Tribal Art Quotes

So with the young African artists. What they have to learn from tribal art is not how to copy the traditional forms, but the confidence that comes from knowing that somewhere inside them there should be the vitality which enabled their fathers to produce these extraordinary and exciting forms.

Asmat has natural and cultural treasures that await exploration.

I always think of the Pacific Northwest as giant trees and rain and clouds and dampness, like the Native American art from that area. That all says Pacific Northwest to me. Salmon. It really only exists on the Western side of the Cascades.

I've got tonnes of aboriginal and Native American art, but I'd like even more.

I started collecting aerial photographs of Native American and South Pacific architecture; only the African ones were fractal. And if you think about it, all these different societies have different geometric design themes that they use. So Native Americans use a combination of circular symmetry and fourfold symmetry.

Primitivism has become the vulgar cliché of much modern art and speculation.

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

I don't want to collect Indian art, though pots and beadwork and blankets made by Indians remain the most beautiful art objects in the American West, in my opinion.

I would like to go to Kalimantan island in Sumatra to see the carvings and longhouse sculptures. I've also always wanted to look at the wood carvings along the Sepik River in New Guinea.

That is why we profess a spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.

The toute ensemble was such as to make polished society blush, when compared with these savages.

People say, 'Why don't you just paint with paintbrushes?' I say that I feel more connected to my painting using my skin. It's very tribal in a way - savage!