The place of so called 'Primitive Art' in Western esthetic appraisal has always revealed us more about the values of the connaisseurs than about the values of those who create the objects classified and collected under this label. The surrealists were enthusiastic collectors of this kind of objects which they highly valued. In this article we look at the possible differences and continuities between the approach of contemporary artists and anthropologists on the one hand, and that of the surrealist movement on the other, to this Other through its objects.
alterity; ethnography; 'primitive art'; surrealism