“Primitivism” in Migration: Ambivalence and Locality in South African Modernism

Modernism in South Africa was not only characterized by the migration of settler artists between the global “periphery” of South Africa and Europe’s urban centers, such as Berlin, London, or Paris, which their parents had left and where they themselves frequently returned to further their careers, but also by the migration of objects and concepts.[1] The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a rapidly increasing circulation of African artifacts into the West in various ways—ethically and unethically, some as desecrated religious objects and some specifically produced for trade—and their subsequent appropriation by the European avant-gardes. At the same time, and largely neglected in Western art historical narratives, the aesthetic appreciation of such objects returned to their countries of origin. This was mediated by, often Jewish, immigrants with substantial collections of African artifacts, on the one hand, and Western theory such as Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik (1915) on the other. Departing from this European appreciation of African art, Irma Stern (1894–1966), the so-called pioneer of South African modernism, and the sculptor Lippy Lipshitz (1903–1980) laid the foundations for a specifically South African “settler primitivism.”[2] Stern and Lipshitz can be considered settlers, as they migrated to South Africa early in their lives but kept close ties to their European origins, artistically as well as personally. Departing from Nicholas Thomas’s definition of “settler primitivism,” this article discusses the importance of ambivalence and locality in Stern’s and Lipshitz’s “primitivist” representations of their black compatriots, in which they sought to establish a South African culture distinctive from the English traditions that were formative at the time, furthering their own indigenization in the process. My analysis is based on their artworks, different writings produced by the artists collected from various archives, as well as secondary texts on their works and careers. Before delving into the specific South African context, I will first attempt a brief localization of the terms “primitive” and “primitivism” in relation to the visual arts, as both terms are hugely problematic.