In art, literature, music, dance, and theater, primitivism denotes the adoption of motifs, subjects, and styles associated with primordial, elementary, fertile, or preindustrial qualities. Throughout the history of art, objects from various cultures have inspired primitivist exploration, including sculptures from Africa, Asia, ancient America, and Oceania, as well as paintings and drawings by children, the mentally ill, or “outsiders.” Primitivism marks the borrowing of forms and artistic expressions from other cultures as a means of renewal of and rebellion against “exhausted” values of mainstream Western civilization. It functions as a cultural corrective, in which the incorporation of primitivist forms and subjects signals renewal and return to some mythic, prehistoric origin of culture.
In the context of the Harlem Renaissance, primitivism signifies a constellation of interconnected ideas, styles, and cultural histories. A multilayered and often contradictory phenomenon, primitivism changes with the movement’s shifting cultural paradigms and inflected perspectives. Like their European and white American counterparts, black American Preer, Evelyn artists and writers perpetuated flawed constructions of a primitive Africa. Yet in addition to this well-aired predicament of primitivism, black artists’ actual African ancestry added layers of meaning. Though generating equally flawed constructions of Africa as a site of otherness, primitivism provided black Americans with an arena in which to probe relationships between blackness and modernity. It fostered the assertion of African American identities in response to the rapid transformation of modern life.
Artists of the Harlem Renaissance were following in the wake of earlier primitivist movements, which had gravitated toward artifacts from Africa and the Pacific Islands. This occurred most notably in early twentieth-century European modernism when artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Maurice Vlaminck turned to African sculpture as a source of artistic inspiration. Its atypical subjects and unfamiliar compositions gave African art the allure of primitive otherness. Artists’ study of works from exotic locales resulted in the incorporation of new formal strategies in modernist art. This process of appropriation was fueled by long-standing European myths of African art as unmediated, instinctive, and uncensored— properties that corresponded with artists’ desire to break away from traditional concepts of creative expression. The problems with modernist approaches to primitivism have been widely addressed. Primitivism failed to address non-European artifacts in their respective cultural environments. Stripped of contextual information about their original use in rituals or everyday activities, African and Oceanic sculptures surfaced in European and American collections around the turn of the twentieth century. African art frequently lacked documentation about its provenance, or rather the circumstances of its looting during the colonial enterprise. Thus African sculptures were lumped together in collections according to formal similarities. Disregard for the aesthetic and social origins of African sculptures allowed Picasso and other modernists to embrace these artworks on a purely formal level. Pursuing stylistic affinities between the primitive and the modern, these artists left a far-reaching legacy that reduced the aesthetic and cultural complexities of African art to purely formal matters for much of the twentieth century.
Alain Locke’s advocacy of a “New Negro” identity in the arts made primitivism a central tenet in Harlem Renaissance culture. Locke encouraged artists to recognize and incorporate an imaginary African heritage, which he positioned at the center of a new black cultural identity. Observing the influence of African art on European modernism, Locke proposed that it should have an even deeper impact on black Americans, whom he viewed as sharing an intrinsic, racial link with the “motherland.” Following Locke’s call for an authentic expression of their African cultural heritage, African American artists and writers modeled their approach to Africa in the same primitivist fashion as European artists. Yet African Americans were— historically and culturally—just as far removed from the original settings of African art as their white American counterparts were. Accordingly, the works of black American artists replicated the same shortcomings as the works of European modernists, for they viewed, and thus defined, African art in purely formalist ways.
Primitivism in African American art and literature gained additional momentum through Locke’s backing of a white patronage system. The Harmon Foundation and philanthropists supported African Americans’ pursuit of seemingly authentic black artistic expressions. Yet instead of encouraging African Americans to transcend aesthetic limitations, patronage restricted black artists to racialized themes based on flawed constructions of Africanness. The paradox of primitivism in the Harlem Renaissance becomes evident in the fact that the most conscious endeavors to embrace African-based identities returned to long-standing stereotypes. Thus the primitivist impulse in the Harlem Renaissance actually hindered the very development of cultural self-determination that it sought to encourage.
Primitivism affected all areas of culture in the Harlem Renaissance: literature, art, music, dance, and theater. Novels and poems by Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, and others affirmed African origins or presented the continent as a lost paradise at a time when blacks continued to experience racial discrimination and economic hardships. Primitivist constructions of Africa provided solace in an alienated, industrialized world. Correspondingly, representations of African masks and sculptures abound in the visual imagery of the Harlem Renaissance. Aaron Douglas created his signature primitivist style by incorporating African motifs and embracing an extremely flat style. Similarly, William H. Johnson’s paintings combined ordinary life, religious customs, and folk art traditions into a unique primitivist style. Palmer Hayden’s primitivist appropriations and exaggerations of racial stereotypes accounted for the provocative nature of his works. Other artists who embraced primitivism include Richmond Barthé, Miguel Covarrubias, Malvin Gray Johnson, Lois Mailou Jones, and Horace Pippin, to mention only some of the better-known figures. Similarly, the employment of primitivist modes of expression translated into major stage successes for figures like Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker. The phenomenon extended to music halls and nightclubs such as the legendary Cotton Club, where primitivist decorations suggested black sensuality in exotic African settings. Primitivist experimentation during the Harlem Renaissance lasted until changing economic and political conditions yielded to social realist styles in the arts during the 1930s. Despite its contradictions and setbacks, primitivism constituted a vital aspect of renaissance culture, for it allowed artists to participate in ongoing modernist discourses. Positioning themselves in a network of cultural and historical relationships between the United States, Europe, and Africa, black artists and writers laid claim to the interconnections of the black diaspora and modern consciousness. And while much of the reality of a historically existing Africa may have eluded the primitivism of the Harlem Renaissance, the movement provided fresh perspectives for African Americans in search of their cultural identity.
