Surrealist primitivism
Le café La Fleur (55 rue des Alexiens 1000 Bruxelles) March 1953. From left to right: Marcel Mariën, Camille Goemans, Gérard Van Bruaene, Irène Hamoir, Georgette Magritte, E.L.T. Mesens, Louis Scutenaire, René Magritte and Paul Colinet. By Alexandra A Jopp The “other” has performed many functions throughout human history. It has variously been a source of fear, fascination, inspiration, exoticism, disgust and many things in between. One consistent theme emerges, though: how one defines the other (whatever it may be in a given situation) often goes a long way toward defining oneself. This self-identification through proxy was never more true – or more intentional – than in the Surrealists’ conception of otherness and their investigation of it through ethnography. Surrealists went beyond mere curiosity about the exotic features of other cultures that typified movements such as Orientalism. In a world based on modern, rational thought that Surrealists found to be lack...