This was an attempt by Martin and his curatorial team to subvert the illusion of Eurocentric superiority in the field of artistic representation and the vision of the world inherited from the colonial age.
Many critics condemned "Primitivism", as it fell into a similar Modernist trap of providing only a pure aesthetization of the work of native cultures.
"Primitivism" stated that it was only interested in displaying tribal works that influenced Modern artists and studying how this phenomenon functioned within the Modernist discourse.
This exhibition was organized in a typical colonial fashion, to show the economic and moral superiority of the French country, as well as the products of the grateful colonized.
With the failings of the previous shows in mind, Martin organized Magiciens by selecting one hundred artists from around the world: fifty from the so-called "centers" of the world (the United States and Western Europe) and fifty from the "margins" (Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Australia).
No specific criteria were set up for the selection of the individual works in the show as long as this numerical ratio was maintained.
Lewison gave examples of how the curation of Western artwork with the "margined' art creates cross-currents impacting viewers perception of the Western artists' attempts: The ritualistic and religious nature of the Aborigine work endows Long's circle with a meaning which, in another context, it might not have ... Where religion, sex, death and functionalism seem to be the basis for the creation of most forms of 'ethnic' art, art itself is often the only reason for the making of western art ... Baldessari's photographic story-book seems tired and knowing when juxtaposed with the innocence of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, whose own imaginative tales deal with the language of animals, stones and trees and illustrate the evolution of the nuclear missile from the chicken-bone by way of the arrow, and whose view of history (Caesar and Ulysses, for example), previously known to westerners in a European form seems equally plausible as African history.