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A Modern Look at Primitive Art

History of Art (by Elie Faure)
The Beginnings of Art (by Grosse, Ernst)
The origins of art; a psychological & so... (by Hirn, Yrjö)
Primitive Art in Egypt (by Capart, Jean)

"The dust of bones, primitive weapons, coal, and buried wood—the old human as well as solar energy—come down to us tangled like roots in the fermentation of the dampness under the earth." So begins Elie Faure's epic five-part translation of the History of Art from ancient times to the early 20th century.

Some of the first impressions of mankind come to us now through dark reflections in a mirror: markings etched into the walls of a dark cave. The pale attempts at language through symbols of animals, mankind, and the process of the hunt convey the fear of a vast wilderness and the beasts that inhabit it, with mankind as just one among the many shaded lifeforms and the night sky lit with strange holes of light and an ever-changing moon shape. These first scratchings were both the ends and the means of primitive arts, almost as straightforward as a hand moves to feed the mouth.

Much more than a historical rendering of art, Faure’s decipherings are a work of art and include an introduction about the importance and utility of art that can make any artist leap in ecstasy. His first book in the series doesn’t simply transport us back into the time of our primitive ancestors, nor does lay out facts of the past to do with what we will. Faure's work creates a harmony of past to present that aims to reveal the immortal bonds of creation and human spirit.

The discomfiture which we experience on seeing our most ancient bones and implements mingled with a soil full of tiny roots and insects has something of the religious in it. It teaches us that our effort to extricate the rudimentary elements of a social harmony from animalism surpasses, in essential power, all our subsequent efforts to realizes in the mind a superior harmony which, moreover, we shall not attain. (History of Art, p. 5)

In speaking of art through historical refraction, the works become an in-depth discussion of what art is and how its essence can never change. In understanding primitive art with little social structure to surround it, one sees the naked act of creating as a humanizing act. Faure was one of the first to put into words disdain of the the money, publicity, and overall elitism of much of the art that we see today:

The gesture of a hungry man who stretches out his hand, the words that a woman murmurs in the ear of the passer-by on some enervating evening, and the most infinitesimal human gesture have a much more important place in the history of art itself than the hundred thousand canvases in question, and the associations of interest which try to impose them on the public. (History of Art, p. xlii)

For more inquiries into primitive art and art origins, check out The Beginnings of Art by Grosse Ernst, The Origins of Art: A Psychological, Sociological Inquiry by Hirn Yrjo, and Primitive Art in Egypt by Jean Capart.