Art, Ethnography and the Life of Objects

In the 1920s and 1930s, anthropology and ethnography provided new and striking ways of rethinking what art could be and the forms which it could take. This book examines the impact of these emergent disciplines on the artistic avant-garde in Paris. The reception by European artists of objects arriving from colonial territories in the first half of the twentieth century is generally understood through the artistic appropriation of the forms of African or Oceanic sculpture. The author reveals how anthropological approaches to this intriguing material began to affect the ways in which artists, theorists, critics, and curators thought about three-dimensional objects and their changing status as "art," "artefacts," or "ethnographic evidence." This book analyzes texts, photographs, and art works that cross disciplinary boundaries, through case studies including the Dakar to Djibouti expedition of 1931-33, the Trocadero Ethnographic Museum, and the two art periodicals Documents and Minotaure. Through its interdisciplinary and contextual approach, it provides an important corrective to histories of modern art and the European avant-garde.

Julia Kelly is Lecturer in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester.