Book Reviews

are conceived as keepers of material culture, how much

should the museum collect when most of it will never be
displayed? Are there limits to the collection of taboo or
sacred items? What are the challenges of purchasing
objects in venues such as pawnshops or tourist markets?
One of the most thought-provoking chapters in this
section is Richard Wilks discussion of the collection of
Japanese 18th- to 20th-century mass-produced prints
known as ukiyo-e. Wilk suggests that collecting is about
the selection and organization of differences among
things and peoples. Through the process of highlighting
some specific differences, other differences are sublimated and obscured. Collecting in this sense delineates
authoritative boundaries of recognized and proper ways
of collecting. Discussing the rise of ukiyo-e sellers on
eBay, Wilk suggests that an emergent form of digital
collecting has grown, whereby collectors trade and sell
digital compilations of their collections. Digitization of
the ukiyo-e prints, already themselves a copy, reanimates the object and fashions new collecting economies. New channels of demand and supply subvert
previous forms of curatorial selection. While it is generally accepted that collectors and their collections
reflect a hierarchy of differences, Wilk suggests that
eBay alters traditional scales. Through its global reach
and diffusion of knowledge, eBay, and its large number
of participants, breaks down past ordering and exclusionary hierarchies associated with collecting art. Collecting is consequently refashioned and democratized
vis--vis eBay and web technology.
The final section, Extreme Matters, focuses on
issues of scale and the collection of objects that present
challenges for conservation, such as plastics. That
museums struggle with large objects is not new, but
this section does highlight the paradox of the inherent
limits in institutional collecting. The unstable nature of
objects in these situations highlights the instability of
knowledge and collections in general. Brian Durranss
chapter on time capsules as an extreme form of collecting provides a thoughtful discussion on the ways in
which time capsule collecting differs from traditional
museum collecting. The ambiguity and loss of framing
(for example, the contents of time capsule collections
are not known) make them interesting and unstable
articulations not only of futurity, but also of the
present.
The book concludes with a refreshing interview
with Robert Opie. He speaks with candor about his
selection process, lack of formal budget, and the ad hoc
nature of constructing his Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising. In many ways, the discussion
affirms the persistence of the individual as foundational
for museum construction, quirks and all. Moreover, the

169

interview suggests that challenges such as finite

resources, conservation, spoilage, storage, and the personal and subjective selection of objects persist as issues
all museums face in some form or another. Opies
museum differs in one important aspect, however.
Because he collects quotidian consumer items, his holdings have become a repository and archive for use by
forensic crime laboratory investigators. Such a twist is
extreme and merits further inquiry into the way collections are used outside of the museum.
The edited volume returns objects to a central place
in museological discourse. As museums and cities construct new buildings that have no collections or new
wings to display old collections, this volume brings us
back to the persistent relevance of objects and collecting
to museums. Although architecture and community
building have taken center stage in museum discourse,
this volume reminds us of what museums continue to
do: collect. The primacy of objects in making places,
museums, memories, and history remains central to
their endeavor.

French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire,

19451975
Daniel J. Sherman. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2011.
Christian N. Vannier
Grand Valley State University
In French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire, 1945
1975, Daniel Sherman offers a comprehensive analysis
of the cultural influence of modern primitivism on
French society during les trentes glorieuses. Primitivism
signifies a celebration of people, and peoples believed to
be leading simpler, more natural lives than in the
modern West. For Sherman, primitivism is a metaphorical discourse, a collective fantasy, and a cultural vehicle
for distancing, to the point of amnesia, the French social
imaginary from its colonial past. Primitivism serves as a
critique of the West, yet is deeply woven into modernity
and colonial legacies. Shermans choice of eras, Frances
thirty glorious years, pointedly frames his analysis
socially and politically. France suffered crushing psychological blows at Dien Bien Phu and the Suez Crisis,
while Gaullists dreamed of cultural hegemonic grandeur. The Algerian War brought colonial violence home
to the metropole, while African ritual objects emerged
as interior decorations in high-class fashion magazines.
In this era of rapid political and social change, modern

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VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 29 Number 2 Fall 2013

primitivism emerged as an intellectual institution and

cultural framework for confronting the ends of French
empire.
Sherman begins by situating the origins of primitivism in the 20th-century evolution of French ethnology and museology. Prior, local booty taken by
ethnographic expeditions were displayed in museums,
such as the Muse dEthnographie, with little regard for
scholarly research or cultural connections. By the end of
World War I, colonial administrations were searching for
ways to become better informed, and thus more effective. Ethnology as a supported and respected discipline
developed in connection with the museum-laboratory,
a space of research and dissemination, science, and
spectacle that produced knowledge about the Other.
Museums were spaces that offered access to primitive
peoples. This access was made possible by colonialism,
and mystified by the institutional and political priorities
of the museum. As ethnology matured into ethnographic
humanism, ethnographers were no longer concerned
with solely commandeering stuff to display as, ultimately, symbols of colonial power. New frameworks that
posited indigenous artifacts as symbolic representations
of sociocultural systems sought to turn these artifacts
into broader scientific understandings for those who
created them. These ideas were predicated upon the
belief that indigenous cultures were isolated, natural,
and disappearing under the polluting onslaught of
modernity. Thus, a central tenet of primitivism emerged
and found an ideological home in the mutual constitution of a new ethnology and museology. Yet primitivism
extended much closer to home than the colonies. The
Muse des Arts et Traditions Populaires provided institutional support to the ethnographic study of rural
France. Decontextualizing the class divisions and violence that comprised much of French history, the
museum displayed objects collected from the countryside in a way that enshrined a simpler, more immediate,
and less complicated life. With decolonialization happening outside France and modernity enclosing tradition within, museums developed as placeholders for
Western scientific knowledge of the primitive Other.
By the early 1960s, the aesthetic quality of museum
displays and its promise of the authentic influenced
the emergence of new forms of access to the primitive:
the art market. Ethnographic arts appeared in stylish
glossy magazines, and thus provided a new discourse
for making sense of, and obscuring, the colonial past.
This interior decorating trend reformed artifacts into a
fashion aesthetic that represented harmony, simplicity,
and purity. An associated style emerged that posited
formal affinities between pieces of vastly different
origins. The collection of ethnographic pieces in the

