art, Hugh Honour and John3 Ralph Linton (“‘Primitive’ Art,” The American Magazine of Art 26, no.1 (1933): 17) articulates this plainly in the first line of an article from The American Magazine of Art entitled “Primitive’ Art:’ ‘The term “primitive art’ is used ordinarily to designate the arts of uncivilized peoples as distinct from those of civilized peoples. It is not a good expression, because of the ordinary connotations of the word “primitive,” but it has become thoroughly entrenched in our literature…’ 4 Honour & Fleming, A World History of Art, p.769. 5 For instance, on Carl Einstein’s Negro Scultpture (1915), a seminal monograph of Negro art, Sebastian Zeidler (“Negro Sculpture,” October 104, (Winter 2004):122) writes: ‘In the decade following its publication, [images of Negro art contained in the monograph] were eagerly adapted by scores of artists from the whole spectrum of European primitivism, from German Expressionism to French post-Cubist "black deco,”… [but] few contemporaries read [the text] closely, fewer understood it, and hardly any-one engaged with its argument more than superficially.’ 6 Joseph Underwood, “Tendances et Confrontations: an experimental space for defining art from Africa,” World Art 9, no.1 (2019):43. 7 Rhoda Woets,“The Recreation Of Modern And African Art At Achimota School In The Gold Coast (1927-52),” The Journal of African History 55, no. 3 (2014): 460. 8 kąrî'kạchä Seid’ou, George Ampratwum, Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu and Robin Riskin, "Silent Ruptures: Emergent Art Of The Kumasi College Of Art," International Journal Of Humanities And Social Science 5, no.10 (2015):.132 9 Seid’ou, Ampratwum, Kissiedu, Riskin, “Silent Ruptures,” 133. 10 Kofi Antubam, Ghana's Heritage Of Culture (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1963).124. 11 Seid’ou, Ampratwum, Kissiedu, Riskin, “Silent Ruptures,” 133. 12 See Hubert Martin and Benjamin Buchloh. Buchloh, “The Whole Earth Show,” Interview with Jean-Hubert Martin by Benjamin Buchloh, https://msu.edu/course/ha/491/buchlohwholeearth.pdf. 7 13 Honour, Fleming, A World History of Art, p.768-769. 14 See Sebastian Ziedler, “Negro Sculpture,” October 104, (Winter 2004):122: ‘Negro Sculpture is a theoretical exploration of sculpturality as a model of object experience in modernity, and by the same token it is a critique of certain definitions of subjectivity supported by other sculptural paradigms popular at the time.’ Negro sculpture as it was first posited is conceived in response to a crisis of modernity and as a result of a desire to ‘create islands of totality in the contingent environment of the modern city.’ 15 See Woets, “African Art At Achimota School,” 451: Colonial education was designed to ‘preserve colonial dependency’, according to Nigeria artist, curator and scholar Olu Oguibe, ‘By denying he colonized access to a complete Western art education…colonizers assured the continued inferiority of the ‘primitive’ subjects. 16 Maruska Svašek, "Identity And Style In Ghanaian Artistic Discourse." In Contesting Art. Art, Politics, And Identity In The Modern World, ed. Jeremy MacClancy, 27-62. (Oxford: Berg, 1997) 17 Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, “Curatorial Models,” Online Essay accessible online as of October 20th , 2020, https://iubeezy.wordpress.com/exhibitions/spectacles/curatorialmodels/. 18 Honour, Fleming, A World History of Art, p.768-769. 10 Bibliography Antubam, Kofi. Ghana's Heritage Of Culture. Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1963. Buchloh, Benjamin H.D. “The Whole Earth Show.” Interview with Jean-Hubert Martin by Benjamin Buchloh. https://msu.edu/course/ha/491/buchlohwholeearth.pdf. Edgerton, Robert B. The Fall Of The Asante Empire. New York: The Free Press, 1995. Einstein, Carl, Haxthausen, Charles W., and Sebastian Zeidler. “Negro Sculpture.” October 104, (Winter 2004): 122-138. Hiller, Susan, ed. The Myth Of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art. London, New York: Routledge, 1991. Honour, Hugh and John Fleming. A World History of Art. London: Lawrence King, 2009. Kwami, Atta. 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