From Primitive to Prosperous: the Complicated Rise of Tribal Art
Artkhade avec Art Media AgencyParis, 10 September 2013
Tribal Art has witnessed a long and complex evolution, with European art history oscillating wildly in its attitude to the genre. Once referred to pejoratively as ‘primitive art’, tribal art has since been recognised for the important influence it had on the works of Expressionist, Surrealist and Cubist artists. Now, the field is recognised as rich and diverse, with museums, galleries and collectors across the globe placing an important focus on the works of indigenous peoples from Africa, North America and Oceania. Artkhade with Art Media Agency examined the platforms which are specialising in the genre today, looking at the presence of Tribal Art in Galleries, Museums, at auction houses and in dealerships.
A Slow Rise to Success
‘Primitive art’ is now recognised as a dismissive term, connoting an outdated Euro-centric attitude which coincided with the height of imperialism, colonialism, and the exploitation of countries by the West. The title connoted the belief that non-Western cultures were somehow less developed; that they were somehow missing the influence of European powers who viewed themselves, unquestioningly, as being antithetically un-primitive. By the beginning of the 20th century, 85% of the world was dominated by a small group of European nations. The Western world had spent several years promoting classical realism as the zenith of artistic production, with works of the period seeking to replicate nature whilst adhering to an idealised notion of beauty. Art from colonised countries did not adhere to this rigid aesthetic; in African countries, representations of the human body were not perceptual but symbolic. Human figures with mask-like faces and stylised limbs challenged the West’s establish conception of beauty, and were often dismissed as mere ‘artefacts’ – more valuable as novelty items than works of art.
From the early 1870s, thousands of African sculptures arrived in Europe following colonial conquests and expeditions. Though the pieces were exhibited at museums in cities including Berlin, Munich, London and Paris, they held so little economic value that they found their way into flea markets and pawnshop windows. Nevertheless, the pieces began to attract the attention of avant-garde artists, who were inspired by art which re-conceptualised existing European notions of the human form. Whilst artworks from Oceania and the Americas attracted the attention of artists, particularly during the 1930s Surrealist movement, the most influential early modernists predominantly centred their interests on the sculpture of sub-Saharan Africa. In Paris, artists from the Paris School, including André Derain and Pablo Picasso – ‘discovered’ African art, with institutions such as the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro and the Musée de l’Homme presenting exhibitions of works taken from the country. These Parisian artists began to merge the highly stylised treatment of African sculpture figures with the post-Impressionist style established by artists such as Cézanne and Gauguin, producing works characterised by a vivid colour palette and a near-flat picture plane. Henri Matisse is thought to have encountered examples of African sculpture at Trocadéro with fellow Fauve painter Maurice de Vlaminck, and visited North Africa in 1906. Pieces such as The Young Sailor (1906) or Green Stripe (1905), visibly suggest the influence of these encounters, featuring abstracted faces boldly set apart from the naturalistic contours of the previous century’s portraits. American writer Gertrude Stein, who was at the heart of artistic and literary activities in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, described Matisse’s purchase of a small African sculpture, made in the Autumn of 1906, in her Autobiography of Alice B. Tolkas (1913). The purchase, Stein recalled, was made with one Pablo Picasso, whose cubist works would later become firmly associated with the tribal works of the continent. From 1907, Picasso regularly visited the Trocadéro’s African collections, later describing the influence of the exhibited works to writers and curators. In 1907, after producing hundreds of preparatory sketches, Picasso created the seminal work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; presenting the female form as fragmentary and geometric, the piece is widely attributed with the birth of cubism, and was of significant influence to subsequent works by other artists of the modernist era. Much like Matisse’s works of the period, the piece displays the influence of African sculptural works, with two of the five women presented in the work bearing a resemblence to the style of masks in the Trocadéro. Other figures display the influence of Picasso’s native Iberia – an influence which was also visible in the artist’s 1906 portrait of Gertrude Stein. In Germany, Expressionist painters such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner – a member of Dresden and Berlin-based group Die Brücke – produced works which merged African aesthetics with clashing colours and figural distortion, producing pieces which sought to act as visible responses to the anxieties of modern life. Interest in non-Western art in the country intensified following an exhibition of works by Gauguin in Dresden. At the same time, modernist artists in Italy, England and the United States began to engage with African art after coming into contact with members of the Paris School. The notion that these works were ‘Primitive’ however, persisted. Though the influence of Africa’s art upon the works of certain modernists is undeniable, it is unclear whether those appropriating stylistic elements of the country’s sculptural works were aware of the more complex spiritual associations which the pieces conveyed. Art criticism of the early 20th century continued to equate works by the indigenous people of colonised countries with a notion of simplicity. Written in 1938, Robert Goldwater’s Primitivism and Modern Art equated non-Western art with art produced by “undeveloped” people, including children. Goldwater sought to defend his opinion, however, by stating that “Primitivism” was a notion adopted by artists who drew from tribal works as part of a broader attempt to diversify their own practice.