home shifted attention from the pieces themselves, and

the troubling reminders of their violent colonial origins,
and toward their universality as abstract art. Through
this shift, the French reasserted a global status based not
upon colonial domination, but rather a cosmopolitan
cultural superiority. Thus, a collective fantasy arose,
based upon a primitivism in home decorating that
replaced the museum with the market, and scientific
inquiry with aestheticism.
From the museum to the home, Sherman turns next
to art. During les trentes glorieuses, art brut arose as a
contrast to specialized professional artists and art
milieus. Suffused with primitivism, art brut celebrated
spontaneity, immediacy, and freedom from convention.
Sherman studies the lifestyle and prolific career of
Gaston Chiassac, celebrated as a primitivist artist par
excellence. Chiassacs rejection of all artistic norms and
conventions, including the market, allowed his work
and his identity to be cast as primitive. Similar to the
use of ethnographic arts in decorating, Chiassacs primitivism stood for a universal aesthetic of creativity rather
than a form of colonial domination.
The book culminates in a final chapter that analyzes the discursive cast of an entire society as a trope
of primitivism. At the spatial ends of French empire,
Tahitians became noble savages who needed protection
from the pollutions of modernity, which only the civilized world could provide. Tahitians encountered the
West through the jet plane and the nuclear bomb, two
iconic symbols of modernity. The jet plane brought
tourists, and primitivism offered a way of marketing
paradise as a product antithetical to the soulless
modern West. Tahitian people were recast into the new
role of postcolonial citizen, expected to reinvent traditional culture for a metropole that sought an escape
from a modernity that colonialism helped create. Concurrently, Gaullist ambitions of a nuclear France
brought testing to Polynesia. Nuclear testing bolstered
the primitivist myth of Tahiti by imagining Tahitian
culture as childlike, innocent, and again in need of
protection from the more civilized West.
In sum, this study of modern primitivism provides
a lens through which we may capture a particular
moment in the ongoing encounter between the West
and the Other. Intellectually in the museum exhibit,
culturally in art and fashion, and economically in the
tourist market, the tropes of primitivism are an apparatus of power/knowledge and a collective fantasy. As
such, these tropes are entwined with colonialism,
postcolonialism, and globalized political economy. It
allowed the French to culturally confront and deal with
psychosocial traumas at the ends of empire by recasting
the guilt of colonialism into a new universal humanity.

Book Reviews

For visual anthropology, Sherman makes plain that

object placement in museums is both a physical operation and a cognitive one that determines relations
between objects so they may function in a context other
than their original or intended ones. This is not a new
concept. Shermans important contribution, however, is
demonstrating this argument using an extraordinarily
expansive sociopolitical vantage point. This cognitive
operation is in museums, where ethnographic objects
are adjacent to others of similar ethnic or temporal
origin. In the home, the collection of diverse artifacts
allows the coupling of objects not based on ethnographic similarities, but through aesthetic qualities
devoid of origins. In art, the borrowing and incorporation of aesthetic elements drawn from African or
Oceanic artifacts draw them into an invented universal
artistry. Finally, this cognitive operation is in the objectification of people and culture in tourist marketing
meant to contrast with the controlled life of modernity.
The real strength of Shermans book is his accomplishment of two objectives: the interdisciplinary exploration
of an overarching theme, modern primitivism, through
very large and complex social phenomena; and the
exploration of a critical stage of French history, les
trentes glorieuses, through this same overarching
theme.

171

French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire, 1945

1975 is of interest to a variety of academic disciplines,
a testimony to the scale and scope of the authors
thought. Sherman cites a breadth of scholars, historical and recent, to explain and reinforce his data.
Museum studies theorists, art historians, anthropologists, and other scholars interested in colonialism and
postcolonialism more generally will benefit from this
research, although a familiarity with French 20thcentury history maximizes the books intellectual
reward. These qualities place the text out of reach for
most undergraduate students. The book will, however,
generate much discussion in graduate study classrooms
exploring intersections of politicized visions of culture,
postcolonial citizenry, and the role of institutions in the
creation of the Other. Black-and-white photographs,
color plates, and extensive notes complete this complex
and worthy book.
Finally, Sherman does not leave the reader with the
impression that his is solely a historical endeavor. The
opening of the Muse de Quai Branley in 2006 drew
criticism for minimizing the collections colonial past
and reenvisioning ethnographic artifacts as works of
art. The recurrent tropes of primitivism are surviving
changing social contexts by performing useful cultural
functions, in the past and in the present.