The taste for authority and the authority of taste: cultural appropriations in the ‘arts prémiers’

The main actors responsible for the introduction of the arts prémiers into museums and the Western market are not, in fact, the same ones that produced them and, frequently, do not speak in the name of their interests. In the present article I investigate the first exhibition of the Musée du Quai Branly, which opened in the year 2000, in a section of the Musée du Louvre, in Paris. In the presentation of the objects in the new context, Jacques Kerchache, the main visionary behind this project, provided no room for dissonant views on the selection of the pieces. Some of the more obvious contradictions of the arts prémiers are visible in the Louvre exhibition. The criteria that dictated the musealization of the exhibited primitive sculptures reveal the inability to isolate, inside this particular aesthetic, the anthropological perspective. This article does not aim to discuss the inspiration of the first creators of these objects at the moment that they conceived their work. Instead, its goal is to question whether the creators’ intentions can be disregarded without consequences for the musealization of these objects in the European context, helping to understand this process from a sociological perspective.

事实上，将**原始艺术（arts prémiers）**引入博物馆与西方市场的核心主体，并非这些艺术作品的创作者，且其行动往往并非以创作者自身的利益为出发点。本文聚焦于2000年于巴黎卢浮宫博物馆展厅举办的**凯布朗利博物馆（Musée du Quai Branly）**首展。该项目的核心远见者雅克·凯尔沙什（Jacques Kerchache）在新展陈语境下呈现展品时，未为展品遴选的异见留有余地。此次卢浮宫展览中，原始艺术的部分显性矛盾显露无遗。支配此次展出的原始雕塑博物馆化（musealization）的评判标准，暴露出在这一特定美学框架下，无法将人类学视角从中剥离的局限。本文无意探讨这些器物初代创作者在构思作品时的创作灵感，其核心目标在于质疑：在欧洲语境中，无视创作者意图是否会对这些器物的博物馆化进程造成影响，进而助力从社会学视角解析这一进程。