Art et ‘race’. Les gravures des ‘peuples primitifs’ à l’Exposition universelle de Paris de 1878

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.