Style and Race: Medieval and African Art at the Trocadero

This paper explores how medieval, and particularly Romanesque art, came to be understood as “primitive” and “originary” through its display in the museums of the Trocadéro (1878-1937). I argue that because Romanesque sculpture was perceived to be both an anterior and foreign style, its alterity disturbed the linear nationalistic narratives being developed throughout the nineteenth century. Romanesque art was non-naturalistic, de-centralized and did not conform to the established aesthetic canons of the time in which it re-entered the European imagination. Theories of racial hierarchies were brought to bear on this “primitive” period in France to the extent that theoreticians’ engagements with Romanesque furnished them with language and a model of comparison for the great variety of nonwestern, and mostly non-naturalistic, styles that were brought back to Europe during the same period. Indeed, the circulation of African art in the early Colonial period did not engender Modernist Primitivism but rather that pre-existent notions of “primitivity” attached to Romanesque sculpture were extended to this newly ‘discovered’ material culture. This interconnected history of reception is a major “blind spot” in the history of art and the history of museums. It is important to understand that perceptions of African art were not conceived in a vacuum, nor did they arise distinct from European material culture and aesthetics. This narrow and separate historiography is a component in reifying the alterity of Romanesque and African art; understanding their twin and parallel reception can be of value when we consider display practices anew.