Primitivism
Encyclopedia
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin
's inclusion of Tahiti
an motifs in paintings and ceramics. Borrowings from primitive art has been important to the development of modern art
.
The term "primitivism" is often applied to other professional painters working in the style of naïve
or folk art
like Henri Rousseau
, Mikhail Larionov
, Paul Klee
, Sergey Zagraevsky
and others.
, depicted in the genre of European poetry and visual art known as the Pastoral
. The debate about the merits and demerits of a simple, versus a complex life, gained new urgency with the European encounter with hitherto unknown peoples after the exploration of the Americas and Pacific Islands by Columbus and others.
During the Enlightenment
, arguments about the supposed superiority of indigenous peoples were chiefly used as a rhetorical device to criticize aspects of European society. In the realm of aesthetics, however, the eccentric Italian philosopher, historian and jurist Giambattista Vico
(1688–1744) was the first to argue that primitive man was closer to the sources of poetry and artistic inspiration than "civilized" or modern man. Vico was writing in the context of the celebrated contemporary debate, known as the great Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns
, over which was better, the classic poetry of Homer and the Bible or modern vernacular literature.
In the 18th century, the German scholar Friedrich August Wolf
identified the distinctive character of oral literature and located Homer and the Bible as examples of folk or oral tradition (Prolegomena to Homer, 1795). Vico and Wolf's ideas were developed further in the beginning of the 19th century by Herder
. Nevertheless, although influential in literature, such arguments were known to a relatively small number of educated people and their impact was limited or non-existent in the sphere of visual arts.
The 19th century saw for the first time the emergence of historicism
, or the ability to judge different eras by their own context and criteria. A result of this new historicism, new schools of visual art arose that aspired to hitherto unprecedented levels of historical fidelity in setting and costumes. Neoclassicism
in visual art and architecture was one result. Another such "historicist" movement in art was the Nazarene movement
in Germany, which took inspiration from the so-called Italian "primitive" school of devotional paintings (i.e., before the age of Raphael and the discovery of oil painting).
Where conventional academic painting (after Raphael) used dark glazes, highly selective, idealized forms, and rigorous suppression of details, the Nazarenes used clear outlines, bright colors, and paid meticulous attention to detail. This German school had its English counterpart in the Pre-Raphaelites, who were primarily inspired by the critical writings of John Ruskin
, who admired the painters before Raphael (such as Botticelli) and who also recommended painting outdoors, hitherto unheard of.
Two phenomena shook the world of visual art in the mid-19th century. The first was the invention of the photographic camera, which arguably spurred the development of Realism
in art. The second was a discovery in the world of mathematics of non-Euclidean geometry
, which overthrew the 2000 year-old seeming absolutes of Euclidean geometry and threw into question conventional Renaissance perspective by suggesting the possible existence of multiple dimensional worlds and perspectives in which things might look very different.
The discovery of possible new dimensions had the opposite effect of photography and worked to counteract realism. Artists, mathematicians, and intellectuals now realized that there were other ways of seeing things beyond what they had been taught in Beaux Arts École des Beaux-Arts
Schools of Academic painting, which prescribed a rigid curriculum based on the copying of idealized classical forms and held up Renaissance perspective Renaissance painting as the culmination of civilization and knowledge. Beaux Arts academies held than non-Western and tribal peoples had had no art or only inferior art.
In rebellion against this dogmatic approach, artists began to try to depict realities that might exist in a world beyond the limitations of the three dimensional world of conventional representation mediated by classical sculpture. They looked to Japanese
and Chinese art
, which was learned and sophisticated and did not employ Renaissance one-point perspective. Non-euclidean perspective (Cubism
) and tribal art
fascinated Western European artists who saw them as portraying the reality of the spirit world. They also looked to the art of untrained painters and to children's art, which they believed depicted interior emotional realities that had been ignored in conventional, cook-book-style academic painting.
Tribal and other non-European art also appealed to those who were unhappy with the repressive aspects of European culture, as pastoral
art had done for millennia. Imitations of tribal or archaic art also fall into the category of nineteenth-century "historicism", as these imitations strive to reproduce this art in an authentic manner. Actual examples of tribal, archaic, and folk art were prized by both creative artists and collectors.
Paul Gauguin
's paintings, Pablo Picasso
's paintings and Igor Stravinsky
's music are sometimes cited as examples of primitivism in art. Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring
, is "primitivist" in that its programmatic
subject is a pagan rite: a human sacrifice in pre-Christian Russia. It uses dissonance and loud, repetitive rhythms to depict "Dionysian" modernism, i.e., abandonment of inhibition (restraint standing for civilization). Nevertheless, Stravinsky was a master of learned classical tradition and worked within its bounds. In his later work he adopted a more "Apollonian" neoclassicism
, to use Nietzsche's terminology, although in his use of serialism
he still rejects 19th-century convention. In modern visual art, Picasso's work is also understood as rejecting Beaux Arts artistic expectations and expressing primal impulses, whether he worked in a cubist, neo-classical, or tribal-art-influenced vein.
