COML 3041 - [Modern Primitives]

Fall. Next Offered: 2019-2020. 4 credits. Student option grading.

N. Melas.

What is “modern”? What is “primitive”? Through the lens of contemporary debates, this course will examine the complex conjuncture of art, literature, anthropology and colonial racism in the early decades of the twentieth century, from Cubist painting to surrealism. Of central concern will be the figure of the “fetish” in its artifactual, economic and psychic dimensions and also the richly paradoxical position of artists and thinkers of color caught in the nexus of “primitivism” and “modernism.” Authors may include Pablo Picasso, Jospehine Baker, Lydia Cabrera, Claude McKay, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, James Clifford, Sigmund Freud, Joseph Conrad, Langston Hugues, Karl Marx, André Breton, Pierre Mabille, Wifreo Lam, Leopold Sédar Senghor.