Table Of ContentArtists in the Exhibition
Jonas dos Santos
Juan Downey
Charles Fahlen
Rafael Ferrer
Nancy Graves
Joseph Kurhajec
Jody Pinto
ltalo Scanga
Salvatore Scarpitta
Alan Shields
Charles Simonds
Katherine Sokolnikoff
William Wiley
This exhibition and catalogue are supported in part by the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. a
Federal agency. Copyright c:-1979 Institute of Contemporary Art. University of
Pennsylvania. Philadefph,a. All rights reserved. ISBN 0-88454-053-7. Library
of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 79-92164. Printed in the United States
of America.
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Masks, Tents, Vessels. Talismans would not have been
possible without the talent, devotion, and generosity of many
individuals and the support of government agencies. The kind
cooperation of the lenders is especially appreciated. They are:
Pam Adler Gallery, Leo Castelli Gallery, Paula Cooper Gallery,
John Czerkowitz, Jonas dos Santos, Juan Downey, Rafael
Ferrer, Alan Frumkin Gallery, Frumkin and Struve Gallery,
Nancy Hoffman Gallery, M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., Droll/Kolbert
Gallery, Joseph Kurhajec, Janie C. Lee Gallery, Lucy Lippard.
The Albert A. List Family Collection, Vicki List, Marian Locks
Gallery, Jody Pinto, Quay Gallery, ltalo Scanga, Charles
Simonds, and Barbara Toll Fine Arts.
Joan Horvath ably assisted with all aspects of the production
of this catalogue. I am grateful to her and to Patricia Cruser for
editing the catalogue essay. Barbara Sosson is responsible for
the catalogue·s design. Ella Schaap contributed much
valuable research. Our new ICA staff was especially devoted;
my thanks to Amy Cohen and Matthew McClain for helping with
many detai Is of the first exhibition to be organized under their
tenure. Frank Farmer transported the art works with the greatest
of care and attention. John Taylor and William Baumann, and
other members of the installation crew were, as always, heedful
of the preciousness of the objects and were a great pleasure to
work with. My warmest gratitude is extended to Mrs. B. Herbert
Lee, Chairman, ICA Advisory Board, and all the other members
of our board for their encouragement.
The Institute of Contemporary Art is delighted to present
concurrent exhibitions with The University Museum. My
colleagues at that institution, Mary Elizabeth King and John T.
Murray, were very cooperative.
I am, of course, most grateful to the artists in the exhibition,
not only for having created the works that we may share for
several weeks, but also for sparing moments in their busy lives
to discuss their work and the concerns of this exhibition with me.
SALVATORE SCARPITTA, TUBLEG ELK, 1975 J.K.
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JONAS DOS SANTOS H ARDSOF T FROM FOREIGN MAS TE RS-( TWO PIECES OF GARLIC IN AN INOIAN OE ATH BED) 1974
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The Ethnographic Model
It is a recurring habit of modern culture to seek renewal. The may be seen. By 1885, authentic objects from primitive
modern consciousness, it seems. perceives its own societies were accessible to European artists. Goldwater dates
inadequacies and searches for those forms, ideas. and the first period of primitivism in the twentieth century from 1904
energies that will give it a sense of completion, however to 1938. During this period most of the artists who drew upon
temporary. This search takes several distinct paths. The primitive sources knew the objects only in isolation from their
energies of the vernacular, the ideas provided by other geographical and social context. Goldwater calls this response
disciplines. particularly science. and the examples of past "primitivising." Van Gogh and Gauguin, for example, first saw
forms have all been applied to modern art. Another strain - the primitive sculpture and architecture in Paris at the Paris
neo-primitive - has recently proven attractive to a variety of Exposition of 1889. But before that Gauguin had experienced
artists. During the course of modern art it has been a source of that art in its original mise en scene. The Fauves were moved
forms. ideas. and energy. by primitive objects to simplify their means to achieve more
directness and immediacy. The German artists of Der Bracke
Objects made in primitive societies were not conceived as
and Blaue Reiter also translated the emotive power of primitive
works of art. Giving such objects esthetic value alienates them
objects into their own language of form although their written
from their original context and expresses our esthetic
comments may have shown more understanding than their art.