Exhibitions of Tribal Art
The mid-20th century saw tribal art established as a valuable artistic genre in its own right. Major museums such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art presented exhibitions such as “Africa Negro Art” (1935) and “Indian Art of the United States” (1941), firmly declaring the artistic significance of once-dismissed tribal works. Western artists continued to draw upon works by African artists, with black philosopher Alain Locke arguing that all African American artists should look to African art as a source of inspiration at the height of the Harlem Renaissance in 1925, prompting an engagement with the genre which continued much later into the century.
Today, a huge number of museums, galleries, publications and art fairs are devoted to work from Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. Major museums devoted to tribal arts – or with significant collections of tribal art – can be found across major art market centres internationally, with a brief selection including: the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin; the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico ‘Luigi Pigorini’, Rome; the Museum Africa, Johannesburg; the Museum der Kulturen, Basel; the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Museum of the American Indian – George Gustav Heye Center, New York; the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington DC; the British Museum, London. A full list of the world’s major collections can be found in the pages of Tribal Art, a publication devoted entirely to current events and developments in the field, released on a quarterly basis. Tribal art has a significantly less prominent place in art fairs, struggling to make an appearance at major events such as the Venice Biennale or Art Basel, where the focus is very much on new contemporary art – though visitors to such events may find contemporary works which, like those produced by the Paris School, are indebted to encounters with tribal art. Nevertheless, a few annual events take place each year: London’s Tribal Perspectives is to take place this year between 2 – 5 October, whilst the 2013 edition of Amsterdam’s Tribal Art Fair (TAF) is to run from 24 to 27 October 2013, bringing together a selection of 19 renowned art dealers. This year’s Frieze Masters, to run between 17 and 20 October, is to feature three prominent tribal art dealers: Donald Ellis from New York, Entwistle from London and Paris, and Galerie Meyer from Paris.
Perhaps the most major fair in the genre, however, is found in Paris. Now in its 12th edition, the “Parcours des Mondes” describes itself as the “Leading international Tribal art fair”. The annual event features participation from around 60 galleries – based both internationally and in Paris itself – “specialising in the arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.” The show prides itself on the quality of the works presented, aiming to appeal to collectors and dealers who are drawn to a market described by organisers as being “very healthy”.
The event emphasises the French capital’s existing commitment to tribal art, with one of the city’s major museums – the Musée du Quai Branly – specialising in art from Africa, the Americas, Oceania, and Asia. Boasting a permanent collection of 5,450 artefacts, the Jean Nouvel-designed building also carries out extensive research, and offers an educational centre and library. The institution is currently hosting an exhibition entitled “Charles Ratton: l’Invention des Arts ‘Primitives’” (“Charles Ratton: The Invention of ‘Primitive’ Art”), featuring over 200 works associated with expert, dealer and collector Charles Ratton. Credited with having changed the way in which “primitive” art was received, Ratton encouraged galleries and collectors to diversify their collections of tribal art, emphasising the genre’s influence on the work of the Surrealists and photographers including Ma n Ray. Forthcoming events at the gallery include PH4, the 4th photographic biennale “des images du monde” (“images of the world”).
Though works of tribal art are considerably less prominent than other genres at auction, auction houses Bonhams, Christie’s and Sotheby’s each have dedicated departments to the genre. Sales of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian Art are held twice annually at Bonhams, featuring “unique and traditional works from sub-Saharan Africa, Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Indonesia and Australia” created in the 20th century, as well as works from Central and South America created prior to European contact in the 16th century. The next auction of tribal art by Bonhams is to be held at the New York sales room on 14 November 2013.
Christie’s offers two annual sales in the African & Oceanic Art category, featuring important sculptures, artefacts, ceremonial clubs and shields, and costumes sourced from countries across the globe. Each sale takes place in Paris, with the next sale scheduled to take place on 10 December 2013. Sotheby’s has a number of departments dedicated to the genre, and – like Christie’s – holds two annual sales in June and December. Paris’s June sale joined “a highly selective group of 70 items of leading African and Oceanic art”; the strongest result of the sale was achieved by a carved wooden mask, originating from the Côte d’Ivoire, which sold for €781,500, having been estimated at €120,000-180,000. The next sale in the category is to be held at the auction house’s Paris centre on 11 December 2013.
