4A: Primitivist Fantasies: Art and the German Colonies
- Sabine Wilke, “Romantic Images of Africa: Paradigms of German Colonial Paintings,” German Studies Review, 29.2 (May 2006): 285 – 298.
- Key Themes
- For the average German, all encounters with Africa were mediated by images (including the "image" of the "primitive" performed live at human zoos);
- Artworks with human subjects were made to seem uncivilized;
- The landscapes and animals were made to seem pristine;
- Colonial paintings maintained a German Romanticist fantasy, both for the viewers and for the artist, himself;
- Post-WWI paintings of colonies became nostalgic.
- Key Themes
- Andrew Zimmerman, “Primitive Art, Primitive Accumulation, and the Origin of the Work of Art in German New Guinea,” History of the Present, 1.1 (Summer 2011): 5 – 30.
- Key Themes
- Artists like Emil Nolde believed that experiencing “primitive” art at museums and, even better, in contact with “primitive” cultures in the colonies was imperative to the creative and spiritual process;
- Belief that colonized had their own original culture was leveraged both as a reason to colonize (civilize / exploit), but also to preserve their culture as a part of history;
- Both Nolde and the colonizers treated humans (and their labor) as raw material (“primitive accumulation”: the haves and have nots).
- Key Themes