History of Art and Anthropology of Art

Abstract

In April 2000, the French president opened a permanent exhibition of primitive art in the Mus?e du Louvre in Paris. Jacques Chirac directly sponsored this exhibition, entrusting a collector and dealer (who was neither an art historian nor an anthropologist) with the task of organizing the entire show. Out of the 150 sculptures from Africa, Oceania, Asia, and the Americas, many were coming from the Mus?e de l'Homme and the Mus?e des Arts Africains et Oc?aniens, others were bought on purpose, and a few more lent by their country of origin. Most of the objects can be labeled as tribal art with the exception of a few archaeological pieces from Africa (If, Nook) and a much larger representation of pre-Columbian, mostly Mesoamerican, art. The media and the public were very pleased with the presentation; the vast rooms had been entirely remodeled including the ceiling and windows; every sculpture but the smallest had its own showcase, accentuating the impression of its uniqueness and absence of context; much space was allowed so viewers could freely turn around in order to have the best look at the objects. Critics and visitors were above all delighted at the thought that primitive art, for a long time neglected if not despised, had received the supreme recognition and consecration by being welcomed under the same roof as Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. A few discordant voices were heard, however, in the French anthropological community, which claimed that this politically correct discourse could not hide the ethnocentrism prevalent in this operation; to anthropologists, the exhibition appeared as a spectacular illustration of the appropriation of non-Western art by Westerners because the objects displayed were only those that Westerners had accepted as belonging to their category art.1 The interest in Primitive art demonstrated by the artistic European avant-garde in the first decades of the twentieth century was presented as a guarantee for this operation, and illustrated in the exhibition by objects that had belonged to prestigious artists such as Max Ernst or Andr? Breton. From the perspective of the producing cultures, the display of objects so diverse in origin could only appear as arbitrary and lacking in coherence. Under the label Sculptures (thus was the title of the catalogue) were presented, among other things, a sapi transverse horn, a baule mice cage for divination, a zulu spoon, a magic stone for obtaining castrated pigs from Vanuatu, a ta?no ceremonial ax, a stool from the same culture, a Teotihuacan mask, and so on. The objects had been selected on the basis of their aesthetic appeal to the Western eye and their authentic?that is, untainted by Western intervention?character. In spite of the information dispensed in the catalogue and accompanying CD-ROM, the visitor left the exhibition without any knowledge of the makers and users of these objects. Thus to many anthropologists, who formerly did not seem to be concerned by these problems, the triumphant entry of primitive art to the Louvre was an opportunity to question the concepts of masterpiece and authenticity in non-Western art, to wonder about the virtues and the sins of collecting and displaying primitive art, and to address the ethical question of acquiring and presenting possible stolen or looted objects. I think that very few scholars specializing in pre Columbian art would follow the collectors' and dealers' ethnocentric trail. The aim of both art historians and