How the World Stole the Idea of Modern Art

Elaine O’Brien, California State University, Sacramento

1985 2012

Catalog cover for the 1984 exhibition, Primitivism in 20th Century Modern Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, showing a Kwakiutl mask (Unknown artist, ca. 1880) and Pablo Picasso’s modernist Girl before a Mirror (detail), 1932

African, Oceanic, and global indigenist art was a primary source for modern art’s radical new visual language.

Paul Gauguin, Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, oil on canvas, 1888

Paul Gauguin appropriated Japanese perspective, composition, and figurative invention. His signature use of outline was essentially authorized by Japanese art.

Hokusai, Sumo Wrestlersfrom the Hokusai Manga vol. III, 1815, color Woodblock, 7 x 4.5”

(left) Ando Hiroshige, Kameido Ume (Japanese apricot) Garden, woodcut, ink on paper, 1857, from the series, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

(right) Vincent Van Gogh, Plum Tree in Bloom (after Hiroshige), oil on canvas,1887

Transformative influence of African tribal sculpture Picasso’s epiphany in June 1907 at the ethnographic museum in Paris

Braque: “It is as if someone had drunk kerosene to spit fire."

“My first exorcism painting….

For me the masks were not just sculptures. They were magical objects...intercessors...against everything - against unknown threatening spirits....They were weapons . . . to keep people from being ruled by spirits. To help them free themselves. . . . If we give a form to these spirits we become free."

Tokyo

(left, above) Unknown, Portrait of Perry, a North American, woodblock print, ca. 1854(right) Mathew Brady, Commodore Matthew Perry, daguerreotype, c. 1856 (below) Gountei Sadahide, Complete Picture of The Newly Opened Port of Yokohama, woodblock, 1863, c. 27 x 75“ (69 x 190 cm)

In 1854 Commodore Perry of the US Navy forced Japan open to trade with the United States

Yoshikazu, Picture of Foreigners Enjoying a Banquet, December 1860, Yokohama, color woodblock

Children dance at the May Festival Ball given in honor of the Japanese ambassadors

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, June 6, 1860

The Emperor Meiji, 1873, albumen silver printDuring the Meiji era (1868-1912) Japan modernized rapidly

and rose to world power status equivalent to Western nations.

Western military dress and photography signify modernity.

For the best artistic minds, Paris alone has the right feel, the proper atmosphere. Iwamura ToruThe Art Students of Paris, 1902

Academic studies by Japanese artists sent to study in Paris: (left) Kuroda Seiki,1889; (right) Kume Keiichiro, 1887. The nude was the foundation subject for academic students of Western art from all over the world.

Academic study by Henri Matisse, 1892

(left) Asai Chu (Japanese, 1856-1907), Fields in Spring , oil on canvas, 1888(right) Camille Pissarro (Caribbean-born French, ca.1830-1903) Gleaners, oil on canvas,1889

Tokyo-Paris Parallel Modernisms

(left) Yorozu Tetsugoro, Self Portrait with Red Eyes, oil on canvas, 1912 – Expressionist / Cubist / Futurist

(right) Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German Expressionist, 1880-1938), Self Portrait with Model, oil on canvas, 1910

São Paulo

Cover of exhibition catalogue for the Week of Modern Art, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1922, held during the celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of independence from Portugal.

(left) Tarsila do Amaral (Brazilian painter, 1886-1973), Self-Portrait, oil on paper, 15 in. H, 1924(right) Tarsila do Amaral, 1922, Portrait of Oswald de Andrade (Brazilian poet and Tarsila’s partner, 1890-1954), author of the Pau-Brazil manifesto (1924) and the Anthropophagite manifesto (1928): assertions of Brazilianness against Eurocentric modernism

(left) Tarsila do Amaral, Central Railway of Brazil, 1924, oil, 56 in. H, Sâo Paulo, A Pau Brazil landscape(right) Fernand Léger (French Cubist, 1881-1955) The City, 1919

(left) Tarsila do Amaral, An Angler, c. 1925(right) Carnival in Madureira, 1924, oil on canvas, 30 in. H

Post-Cubist Pau-Brazil paintings inspired by 1924 travels in rural Brazil with Oswald de Andrade and French poet, Blaise Cendrars

Palette signifies “Brazil” versus “Europe”: “…colors I had adored as a child. I was later taught they were ugly and unsophisticated.”

Tarsila do Amaral, Abaporu (“Man who eats” in Tupi-Guarani), 1928, oil, 33½”(84 cm) high. Inspired Andrade’s “Anthropophagite Manifesto” in which cannibalism becomes the metaphor for Brazil’s transformation of European culture.

“Only anthropophagy unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically. The world's only law. The masked expression of all individualisms, of all collectivisms. Of all religions. Of all peace treaties.

Oswald de Andrade, 1928 Anthropophagite Manifesto

Lagos

(left) Aina Onabolu (Nigerian, 1882-1963), Portrait of a Lawyer, oil, c. 1910

(right) Egungun Mask, Yoruba people, Nigeria, late 19th/early 20th century Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, icon of avant-garde painting

Shrine head, Yoruba. Ife, Nigeria. 12th-14th c., terracotta, 12 x 7 in. (31.1 x 18.4 cm). Minneapolis MA

(left) Aina Onabolu, Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?), oil on canvas, 1954(right) Onabolu, Nude Study, drawing, 1920(?)

(left) Uche Okeke, Ana Mmuo (Land of the Spirits), 1961, oil on board, 36 x 48”, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution

(right) Some members of the Zaria Art Society, Nigeria, 1960. Left to right: Bruce Onobrakpeya, S.O.Okeke, Uche Okeke (cut off); 2nd row Odechukwu Odita, Demas Nwoko and Oseloka Osabede

“Art, like language, lives by appropriation and assimilation. Why then should this self-evidence be made a western monopoly, while we, the Others, when we take up, learn and appropriate are stamped as imitators and parrots?”

Everlyn Nicodemus “The Centre of Otherness”