On: The Relationship between Modernism and the ‘Cult’ of Primitivism

Some notes towards a potential longer essay on the subject — a few starters here around appropriation, connection, influence and awareness.

In Modernism, many artists, composers and writers had a fascination with “primitivism”. It was a chance to get ‘back’ to a ‘pure’ human expression and connection to cultures that sat outside of the the westernised, industrialised, mechanical world that was the modern society of the time. Nowadays, we talk instantly, of “appropriation”. Joni Mitchell in blackface on the cover of her 1977 album, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, was an attempt to slip into a character. The new version of the album cover now has that image removed. It’s possible to link this idea of Mitchell’s back to Gaugin’s paintings of Tahitians.

Gaugin sought inspiration in Tahiti, a way of escaping the industrial life, his goal was to find a spiritual purity, but he famously projected his own ideas onto the culture he sought to represent in his paintings, being outside of it. He depicted “noble savages” and was criticised for it. It’s important to note that Mitchell is a painter as well as musician and poet, and Gauguin, along with Matisse and Van Gogh are her biggest artistic influences. So the parallel of her parading a caricature of herself in drag as a black man links directly to Gaugin’s painted images. It is a type of objectification that lacks self-awareness. Both Mitchell and Gaugin were seeking to parade about their devotion to a subject, suggesting they drew enormous influence from it — Mitchell embracing the ‘coolness’ of black culture which was there in her music, but it was not her right to parade it about in an actual depiction; Gaugin to use the colour and shape of the island to, erm, ‘shape’ and ‘colour’ his new works. But he projected his own fantasies onto those images without any deep understanding of the culture he was depicting; therefore running close to lampooning the spirituality of the place, even if it was his earnest errand to celebrate it.

Original album cover left, new 2024 reissue right

Writers in the Modernist movement made similar mistakes. Perhaps particularly the poets. The aim, again, being to sit outside and away from purely western influence. But there were obvious examples where it makes sense — such as Langston Hughes, in The Negro Speaks of Rivers, tracing the African American lineage back to their African ancestors, and how the cultures have water in their lives as the parallel source. Hughes, being black, had the ‘right’ to explore this. But what ‘right’ did Ezra Pound have to work in Chinese translations of poetry? Yes, he brought something to the form of poetry through this, but it was through no direct knowledge or ancestry of his own. He did not speak the language and was not immersed in the culture, simply relying on translations from someone else. Cathay is admired for its pared-back style, but where is Pound’s ‘license for authorship’ here? And this, ultimately, is the issue with the cult of primitivism and its relationship to Modernism.

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is one of the towering examples of modernist music, taking unconventional rhythms as an approach to consciously break from the romanticism that was the dominant structure. Its early performances — a big ballet, taking its subject from ancient Russian (peasantry) and with shocking choreography – all but caused a riot. There is something very complicated here, in the way that we now look at western artists taking from cultures (appropriation) but don’t look at how the primitive cultures adopted ideas from their colonisers and integrated that into their own art, whether stylistically (North African music benefiting from the introduction of the electric guitar via Europe) or via delivery models (African-derived blues music recorded by archivists and released via record labels). It is very easy to claim appropriation, and in the example of blues, the waters are definitely muddied, since there was commercial gain for white westerners (label owners, the recording industry, managers) but there are examples of the primitive cultures benefiting from some of the western influence, it is not merely the western practitioners of the arts that ‘stole’ or learned from primitivism. This paradox remains at the heart of modernism’s enduring conflicts.

We should remember that the goal here, by modernists, was to return to the roots of an experience — the issue though was that the experience was not necessarily something they personally had ‘roots’ to attach to, they merely grafted themselves to the idea or ethos for their benefit, a chance to broaden their experiential canvas. In this sense we are still very much grappling with modernism’s hopeful aim to engage with the cult of primitivism and seek influence from it. We have come to view the relationship as one-sided, in apology we focus on the appropriation aspect, but there was a dialogue happening. The jazz musicians that explored their African heritage in a way that Hughes did in his writing (Max Roach, Art Blakey, Duke Ellington) were able to give back to a culture that had created the art form they worked in. But that of course is different to Joni Mitchell putting on male clothing, cutting her hair, painting her face black, and adopting the persona of a jive-hipster black male, in suggestion that such a character was formative to her musical expression.