Abstract
Mário de Andrade published on Revista da Academia Paulista de Letras the essay “Primitivos” in 1943, which presented the concept of primitive relying on L’art primitif (1930) by the French philosopher and ethnologist Georges-Henri Luquet (1876-1965). Georges Bataille reviewed Luquet’s book on the text “L’art primitif” (Documents, 1930). This paper has the aim to highlight the traces left by the reading of Luquet in both intellectuals. In addition, this article intends to illuminate two different approaches to the notion of primitive in modernity: one that conceives native or non-Western cultures as a principle of identity and as aesthetic affinity (interested in criteria such as beauty, similarity and genesis); and other that conceives the reversion as a transgressive heterogeneity (anti-humanist, formless).
Keywords:
primitivism; Brazilian modernism; Mário de Andrade; Georges Bataille
