James Clifford Essay Review

In James Clifford’s essay, “Histories of the Tribal and the Modern,” the appearance of tribal art(ifacts), some grouped with modern art, in several museum galleries comes under fire. He very critically addresses such museum’s attempts to classify and reclassify primitive art and modern art into one by pointing out only vague similarities. Clifford also highly objects to one museum’s, the Museum of Modern Art, use of the word ‘affinity’ in a gallery held in 1984 entitled, “Primitivism in 20th Century Art.” The driving force behind this essay is that the status of tribal artifacts has been forced to shift and deviate from their original classification as remnants of an ancient past with anthropological definitions, to those with more modern, aesthetic definitions.

The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) exasperated Clifford on numerous levels. Their 1984 gallery, “Primitivism in 20th Century Art,” coupled so-called tribal artifacts with modern works in order to show a correlation between the two. In particular, the word affinity was used, meaning a “deeper or more natural relationship than mere resemblance or juxtaposition.” Clifford felt that MOMA incorrectly represented this word; he said the e

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Some common words found in the essay are:
Girl Mirror, Barbara Tedlock, Century Art, Tribal Modern, African Masterpieces, Te Maori, Natural History, Clifford MOMA, Modern Art, Art MOMA, modern art, tribal modern, tribal artifacts, histories tribal modern, tribal artifacts modern, museum modern, primitive art, histories tribal, primitivism 20th, century art, 20th century, primitivism 20th century, 20th century art, ethnographic specimens, museum modern art,
Approximate Word count = 854
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)