Art in Modernism: the Ambivalence of Appropriation

The essay investigates the complex interrelationships between modernism and the anthropological research on "primitive cultures". The systematic study of primitive art and culture has laid the foundation for a critical discussion developed by modernism on the values of the western world, but it has also enhanced the need to renew techniques and forms of expression both in literature and the visual arts. The starting point of a comparative investigation which encompasses anthropology, the visual arts and literature is the discussion of three concepts: "barbarism", "primitivism", and "race". These concepts are examined by establishing a confrontation between the critical perspective adopted in Primitive Art (Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning, Oslo, 1927) by Franz Boas, in Argonauts of the Western Pacific. An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (Newton Compton, 1922) and in Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (John Hawkins & Associates Inc., New York, 1967) by Bronislaw Malinowski on the one hand, and in some novels like Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence, Time and Western Man by W. Lewis, and in Heart of Darkness by J. Conrad.