Primitivism Revisited: After the End of an Idea

Carolee Schneemann's 1975 Interior Scroll hung in the hallway, represented by photographs of the performance and the typed scroll the naked artist extracted from her vagina and then read to her audience. Her work was included to show how, without any knowledge of the work--that is, without the necessary contextualization of art objects--viewers are unable to decipher them. By extension, without any knowledge of African art objects, the objects are inscrutable.

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In "Constructing Culture" Huffra Frobes-Cross and Sarria A. Jass placed contemporary works by El Anatsui, Yinka Shonibare, and KD alongside traditional Xhosa style beadwork and a Lega style fiber hat to question the relevance of categories like "WesternS," "native," "African" and "European" in the construction of culture. This exhibition shared the same space with "Manufacturing Authenticity," curated by Kevin Dumouchelle and Jane W. Innis, which was concerned with the question of authenticity and how the Western desire for "authentic" images of African art is rooted in a primitivist discourse. The curators' statement, "You may not be looking at African Art," challenged the viewer's conception of and expectations about an "authentic Africa." Included were objects made in the Kongo, Makonde, Djenne styles, a Baman style tourist object, a Dogon hermaphrodite figure, and a Zulu style married woman's hat--some of which were exhibited in glass cases on white pedestals.

In "Imagining Another" Maika Pollack and Sara Urist Green interrogated the relationship between Europe and Africa through the concepts of fantasy, desire, and longing. Baule style spirit spouses from Cote d'Ivoire were exhibited with Thomas Ruff's huge blurred photograph of a pornographic nude, an untitled pile of candy by Felix Gonzales-Torres, Elizabeth Peyton's large painting Piotr, of a reclining male figure, and a small John Currin painting, Tropical Hospital, depicting a doctor ogling a nurse with big breasts. While concepts of fantasy and desire are certainly at play in all the works in one form or another, the connections between these disparate works were not immediately clear. Even with the eloquent explanation provided by the wall text the conceptual link was weak in the face of such individually powerful, important, and different works.

Ultimately the exhibitions that comprised "Primitivism Revisited" had as a unifying principle the pairing of contemporary and classical African art objects in new ways. But this approach raises the question: If the traditional pairing of contemporary art and "primitive" art has come to an end after 100 years because contemporary private collections and art institutions, in general, have abandoned the pairing, and because criticism of such ideas and exhibitionary practices have been so severe, then why was this exhibition doing it? If the idea of "primitivism" has indeed come to an end, would not an exhibition of classical African art objects as art in a contemporary art gallery in the heart of Chelsea have been the ultimate celebration?