L’art colonial, entre orientalisme et art primitif. Recherche d’une définition

Abstract

Colonial art between orientalism and primitive art : in search of a definition. The notion of colonial art, common at the beginning of the 20th century, is not a well integrated field in the history of art ; to make it less disturbing, it is sometimes reduced to the production of travelling artists ; however, a broader definition would enrich an approach of miscellaneous artefacts by bringing it closer to history and anthropology, whose analysis only too often makes a point of denouncing ideology and ethnocentrism. Born from the 19th century orientalism, the notion came to associate primitive and native arts controlled by settlers with the usual production of modern exoticism, two forms of art which tend to make one. But, just as Angkor or Moroccan crafts, would not it be better to annex primitivism, as a form of colonial art, to the field of French art ? Isn’t it time to acknowledge that this hateful colonialism could give birth to masterpieces, such as Jannot’s low relief at the Musée des Colonies in the 1931 Exhibition ? One has to face the difficulties and delve into a knowledge of these productions, whether academic or avant-garde, of the ordering institutions and of artists, of their iconographic and ethnologic themes.