Скачать или смотреть The Primitive and the Professional | part one: an essay by John Berger

Part one of two.

Join us this month in a dissection of “The Primitive and the Professional”, a 1976 essay by John Berger. With Suttkin, M. Benjamin, Angelus Dubiosos, and Dumpster Dan.

“Art-historically the word primitive has been used in three different ways: to designate art (before Raphael) on the borderline between the medieval and modern Renaissance traditions; to label the trophies and ‘curiosities’ taken from the colonies (Africa, Caribbean, South Pacific) when brought back to the imperial metropolis; and lastly to put in its place the art of men and women from the working classes — proletarian, peasant, petit-bourgeois — who did not leave their class by becoming professional artists. According to all three usages of the word, originating in the last century when the confidence of the European ruling class was at its height, the superiority of the main European tradition of secular art, serving that same ‘civilised’ ruling class, was assured.”