Contemporary Artists on Colonial Museums.

Abstract

Ethnological museums are not only where objects from primitive societies are exhibited, but also creators of categories, parameters and models of behaviour and understanding of the world in relation to such societies. The objects collected in colonial expeditions slowly began a process of reformulation in the twentieth century, which was the century of contemporary art museums and the aestheticization of objects to which we nowadays refer as «primitive art». Ethnological museums held great appeal for artists throughout the twentieth century. Firstly, it was there that the avant-garde got to know and came to appreciate the works of primitive art which would have such an influence on the formulation of Modernism. Later, ethnological museums prompted artists to reflect upon and develop the principles on the basis of which western society has confronted the Other, the relationship between western culture and non-western cultures. That is the case of Hannah Höch, Candida Höfer and Bertrand Lavier.