imperialism. Our attention to them is fairly recent. They began
to appear in public collections in the eighteenth century; most Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, interrupts the
of our ethnographic museums were founded in the nineteenth palimpsests of western art history with elements from pagan
century, and in the twentieth century the voice of primitive cultures-Iberian art and African masks. Many of these
cultures was strongly echoed in modern art. The influence of cultures isolate and exaggerate what is important in their
primitive art on Fauvism. Cubism, and Surrealism has been beliefs, resulting in fewer. but more powerful structural
examined by Robert Goldwater, whose classic Primitivism in components. This stylistic approach gave Picasso, between
Modern Art will be gratefully recalled in this text.1 The late 1906 and 1908, license to practice cubist surgery on the
sixties and seventies witnessed a second wave of figure-and on the western tradition in art, with results that
"primitivism" - an impulse shared by several artists to became the guiding principle of modernism.
incorporate materials, objects, and methods that suggest an
Whereas Cubism appropriated the forms of primitive art, the
easy reference to those products of cultures we are still
Surrealists appropriated the mythic and ritualistic content of
pleased to call "primitive." These are modern artists, or as we
pagan objects. A vocabulary of meaning and mystery was
now say, post-modern artists, so the idea of the primitive is just
made accessible by reflecting the individual psyche in vast
one of many factors included in their thinking. It enters their
cultural mirrors. One reference will suffice from the hundreds
work in a variety of ways -as a suggestive model, as a look. as
that could be chosen. Diane Waldman points out the totemic
content. The result seems to be anti-formal. or more truly,
aspect of the figures in Max Ernst's Capricorn. 1948, "Ernst
unconcerned with the interior monologue of formalism.
combines personal and monumental implications of his private
Earlier antecedents may provide a background against mythology with allusion to the timeless forms of other, ancient
which some aspects of the neo-primitive presence in recent art cultures." 2 To the Surrealists, primitive art seemed to express
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,ing stretching tying glueing rubbing dying dipping wrapping modeling painting forging beading knotting sewing glueing rubbing dying dipping wrapping model,ng
JODY PINTO, UNTITLED. 1974
the unconscious, and offered a kind of shorthand language The earliest work in Masks. Tents, Vessels, Talismans is
communicating mythic urgencies. By isolation and Joseph Kurhajec·s Spider, 1961. Most of the objects were made
juxtaposition, some of the strangeness of primitive objects was in the seventies. When the term "primitive" is used here it will
recalled. The Surrealists focused primarily on tribal objects not mean "crude" or the early stages of a mature statement,
from North America and the South Pacific, as well as Jungian though some of the works wi 11 appear to be roughly executed.
psychology. Marxism, and Symbolism- all stirred into the Nor will it reflect what Goldwater has called "the chi Id
radical Surrealist brew. cult"-imitating the symbolic and conceptual phase of
children's art. In the context of this exhibition, each of these
As heirs to both traditions- Cubism and Surrealism - the
objects is a nexus that transmits signals between two different
Abstract Expressionists tried to reconcile the formal probity of
kinds of cultures; our own. based upon science. reason, written
one with the content of the other. though this is, of course. a
history, and monotheistic religions; and the other based on
simplification. Primitive sources of their early work have been
magic, intuition. animism. tribal customs, and multiple, often
documented by Robert Carleton Hobbs3- and Irving Sandler
man-made deities. Most of the objects project a specific.
has speculated on the influence of some major primitive art
general or invented reference to primitive cultures.
exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in the late thirties and
early forties.4 Motherwell, Newman. Pollock, and Stamos This "primitivising" occurs among artists widely separated in
visited American Indian and European pre-historical sites. The origins. interests, and intention. To some degree. the exhibition
primitive and Jungian concerns evidenced in the titles of their distorts the nature of their work for the purpose of making this
pictures have frequently been noted. But Abstract point. While such an examination may overemphasize one
Expressionist work rarely looked particularly nee-primitive; it aspect of the work. this issue should be met. The work is of
always remained highly urbane painting. Every historical such complexity and value. it seems to me, that this strain.
movement has. however. a rhetoric and a result, and the often remarked on in the past,5 should be clarified. If we can
relation between the two is often less than it would like to identify a strategy and "look" among a group of highly
persuade us All these historical styles provide precedents. but individual artists whose work has a strangeness lo it. the
not models for the work presented here. exhibition will have served I1s purpose.
This "pnmitiv1sing" 1s not a movement or a cons,stently
shared set of ideas But in recognizing a "look" that now affects
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