Yet whilst fairs and auctions aim to draw purchases from an international selection of collectors – and frequently seek to promote the artistic value of works by indigenous people – the question of ownership raised by such events is not without controversy. Whilst galleries, museums and academics may have developed their studies beyond the patronising conclusion that tribal art is a ‘primitive’, less developed example of Western works, many of those who purchase or exhibit the genre fail to consider the frequently problematic circumstances in which tribal works came to leave the locations in which they were originally produced.
This problem came to head spectacularly in May 2013, when French lawyer Pierre Servan-Schreiber attempted to halt a Paris-based auction of 70 sacred artefacts, taken from the Hopi people. The lawyer worked with Survival International – a US group which carries out legal proceedings on behalf of tribal and indigenous groups – but failed to prevent the sale; 70 Hopi masks were subsequently sold via Paris auction house Drouot for €900,000. The case saw a direct contradiction in US and French property law: whilst director of Survival International Stephen Corry stated that “The sale of Hopi katsinam would never have happened in the USA – thankfully US law recognizes the importance of these ceremonial objects”, French auctioneer Gilles Neret-Minet responded: “I am also very concerned about the Hopi’s sadness, but you cannot break property law…when objects are in private collections, even in the United States, they are desacralised.̶ 1;
Despite its challenging beginnings, tribal art has become firmly established as a valuable, rich and important genre. Works which were initially dealt at flea markets – having been dismissed as ‘primitive’ – now hold a significant place in some of the world’s most prominent museums and galleries. Extensive academic study, along with the development of post-colonialism, has led to works being considered, not merely for their formal properties – which so inspired the Expressionists, Modernists and Cubists – but as pieces with their own complex history. Yet, whilst auction sales and gallery exhibitions have led to pieces in the genre gaining increasing attention from collectors, events such as the Hopi case are a reminder that European relationships with works from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania can still be complicated. It is important that collectors, dealers and curators develop an understanding of these pieces, which trans cends a basic appreciation of form. Rich rewards await for those who do.
Tribal Art has witnessed a long and complex evolution, with European art history oscillating wildly in its attitude to the genre. Once referred to pejoratively as ‘primitive art’, tribal art has since been recognised for the important influence it had on the works of Expressionist, Surrealist and Cubist artists. Now, the field is recognised as rich and diverse, with museums, galleries and collectors across the globe placing an important focus on the works of indigenous peoples from Africa, North America and Oceania. Artkhade with Art Media Agency examined the platforms which are specialising in the genre today, looking at the presence of Tribal Art in Galleries, Museums, at auction houses and in dealerships.
A Slow Rise to Success
‘Primitive art’ is now recognised as a dismissive term, connoting an outdated Euro-centric attitude which coincided with the height of imperialism, colonialism, and the exploitation of countries by the West. The title connoted the belief that non-Western cultures were somehow less developed; that they were somehow missing the influence of European powers who viewed themselves, unquestioningly, as being antithetically un-primitive. By the beginning of the 20th century, 85% of the world was dominated by a small group of European nations. The Western world had spent several years promoting classical realism as the zenith of artistic production, with works of the period seeking to replicate nature whilst adhering to an idealised notion of beauty. Art from colonised countries did not adhere to this rigid aesthetic; in African countries, representations of the human body were not perceptual but symbolic. Human figures with mask-like faces and stylised limbs challenged the West’s establish conception of beauty, and were often dismissed as mere ‘artefacts’ – more valuable as novelty items than works of art.
