Reinventing the savage
RIS ID
76494
Abstract
What would be the point of swapping Picasso’ssmallwooden relief StillLife (1914) in the TateModernwith one of the contemporaneous Kikuyu dance shields hanging in the large glass case in the British Museum’s African room? For one thing it would prove that architecture is the mother art. The implications are profound. Consider the light airy and jazzy Centre Georges Pompidou and the dark enclosed Muse´e du quai Branly. Imagine if they exchanged their whole art collections. Which art – the European or the Indigenous – would be modern, and which savage?
Publication Details
McLean, I. A. (2012). Reinventing the savage. Third Text: third world perspectives on contemporary art and culture, 26 (5), 599-613.