y, and
skill, all are here; but profundity of vision is not. And because they
cannot grasp complicated ideas they fail generally to create organic
wholes. One of the chief characteristics of the very greatest artists
is this power of creating wholes which, as wholes, are of infinitely
greater value than the sum of their parts. That, it seems to me, is what
savage artists generally fail to do.

Also, they lack originality. I do not forget that Negro sculptors have
had to work in a very strict convention. They have been making figures
of tribal gods and fetiches, and have been obliged meticulously to
respect the tradition. But were not European Primitives and Buddhists
similarly bound, and did they not contrive to circumvent their doctrinal
limitations? That the African artists seem hardly to have attempted to
conceive the figure afresh for themselves and realize in wood a personal
vision does, I think, imply a definite want of creative imagination.
Just how serious a defect you will hold this to be will depend on the
degree of importance you attach to complete self-expression. Savage
artists seem to express themselves in details. You must seek their
personality in the quality of their relief, their modulation of surface,
their handling of material, and their choice of ornament. Seek, and you
will be handsomely rewarded; in these things the niggers have never been
surpassed. Only when you begin to look for that passionate affirmation
of a personal vision which we Europeans, at any rate, expect to find in
the greatest art will you run a risk of being disappointed. It will be
then, if ever, that you will be tempted to think that these exquisitely
gifted black artists are perhaps as much like birds building their nests
as men expressing their profoundest emotions.

And now come the inevitable questions--where were these things made, and
when? "At different times and in different places," would be the most
sensible reply. About the provenance of any particular piece it is
generally possible to say something vague; about dates we know next to
nothing. At least, I do; and when I consider that we have no records
and no trustworthy criteria, and that so learned and brilliant an
archaeologist as Mr. Joyce professes ignorance, I am not much disposed to
believe that anyone knows more. I am aware that certain amateurs think
to enhance the value of their collections by conferring dates on their
choicer specimens; I can understand why