“PRIMITIVE ART”?— PUH-LEEEZ!
Unfashionable Opinion from Dean Christopher
“When I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my revolver,” is a quip often incorrectly attributed to that witty wag Joseph Goebbels. It is history’s only known Nazi punch line. I can only suppose that he must have been thinking about primitive culture when he said that.
After all, primitive culture—particularly primitive “art”—is simply too awful to be taken seriously, even by non-Nazis.
Yet millions of people are regularly hoodwinked by primitive gobbledygook. They read about it. They discuss it. They buy it. They even hang it on their own walls, where people who know them can see it!
There’s altogether too much of this “primitive art” around, masquerading as real art. It’s time to fight back. Here I intend to strike a blow for artistic integrity with a realistic reflection upon the pathetic emptiness of “primitive art”—despite the shrill protestations sure to come from its Politically Correct fans.
By Their Fruits Shall Ye Know Them
Primitive peoples still exist on Earth. Indeed there are far more backward societies than even anthropologists may wish to admit. But there’s no such thing as a primitive civilization; that’s a contradiction in terms. Undeveloped people may have tribal groupings or even rudimentary societies, never civilizations.
That’s because a “civilization” is by definition an evolved society that has developed an urbanized life with civic services such as sanitation, health care and education. A civilization is literate, with widespread knowledge of science, technology, statecraft and indoor plumbing. It has architecture, agriculture and dry cleaning. Civilized people use credit cards, room service and fax machines. They fly in airplanes and know how to parallel park. A civilization has a rich intellectual life and the ongoing group awareness we call “recorded history.” Most germane to this essay, civilizations produce highly refined arts. Any society lacking the abovementioned attributes—especially the arts—is not a “civilization.” It’s just a bunch of folks.
Primitive people have only a sketchy grasp of abstractions, and little ability to convert abstractions into anything useful. So they remain becalmed among their roots and berries, their backwoods mutilation rituals, their gawking masks and fearsome mud-gods. The poor creatures slumber on in ignorance and superstition. They live in poverty and illness, swallowed up by flies and by fear; helpless pawns of blind circumstance. They are incapable of improving their lives because they don’t have the physical, mental or social tools necessary for advancing into civilization. They live in an endless summer camp for underachievers.
Art…Or Stuff?
Because they are not civilized, primitive people do not make art, they make stuff. They don’t have the understanding or the skills required to create real art. Perhaps they feel the urge to express themselves. But express what? What on earth do savages have to express that could possibly interest anyone but another savage? The content of our expression is what we know and feel. What do primitives know and feel? Ignorance, fear, helplessness and the need to go potty. That’s what primitives have to express. And because they themselves are so unformed and so uninformed, their “self-expression” inevitably emerges as clunky statues, misshapen mud things, grotesque masks or monotonous chants and log-whacking. Primitive culture isn’t in fact “culture” at all—it’s only behavior.
Any civilized person who is not taste-impaired or in denial will recognize primitives’ diddlings for what they are: Primoridal attempts at art. Repeat, attempts. But they are not art any more than lobbing yak poo at a bird’s nest is NBA-level basketball.
Still, some civilized people actually claim to like this gack! Of course most of them are simply lying. Their fondness for “primitive art” isn’t based on artistic criteria; it’s a political statement. It’s wishful thinking at its most dishonest: they so desperately want savages to be better than they really are, that they are willing to pretend that the savages’ art is better than it really is! These warmhearted fellows claim to believe that anything created by any person (no matter how unskillful) is “art.” Thus the merest stone age construct or artifact—simply because it resulted from human effort—is a cultural achievement to rival Beethoven’s Eroica, Van Gogh’s Starry Night or Chartres Cathedral.
To them I say, poppycock! I say it louder, and in boldface, poppycock! The spewings and doings of brutes, no matter how sincerely they may reflect primitive terror, confusion or fertility fun, are not “art” or “literature” or “music” any more than the barking of hyenas or the ribbiting of tree frogs are sonnets or sonatas. They are silly, incompetent trifles that ought to evoke honest pity, perhaps even derision, but certainly not praise.
Real Art Isn’t Easy
The queer notion that any self-expression is art; that artistic genius resides in every human is simply dead wrong. Fine art is a great miracle, achieved only rarely and with great difficulty. Some artists are more sensitive, more imaginative, better educated, harder working and more skillful than others; therefore some art is better than other art. Civilized art is better than primitive art because civilization provides a better cultural environment for creating fine art than does the rainforest.
Few would deny the “natural human impulse” to make art. But when fine art results from that “natural human impulse,” it is in fact the very opposite of “natural.” There is nothing automatic about art. Art is the deliberate, intelligent reworking of reality. Art is artifice, designed to add to and thereby surpass ordinary reality. It improves upon the natural to create something timeless and emblematic. Art defies death by overcoming the merely natural; it connects all humankind by tapping into subtle essences underlying apparent differences. Thus it bridges the centuries. “Primitive art” is lucky to bridge the next shrub.
Cultural Denial Is Still Denial
Still, primitivophiliacs pay big bucks for homely statues or clumsy clay pots that might fetch mild praise for an eager pre-schooler. Sophisticated urbanites who really ought to know better ooh-and-aah over root-mash splashed on hemp; over low-fidelity wire-recordings of savannah grunting; over bad indigenous weaving badly dyed. “It’s so deliciously…primitive!” they gush, spreading more pesto brie onto their stone ground multi-grain crackers.
Here’s a simple reality check for “primitive art” buyers: would they demand a refund if, through some mixup, their “primitive masterwork from India” turned out instead to be the work of a 7-year-old from Indiana? If so, then their decision to buy the piece was political, maybe even financial—but certainly not an artistic decision. Otherwise they’d keep it and still consider their money well spent.
Relativism has no place in art. There’s a limit to how much we can “grade on a curve.” The unadorned fact is that in the real world some things—including art—are better than other things. The more we educate our taste, the less easily we can be fooled. Civilized people learn to distinguish the authentic from the counterfeit, the superior from the inferior. They ought to be honest enough to admit that “primitive art” is a baby step for people bumbling through social and artistic toddlerhood.
Does this mean that “primitive art” is worthless? Of course not. It is occasionally moving, charming, even instructive—just as a baby’s finger paintings or mud pies can move or amuse indulgent, loving parents. But that does not mean that it should be ranked with the evolved, civilized art born of educated sensibilities working with determination and discipline.
The act of nailing a frame around a canvas splattered with paint does not automatically make it “art,” much less a masterwork. The mere process of recording sounds does not magically convert those sounds into fine music. Finally, no purchase price is extravagant enough to transform clumsy wood hackings into “statues.”
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but if it isn’t in the art as well, we’re just kidding ourselves.
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Copyright © 1998 Dean Christopher
Primitive Art?