Against primitivism

Abstract

When the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz was newly arrived in New York from Europe during World War II, he spent an evening in Dr. Schapiro’s company. The talk turned to the great collections of tribal art in the Musee de l’Homme in Paris, and in particular to a piece that he had especially admired. To help Lipchitz recall it, Dr. Schapiro took a sheet of paper and drew, from memory and to scale, not only the piece in question but every other piece that had been in the case with it some years before. He did not see this as anything out of the ordinary.