e finest black
sculpture is so rich in artistic qualities that it is entitled to a
place beside them.

I write, thinking mainly of sculpture, because it was an exhibition
of sculpture that set me off. It should be remembered, however, that
perhaps the most perfect achievements of these savages are to be found
amongst their textiles and basket-work. Here, their exquisite taste and
sense of quality and their unsurpassed gift for filling a space are seen
to greatest advantage, while their shortcomings lie almost hid. But it
is their sculpture which, at the moment, excites us most, and by it they
may fairly be judged. Exquisiteness of quality is its most attractive
characteristic. Touch one of these African figures and it will remind
you of the rarest Chinese porcelain. What delicacy in the artist's sense
of relief and modelling is here implied! What tireless industry and
patience! Run your hand over a limb, or a torso, or, better still, over
some wooden vessel; there is no flaw, no break in the continuity of the
surface; the thing is alive from end to end. And this extraordinary
sense of quality seems to be universal amongst them. I think I never saw
a genuine nigger object that was vulgar--except, of course, things made
quite recently under European direction. This is a delicious virtue,
but it is a precarious one. It is precarious because it is not
self-conscious: because it has not been reached by the intelligent
understanding of an artist, but springs from the instinctive taste of
primitive people. I have seen an Oxfordshire labourer work himself
beautifully a handle for his hoe, in the true spirit of a savage and
an artist, admiring and envying all the time the lifeless machine-made
article hanging, out of his reach, in the village shop. The savage gift
is precarious because it is unconscious. Once let the black or the
peasant become acquainted with the showy utensils of industrialism, or
with cheap, realistic painting and sculpture, and, having no critical
sense wherewith to protect himself, he will be bowled over for a
certainty. He will admire; he will imitate; he will be undone.

At the root of this lack of artistic self-consciousness lies the defect
which accounts for the essential inferiority of Negro to the very
greatest art. Savages lack self-consciousness and the critical sense
because they lack intelligence. And because they lack intelligence they
are incapable of profound conceptions. Beauty, taste, qualit