The history of the recognition of Palaeolithic art has been written from the perspective of European discoveries in the last third of the 19th century. Through this case study of the publication of the Wandjina paintings (Australian Kimberley) by George Grey between 1838 and 1841 and through the contextualisation of the interpretations attributed to them the article investigates the intellectual and political space in which conceptions relating to the ability of Aborigines to produce this art emerged within the debates of contemporaries and, later, of English and French prehistorians. It also provides an insight into the different contexts that shaped the will to reconstruct the heritage of non–European cultures in a colonial context.
FR
L’histoire de la reconnaissance de l’art paléolithique a été écrite à partir des découvertes européennes du dernier tiers du XIXe siècle. L’étude du cas de la publication des peintures Wandjina du Kimberley australien par George Grey entre 1838 et 1841 et la contextualisation des interprétations qui leur sont attribuées permettent de saisir l’espace intellectuel et politique dans lequel émergent les conceptions sur la capacité des Aborigènes à produire et à maîtriser le geste artistique et sa signification dans les débats des contemporains, et, plus tard, des préhistoriens anglais et français. Il permet aussi de restituer les différents contextes qui ont façonne la volonté de patrimonialiser les éléments des cultures extra–européens en terrain colonial.
Based on a case study, this paper aims to examine the scientific, industrial and political interests that intertwine at the 1878 Paris World’s Fair. We will focus on a graphic composition that was elaborated from various copies of rock art presented in several pavilions of the Exhibition and published by a science magazine. This figure was composed to compare the artistic capacities of European prehistoric and African contemporary primitives, all belonging, in the dis- course of the French anthropologists, to the same race. The article considers the construction of anthropology in public space as a science claiming to be capable of analysing racial relationships in their environment and therefore capable of scientifically directing the French colonial project.
From the second half of the 19th century, prehistory developed, both theoretically and in the field, according to a European model. Concepts and vocabulary, but also collections and European sites, were established as axioms. This construction of prehistory took place during the expansion of ethnographic missions and colonial empires. This European prehistory with universal ambitions had to take into account an otherness, current and embodied by the savage, which had become an object of study for the emerging human sciences. From a historiographical point of view, many relationships remain to be clarified with regard to the interactions between European prehistory and the construction of a prehistory beyond Europe.
FR
À partir de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, la préhistoire s’est développée, sur le plan théorique et sur le terrain, selon un modèle européen. Concepts, vocabulaire, mais aussi collections et sites européens sont alors érigés en axiomes. Cette construction de la préhistoire intervient lors de l’expansion des missions ethnographiques et des empires coloniaux. Cette préhistoire européenne aux ambitions universelles devait prendre en compte une altérité, actuelle et incarnée par le sauvage, devenue un objet d’étude pour les sciences humaines émergentes. Sur le plan historiographique, de nombreuses relations restent à clarifier en ce qui concerne les interactions entre préhistoire européenne et la construction d’une préhistoire hors d’Europe.
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