From the early 1870s, thousands of African sculptures arrived in Europe following colonial conquests and expeditions. Though the pieces were exhibited at museums in cities including Berlin, Munich, London and Paris, they held so little economic value that they found their way into flea markets and pawnshop windows. Nevertheless, the pieces began to attract the attention of avant-garde artists, who were inspired by art which re-conceptualised existing European notions of the human form. Whilst artworks from Oceania and the Americas attracted the attention of artists, particularly during the 1930s Surrealist movement, the most influential early modernists predominantly centred their interests on the sculpture of sub-Saharan Africa. In Paris, artists from the Paris School, including André Derain and Pablo Picasso – ‘discovered’ African art, with institutions such as the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro and the Musée de l’Homme presenting exhibitions of works taken from the country. These Parisian artists began to merge the highly stylised treatment of African sculpture figures with the post-Impressionist style established by artists such as Cézanne and Gauguin, producing works characterised by a vivid colour palette and a near-flat picture plane. Henri Matisse is thought to have encountered examples of African sculpture at Trocadéro with fellow Fauve painter Maurice de Vlaminck, and visited North Africa in 1906. Pieces such as The Young Sailor (1906) or Green Stripe (1905), visibly suggest the influence of these encounters, featuring abstracted faces boldly set apart from the naturalistic contours of the previous century’s portraits. American writer Gertrude Stein, who was at the heart of artistic and literary activities in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, described Matisse’s purchase of a small African sculpture, made in the Autumn of 1906, in her Autobiography of Alice B. Tolkas (1913). The purchase, Stein recalled, was made with one Pablo Picasso, whose cubist works would later become firmly associated with the tribal works of the continent. From 1907, Picasso regularly visited the Trocadéro’s African collections, later describing the influence of the exhibited works to writers and curators. In 1907, after producing hundreds of preparatory sketches, Picasso created the seminal work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; presenting the female form as fragmentary and geometric, the piece is widely attributed with the birth of cubism, and was of significant influence to subsequent works by other artists of the modernist era. Much like Matisse’s works of the period, the piece displays the influence of African sculptural works, with two of the five women presented in the work bearing a resemblence to the style of masks in the Trocadéro. Other figures display the influence of Picasso’s native Iberia – an influence which was also visible in the artist’s 1906 portrait of Gertrude Stein. In Germany, Expressionist painters such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner – a member of Dresden and Berlin-based group Die Brücke – produced works which merged African aesthetics with clashing colours and figural distortion, producing pieces which sought to act as visible responses to the anxieties of modern life. Interest in non-Western art in the country intensified following an exhibition of works by Gauguin in Dresden. At the same time, modernist artists in Italy, England and the United States began to engage with African art after coming into contact with members of the Paris School. The notion that these works were ‘Primitive’ however, persisted. Though the influence of Africa’s art upon the works of certain modernists is undeniable, it is unclear whether those appropriating stylistic elements of the country’s sculptural works were aware of the more complex spiritual associations which the pieces conveyed. Art criticism of the early 20th century continued to equate works by the indigenous people of colonised countries with a notion of simplicity. Written in 1938, Robert Goldwater’s Primitivism and Modern Art equated non-Western art with art produced by “undeveloped” people, including children. Goldwater sought to defend his opinion, however, by stating that “Primitivism” was a notion adopted by artists who drew from tribal works as part of a broader attempt to diversify their own practice.
Exhibitions of Tribal Art
The mid-20th century saw tribal art established as a valuable artistic genre in its own right. Major museums such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art presented exhibitions such as “Africa Negro Art” (1935) and “Indian Art of the United States” (1941), firmly declaring the artistic significance of once-dismissed tribal works. Western artists continued to draw upon works by African artists, with black philosopher Alain Locke arguing that all African American artists should look to African art as a source of inspiration at the height of the Harlem Renaissance in 1925, prompting an engagement with the genre which continued much later into the century.
Today, a huge number of museums, galleries, publications and art fairs are devoted to work from Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. Major museums devoted to tribal arts – or with significant collections of tribal art – can be found across major art market centres internationally, with a brief selection including: the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin; the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico ‘Luigi Pigorini’, Rome; the Museum Africa, Johannesburg; the Museum der Kulturen, Basel; the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Museum of the American Indian – George Gustav Heye Center, New York; the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington DC; the British Museum, London. A full list of the world’s major collections can be found in the pages of Tribal Art, a publication devoted entirely to current events and developments in the field, released on a quarterly basis. Tribal art has a significantly less prominent place in art fairs, struggling to make an appearance at major events such as the Venice Biennale or Art Basel, where the focus is very much on new contemporary art – though visitors to such events may find contemporary works which, like those produced by the Paris School, are indebted to encounters with tribal art. Nevertheless, a few annual events take place each year: London’s Tribal Perspectives is to take place this year between 2 – 5 October, whilst the 2013 edition of Amsterdam’s Tribal Art Fair (TAF) is to run from 24 to 27 October 2013, bringing together a selection of 19 renowned art dealers. This year’s Frieze Masters, to run between 17 and 20 October, is to feature three prominent tribal art dealers: Donald Ellis from New York, Entwistle from London and Paris, and Galerie Meyer from Paris.
