Paris studio (FIG. 35-13). Perhaps responding to the energy of these
two new heads, Picasso also revised their bodies. He broke them into
more ambiguous planes suggesting a combination of views, as if the
observer sees the figures from more than one place in space at once.
The woman seated at the lower right shows these multiple angles most
clearly, seeming to present the viewer simultaneously with a three-
quarter back view from the left, another from the right, and a front
view of the head that suggests seeing the figure frontally as well. Gone is
the traditional concept of an orderly, constructed, and unified pictorial
space that mirrors the world. In its place are the rudimentary begin-
nings of a new representation of the world as a dynamic interplay of
time and space. Clearly,Les Demoiselles d’Avignon represents a dra-
matic departure from the careful presentation of a visual reality. Ex-
plained Picasso: “I paint forms as I think them, not as I see them.”^5920 Chapter 35 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1900 TO 1945M
any scholars have noted that one major source for much of
early-20th-century art is non-Western culture. Many mod-
ernist artists incorporated stylistic elements from the artifacts of
Africa, Oceania, and the native peoples of the Americas—a phenome-
non art historians call primitivism.Some of them, for example, Henri
Matisse and Pablo Picasso (FIG. 35-13), were enthusiastic collectors of
“primitive art,” but all of them could view the numerous non-Western
objects displayed in European and American collections and muse-
ums. During the second half of the 19th century, anthropological and
ethnographic museums began to proliferate. In 1882, the Musée
d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro (now the Musée du quai Branly) in
Paris opened its doors to the public. The Musée Permanent des
Colonies (now the Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie) in
Paris also provided the public with a wide array of objects—weapons,
tools, basketwork, headdresses—from colonial territories, as did the
Musée Africain in Marseilles. In Berlin, the Museum für Völkerkunde
housed close to 10,000 African objects by 1886, when it opened for
public viewing. The Expositions Universelles, regularly scheduled ex-
hibitions in France designed to celebrate industrial progress, included
products from Oceania and Africa after 1851, familiarizing the public
with these cultures. By the beginning of the 20th century, significant
non-Western collections were on view in museums in Liverpool, Glas-
gow, Edinburgh, London, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Vienna, Berlin, Mu-
nich, Leiden, Copenhagen, and Chicago.
The formation of these collections was a by-product of the
rampant colonialism central to the geopolitical dynamics of the 19th
century and much of the 20th century. Most of the Western powers
maintained colonies (MAP35-1). For example, the United States, Hol-
land, and France all kept a colonial presence in the Pacific. Britain,
France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Spain, and Portugal divided up
the African continent. People often perceived these colonial cultures
as “primitive” and referred to many of the non-Western artifacts dis-
played in museums as “artificial curiosities” or “fetish objects.” In-
deed, the exhibition of these objects collected during expeditions to
the colonies served to reinforce the perceived “need” for a colonial
presence in these countries. These objects, which often seemed to
depict strange gods or creatures, bolstered the view that these peo-
ples were “barbarians” who needed to be “civilized” or “saved,” and
this perception thereby justified colonialism—including its mission-
ary dimension—worldwide.
Whether avant-garde artists were aware of the imperialistic im-
plications of their appropriation of non-Western culture is unclear.
Certainly, however, many artists reveled in the energy and freshness
of non-Western images and forms. These different cultural products
provided Western artists with new ways of looking at their own art.
Matisse always maintained he saw African sculptures as simply
“good sculptures... like any other.”* Picasso, in contrast, believed
“the masks weren’t just like any other pieces of sculpture. Not at all.
They were magic things....mediators” between humans and the
forces of evil, and he sought to capture their power as well as their
forms in his paintings. “[In the Trocadéro] I understood why I was a
painter....All alone in that awful museum, with masks, dolls.. .Les
Demoiselles d’Avignon[FIG. 35-12)] must have come to me that
day.”†Further, “primitive” art seemed to embody a directness, close-
ness to nature, and honesty that appealed to modernist artists deter-
mined to reject conventional models. Non-Western art served as an
important revitalizing and energizing force in Western art.
* Jean-Louis Paudrat, “From Africa,” in William Rubin, ed.,“Primitivism” in 20th
Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (New York: Museum of Modern
Art, 1984), 1:141.
†Ibid.Primitivism and Colonialism
ART AND SOCIETY
35-13Frank Gelett Burgess,Pablo Picasso in his studio, Paris,
France, 1908. Collection of the Musée Picasso, Paris.
Picasso was familiar with ancient Iberian art from his homeland and
studied African and other “primitive” art in Paris’s Trocadéro museum.
He kept his own collection of primitive art in his studio.