The Death of Authentic Primitive Art: And Other Tales of Progress

In this lucid, witty, and forceful book, Shelly Errington argues that Primitive Art was invented as a new type of art object at the beginning of the twentieth century but that now, at the century's end, it has died a double but contradictory death. Authenticity and primitivism, both attacked by cultural critics, have died as concepts. At the same time, the penetration of nation-states, the tourist industry, and transnational corporations into regions that formerly produced these artifacts has severely reduced supplies of "primitive art," bringing about a second "death." Errington argues that the construction of the primitive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries must be understood as a product of discourses of progress, from European narratives of technological progress to modernism and the triumph of the free market. She explores how the idea of the primitive is used to promote nationalism and economic development in various public sites in Mexico and Indonesia.