Perhaps the most major fair in the genre, however, is found in Paris. Now in its 12th edition, the “Parcours des Mondes” describes itself as the “Leading international Tribal art fair”. The annual event features participation from around 60 galleries – based both internationally and in Paris itself – “specialising in the arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.” The show prides itself on the quality of the works presented, aiming to appeal to collectors and dealers who are drawn to a market described by organisers as being “very healthy”.
The event emphasises the French capital’s existing commitment to tribal art, with one of the city’s major museums – the Musée du Quai Branly – specialising in art from Africa, the Americas, Oceania, and Asia. Boasting a permanent collection of 5,450 artefacts, the Jean Nouvel-designed building also carries out extensive research, and offers an educational centre and library. The institution is currently hosting an exhibition entitled “Charles Ratton: l’Invention des Arts ‘Primitives’” (“Charles Ratton: The Invention of ‘Primitive’ Art”), featuring over 200 works associated with expert, dealer and collector Charles Ratton. Credited with having changed the way in which “primitive” art was received, Ratton encouraged galleries and collectors to diversify their collections of tribal art, emphasising the genre’s influence on the work of the Surrealists and photographers including Ma n Ray. Forthcoming events at the gallery include PH4, the 4th photographic biennale “des images du monde” (“images of the world”).
Though works of tribal art are considerably less prominent than other genres at auction, auction houses Bonhams, Christie’s and Sotheby’s each have dedicated departments to the genre. Sales of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian Art are held twice annually at Bonhams, featuring “unique and traditional works from sub-Saharan Africa, Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Indonesia and Australia” created in the 20th century, as well as works from Central and South America created prior to European contact in the 16th century. The next auction of tribal art by Bonhams is to be held at the New York sales room on 14 November 2013.
Christie’s offers two annual sales in the African & Oceanic Art category, featuring important sculptures, artefacts, ceremonial clubs and shields, and costumes sourced from countries across the globe. Each sale takes place in Paris, with the next sale scheduled to take place on 10 December 2013. Sotheby’s has a number of departments dedicated to the genre, and – like Christie’s – holds two annual sales in June and December. Paris’s June sale joined “a highly selective group of 70 items of leading African and Oceanic art”; the strongest result of the sale was achieved by a carved wooden mask, originating from the Côte d’Ivoire, which sold for €781,500, having been estimated at €120,000-180,000. The next sale in the category is to be held at the auction house’s Paris centre on 11 December 2013.
Yet whilst fairs and auctions aim to draw purchases from an international selection of collectors – and frequently seek to promote the artistic value of works by indigenous people – the question of ownership raised by such events is not without controversy. Whilst galleries, museums and academics may have developed their studies beyond the patronising conclusion that tribal art is a ‘primitive’, less developed example of Western works, many of those who purchase or exhibit the genre fail to consider the frequently problematic circumstances in which tribal works came to leave the locations in which they were originally produced.
This problem came to head spectacularly in May 2013, when French lawyer Pierre Servan-Schreiber attempted to halt a Paris-based auction of 70 sacred artefacts, taken from the Hopi people. The lawyer worked with Survival International – a US group which carries out legal proceedings on behalf of tribal and indigenous groups – but failed to prevent the sale; 70 Hopi masks were subsequently sold via Paris auction house Drouot for €900,000. The case saw a direct contradiction in US and French property law: whilst director of Survival International Stephen Corry stated that “The sale of Hopi katsinam would never have happened in the USA – thankfully US law recognizes the importance of these ceremonial objects”, French auctioneer Gilles Neret-Minet responded: “I am also very concerned about the Hopi’s sadness, but you cannot break property law…when objects are in private collections, even in the United States, they are desacralised.̶ 1;
Despite its challenging beginnings, tribal art has become firmly established as a valuable, rich and important genre. Works which were initially dealt at flea markets – having been dismissed as ‘primitive’ – now hold a significant place in some of the world’s most prominent museums and galleries. Extensive academic study, along with the development of post-colonialism, has led to works being considered, not merely for their formal properties – which so inspired the Expressionists, Modernists and Cubists – but as pieces with their own complex history. Yet, whilst auction sales and gallery exhibitions have led to pieces in the genre gaining increasing attention from collectors, events such as the Hopi case are a reminder that European relationships with works from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania can still be complicated. It is important that collectors, dealers and curators develop an understanding of these pieces, which trans cends a basic appreciation of form. Rich rewards await for those who do.
Tags: Aboriginal Art, Asian Art, Pre-Columbian Art, Oceanic Art, African Art, Art Market, Event, Fairs & Shows
