Publisher's Note

Preface to the Revised Edition

Introduction

PART I: PRIMITIVE ART IN EUROPE

1. The Accessibility of the Material
The foundation of museums of ethnology
Their change from "documentary" to "aesthetic" installation

2. The Evaluation of the Art of Primitive Peoples
A historical account and analysis of the attitude of anthropological and ethnological writers toward primitive art: The beginnings of their interest and the growth of the realization of artistic value

PART II: THE PREPARATION
The use of exotic stimuli other than the primitive
Latent primitivism in historicism and exoticism
Primitivizing elements in art nouveau

PART III: ROMANTIC PRIMITIVISM

1. Gauguin and the School of Pont-Aven
Direct contact with primitive peoples, and reaction against civilization
Copying of Marquesan art motives
Confusion of the naïve and the primitive
Identification of primitive and European beginnings
Simplification of formal means
Symbolic theories

2. The Primitivism of the Fauves
The "discovery" of African sculpture
Its actual influence
Admiration for popular and children's art
Interest in physical harmony with nature
Simplification and violence of formal methods

PART IV: EMOTIONAL PRIMITIVISM

1. The Brücke
The "discovery" of Oceanic and African art
Its influence and that of medieval art
"Natural" and exotic subject matter; union of man and nature
Emphasis on violent and basic emotions
Simplifications of technique
Emotional and formal immediacy

2. The Primitivism of the Blaue Reiter
Influence of medieval, oriental, primitive, and folk art
Exotic, wild, and provincial subject matter
Formal schematizations and symbolism
Symbolic animism

PART V: INTELLECTUAL PRIMITIVISM

1. The Direct Influence of Primitive Sculpture
Influence on the painting of Picasso
Formal and emotional reasons for this influence
Differences from the primitive in form and content

2. Primitivist Tendencies in Abstract Painting
The search for "basic" forms
The expansion of these forms and the search for "basic" subject matter
Reduction of painting to a lowest common denominator
Similar primitivist elements in cubism, purism, constructivism

VI: THE PRIMITIVISM OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS

1. The Modern Primitives
Contrast of their technique and their vision
Contrast of their achievement and their appreciation
Their relation to primitive art
Similar reasons for their vogue

2. The Child Cult
Its best exemplification the art of Klee
Derivation of form and generalized content
Equation of private and universal meanings
Obliqueness of formal effect
Miró and Dubuffet

3. Dada and Surrealism
Partial origins in automatic, child, and psychopathic art
The search for compelling, pervasive subject matter
Confusion of romantic and primitivist elements

PART VII: PRIMITIVISM IN MODERN SCULPTURE

PART VIII: A DEFINITION OF PRIMITIVISM
The method and intent of a discursive definition
The unifying assumption of primitivism
The development of emotional primitivism
The triple expansion of intellectual primitivism
The endemizing direction of primitivism
Its relation to archaism and romanticism
Indication of its causes

PART IX: JUDGMENTS OF PRIMITIVE ART, 1905-1965

PART X: ART HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY: SOME COMPARISONS OF METHODOLOGY

Appendix: Summary Chronology of Ethnographical Museums and Exhibitions

The Publications of Robert Goldwater (1907-1973)

Index