Le primitivisme pour réinventer l’art
Philippe Dagen has published the third and final volume of his series on primitivism, covering the period from World War II to the late 1970s. The book traces how Western artists, from Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock to members of the CoBrA movement and figures like Jean Dubuffet, Lucio Fontana, and Yayoi Kusama, engaged with so-called "primitive" art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, often as a means of rejecting or redefining modern civilization. Dagen also examines the intellectual debates surrounding primitivism, including the critiques of colonized peoples who refused the label "primitive," and the shifting attitudes of thinkers like Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Leiris, and Aimé Césaire.
This publication matters because it offers a comprehensive, critical synthesis of a persistent and controversial current in 20th-century art, showing how primitivism was both a creative engine and a site of ideological contradiction. By foregrounding the voices of artists and intellectuals who challenged or reappropriated the concept, Dagen’s work contributes to ongoing discussions about cultural appropriation, decolonization, and the politics of art history. It is a key resource for scholars, curators, and anyone interested in how modernism’s engagement with non-Western traditions shaped—and continues to shape—the art world.