GALERIE ART PREMIER AFRICAIN GALERIE ART PRIMITIF AFRICAIN AFRICAN ART GALLERY

P R E F A C E


In one of the chaos of rocks the most amazing of Africa, has a population of farmer-warriors who was one of the last of the French domain to lose its independence.


For most whites in West Africa, the Dogon are dangerous men, if not the most backward of the Federation. Ilspassent to practice human sacrifice and even to defend themselves better against all the outside influences that they live a difficult country. Some writers have told their small fears when supposedly daring excursions. From these legends and the pretext of revolts often due to misunderstandings, it has sometimes taken in exile of entire villages.


In short, the Dogon represent one of the finest examples of primitive savage and this opinion is shared by some black Muslims who, intellectually, are not better equipped than whites to appreciate those of their fellow faithful to ancestral traditions. Only officials who have assumed the heavy task of administering these men have learned to love them.


The author of this book and its many teammates attend the Dogon past fifteen years. They published the work of these men who are now the people's best-known French Sudan: The Souls of the Dogon (G. Dieterlen, 1941), The Currency (S. OF GANAY 1941), Masks (M. Griaule, 1938) have brought to scholarly evidence that blacks lived on complex ideas, but ordered, on systems of institutions and rituals where nothing is left to chance or whim. This work, already ten years ago, drew

Tristan Tzara (born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; April 4 or April 16, 1896 – December 25, 1963) was a Romanian and Frenchavant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishmentDada movement. Under the influence of Adrian Maniu, the adolescent Tzara became interested in Symbolism and co-founded the magazine Simbolulwith Ion Vinea (with whom he also wrote experimental poetry) and painter Marcel Janco. During World War I, after briefly collaborating on Vinea's Chemarea, he joined Janco in Switzerland. There, Tzara's shows at the Cabaret Voltaire and Zunfthaus zur Waag, as well as his poetry and art manifestos, became a main feature of early Dadaism. His work represented Dada's nihilisticside, in contrast with the more moderate approach favored by Hugo Ball.

After moving to Paris in 1919, Tzara, by then one of the "presidents of Dada", joined the staff of Littérature magazine, which marked the first step in the movement's evolution toward Surrealism. He was involved in the major polemics which led to Dada's split, defending his principles against André Breton and Francis Picabia, and, in Romania, against the eclecticmodernism of Vinea and Janco. This personal vision on art defined his Dadaist plays The Gas Heart (1921) and Handkerchief of Clouds (1924). A forerunner of automatist techniques, Tzara eventually rallied with Breton's Surrealism, and, under its influence, wrote his celebrated utopianpoem The Approximate Man.

During the final part of his career, Tzara combined his humanist and anti-fascistperspective with a

Julien Michel Leiris (April 20, 1901 in Paris – September 30, 1990 in Saint-Hilaire, Essonne) was a Frenchsurrealistwriter and ethnographer.

Biography

Michel Leiris obtained his baccalauréat in philosophy in 1918 and after a brief attempt at studying chemistry, he developed a strong interest in jazz and poetry. Between 1921 and 1924, Leiris met a number of important figures such as Max Jacob, Georges Henri Rivière, Jean Dubuffet, Robert Despos, Georges Bataille and the artist André Masson, who soon became his mentor. Through Masson, Leiris became a member of the Surrealistmovement, contributed to La Révolution surréaliste, published Simulacre(1925), and Le Point Cardinal (1927), and wrote a surrealist novel Aurora(1927-28; first published in 1946). In 1926, he married Louise Godon, the step-daughter of Picasso's dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and traveled to Egypt and Greece.

Following a fall out with André Breton in 1929, he joined Bataille’s team as a sub-editor for Documents, to which he also regularly contributed articles such as “Notes on Two Microcosmic Figures of the 14th and 15th Centuries” (1929, issue 1), “In Connection with the ‘Musée des Sorciers" (1929, issue 2), "Civilisation" (1929, issue 4), “The ‘Caput Mortuum’ or the Alchemist’s Wife” (1930, issue 8), and on artists such as Giacometti,Miró, Picasso, and the 16th