Primitive Art

It has been a long time since the first startling wave of African art made its way to Europe and caused a sensation among the ranks of painters and sculptors. Picasso, under the influence of this so-called primitive vision, painted his Demoiselles d' Avignon and learned much from the untutored mystics of the dark continent.

Since then, the primitive idiom has had its effect upon others, many less inspired and less knowing than Picasso. There have been artists who recognized in the forms of these figures, masks and fetishes, a display of rhythms, colors, and impulses universal in nature, and who identified with it and drew from it. But there have been others eager to exploit the primitive motif rather than enrich their work with the deeper currents of primitive expression. Many of these have been commercialists rather than painters qua artist, and they haven't done the real article much good.

Less purely fundamental work has found itself subjected to similar ill-treatment. The composer deBreville wrote of his colleague Chausson: "He had no reason to fear or avoid vulgarity for he knew not what it was." And then the legions of Hollywood score composers came along and bled Franck, Chausson and company for all they were worth. It takes a pure mind not to find traces of "movie-music" in Chausson. But Chausson is not responsible for what happened; nor are the worshippers of the African jungles or of Oceania responsible for what became of their religious expression. And the tribute to each is that each has survived.

The selection of Primitive Art now at the Museum of Fine Arts is an especially fine one. The pieces represented span the work of North American Indians to the splendid cultures of the southern continent, from the gods of Africa to the fetishes of Oceania.

They are all, in every sense, fundamental: in the direct mysticism of their spiritual vision, in their equally mystical approach to nature, in the intuitive spontaneity of their form. Their religion and their form are one. They make aesthetic theory superfluous, and their natural intimacy with the forces of life make our fiddling with eroticism in art trivial. In short, the works leave one with the question, What might sophistication be if this is primitive?

Not the least remarkable feature of these objects is their unconscious subtlety. It is perfectly possible to wander about picking out Henry Moores and Brancousis and Klees, though this is beside the point and the savages almost invariably do it better anyway.