The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

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Postimpressionism

134 CHAPTER 31 The Move Toward Modernism

134 Book5

“primitive,” implying simplicity and lack of sophis-

tication. The French word “primitif” carried as well

a positive charge, implying a closeness to nature

exalted by those who decried the damaging effects

of proto-modern industrialized society.

Contributing to the European infatuation with

non-Western culture was the Exposition Universelle

(World’s Fair) held in Paris in 1889, which brought to

public view the arts of Asia, Africa, and Oceania.

Reconstructions of villages from the Congo and Senegal,

Japan and China, Polynesia and other South Sea islands

introduced the non-Western world to astonished Europeans.

Non-Western societies and their artistic achievements

quickly became objects of research for the new disciplines

of anthropology (the science of humankind and its culture)

and ethnography (the branch of anthropology that studies

preliterate peoples or groups). In 1890, the Scottish

anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854–1941) published

The Golden Bough, a pioneer study of magic and religion

as reflected in ancient and traditional folk customs.

Collections of non-Western art filled the galleries of

ethnographic museums, such as the American Museum of

Natural History, which opened in New York in 1869, and

the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadero in Paris, founded

in 1878. Tragically, however, it was often the case that

even as these cultures were coming to be valued and their

art collected and installed in Western museums, their bril-

liance and originality began to wane. The French painter

Paul Gauguin, who recorded his impressions of Tahiti in

his romanticized journal Noa Noa(Fragrance), lamented:

The European invasion and monotheism have

destroyed the vestiges of a civilization which had its

own grandeur.... [The Tahitians] had been richly

endowed with an instinctive feeling for the harmony

necessary between human creations and the animal

and plant life that formed the setting and decoration

of their existence, but this has now been lost. In

contact with us, with our school, they have truly

become “savages”...

Gauguin objected to colonial efforts to impose French

legal and economic policies on the Tahitians; he con-

demned the eradication of local religious beliefs by

Catholic and Protestant missionaries. The appeal of “the

primitive” among late nineteenth-century figures such as

Gauguin reflected a more than casual interest in the world

beyond the West. It provoked protests against what

Gauguin called the “reign of terror” imposed by the West

upon native non-Western populations. It also constituted

a rebellion against Western values and societal taboos—a

rebellion that would become full-blown in the primitivism

of early modern art.

The art that followed the last of the Impressionist group

shows in 1886 is generally designated as “Postimpressionist.”

Seeking a style that transcended the fleeting, momentary

Figure 31.26 GANHU HUNTONDJI

(attributed), The war god Gu,

nineteenth century. Brass and

wood, height 41^1 ⁄ 2 in.

to cultural traditions that differed sharply from those of the

West. What often emerged was an oversimplified (and

often distorted) understanding of the differences between

and among a multitude of cultures, some of which were

perceived as exotic, violent, and fundamentally inferior.

Many Westerners characterized indigenous peoples as

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