Contemporaneity of the Primitive and the Primitivity of the Contemporary

Abstract

The article examines the contemporary actualization of the »primitive« within a historical horizon in which the various institutes for racial research were founded all around Europe. The contemporaneity of the »primitive« was accompanied by mounting political tension, which reached ist peak during the Nazi regime. The author points out that the art, Nazis labeled degenerate, was not being denounced that way because it had allegedly spoiled and corrupted the virtues of the German people, but due to the fact that from the avand-garde perspective the whole Nazi ideology necessary turns out as dishonest, if not »degenerate«. The sympathetic response to »primitive art« become a reliable confirmation of a special affinity with pro-Western and liberal values. The second part of the paper uncovers the paradox of the new primitivism. Bearing in mind strictly artistic criteria, with respect to its contemporary hermeneutical milieu, the picture of new primitivism would have totally different lighting. The conclusion shows how the strategy of the avant-garde usage of the »primitive« objects fits perfectly into typically European tradition of the appropriation and adoption.