Primitivism gained a new impetus from anxieties about technological innovation but above all from the “Age of Discovery
”, which introduced the West to previously unknown peoples and simultaneously opened doors for colonialism
and the direct scrutiny of radically different peoples. As the European Enlightenment
and the collapse of feudalism
ensued, philosophers started questioning many fixed medieval assumptions about the nature of man, the position of man in society, and the dogmatic Catholic cosmology. They began questioning the nature of humanity and its origins through a discussion of the natural man, which had intrigued theologians since the European encounter with the New World
.
From the 18th century onwards, Western thinkers and artists continued to engage in the retrospective tradition, that is "the conscious search in history for a more deeply expressive, permanent human nature and cultural structure in contrast to the nascent modern realities". Their search led them to parts of the world that they constituted as representing alternatives to modern civilization.
Up until the 19th century only a very few explorers were able to travel and bring back objects. But the 19th-century invention of the steamboat made indigenous cultures of European colonies and their artifacts more accessible to the direct observation and analysis of art lovers. European-trained artists and connoisseurs prized in these objects the stylistic traits they defined as attributes of primitive expression: absence of linear perspective, simple outlines, presence of symbolic signs such as the hieroglyph, emotive distortions of the figure, and the energetic rhythms resulting from the use of repetitive ornamental pattern. These energizing stylistic attributes, present in the visual arts of Africa, Oceana, and the Indians of the Americas, could also be found in the archaic and peasant art of Europe and Asia, as well.
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Painter Paul Gauguin
sought to escape European civilization
and technology when he took up residence in the French colony of Tahiti
and adopted a simple lifestyle which he felt to be more natural than the one he had left behind.
Gauguin’s search for the primitive was manifestly a desire for more sexual freedom than was available in 19th-century Europe, and this is reflected in his such paintings asThe Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch
(1892), Parau na te Varua ino (1892), Anna the Javanerin (1893), Te Tamari No Atua (1896), and Cruel Tales (1902), among others. Gauguin's view of Tahiti as an earthly Arcadia
of free love, gentle climate, and naked nymphs is quite similar, if not identical, to that of the classical pastoral
of academic art, which has shaped Western perceptions of rural life for millennia. One of his Tahitian paintings is even called "Tahitian Pastoral" and another "Where Do We Come From"
. In this way Gauguin extended the academic pastoral tradition of Beaux Arts schools which had hitherto been based solely on idealized European figures copied from Ancient Greek sculpture to include non-European models.
Gauguin also believed he was celebrating Tahitian society and defending the Tahitians against European colonialism. Feminist postcolonial critics, however, decry the fact that Gauguin took adolescent mistresses, one of them as young as thirteen. They remind us that like many men of his time and later, Gauguin saw freedom, especially sexual freedom, strictly from the male point of view. Using Gauguin as an example of what is "wrong" with primitivism, these critics conclude that, in their view, elements of primitivism include the “dense interweave of racial and sexual fantasies and power both colonial and patriarchal”. To these critics, primitivism such as Gauguin's demonstrates fantasies about racial and sexual difference in "an effort to essentialize notions of primitiveness” with “Other
ness”. Thus, they contend, primitivism becomes a process analogous to Exoticism
and Orientalism
, as conceived by Edward Said
, in which European imperialism
and monolithic and degrading views of the "East" by the "West" defined colonized peoples and their cultures. In other words, although Gauguin believed he was celebrating and defending the Tahitians, to the extent that he allegedly saw them as "other
", he participated in the outlook of his time and nationality to a greater extent than he realized and in the guise of celebrating them victimized the Tahitians all over again.
and Native American
art. Artists such as Henri Matisse
and Pablo Picasso
were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those cultures. Around 1906, Picasso, Matisse, André Derain
and other artists in Paris had acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture
, African art
and tribal masks
, in part because of the compelling works of Paul Gauguin
that had suddenly achieved center stage in the avant-garde circles of Paris. Gauguin's powerful posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne
in Paris in 1903 and an even larger one in 1906 had a stunning and powerful influence on Picasso's paintings.
From 1906 to 1909 Pablo Picasso
's paintings explored the impact of Primitivism through Iberian sculpture
, African sculpture
, African traditional masks, and other historical works including the Mannerist paintings
of El Greco
, resulting in his masterpiece Les Demoiselles D'Avignon
and the invention of Cubism
.
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
's inclusion of Tahiti
Tahiti
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...
an motifs in paintings and ceramics. Borrowings from primitive art has been important to the development of modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
.
The term "primitivism" is often applied to other professional painters working in the style of naïve
Naïve art
Naïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true...
or folk art
Folk art
Folk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic....
like Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector...
, Mikhail Larionov
Mikhail Larionov
Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov was an avant-garde Russian painter.-Life and work:...
, Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
, Sergey Zagraevsky
Sergey Zagraevsky
Professor Dr. Sergéy Zagraévsky is a well-known Russian-Jewish painter, architectural historian, writer and theologian.- Biography :...
and others.
Philosophy
Whether and to what extent we should simplify our lives and get "back to basics" is a debate that has been going on since the invention of writing. In antiquity the superiority of the simple life was expressed in the Myth of the Golden AgeGolden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first, followed in sequence, by the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and then the present, a period of decline...
, depicted in the genre of European poetry and visual art known as the Pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
. The debate about the merits and demerits of a simple, versus a complex life, gained new urgency with the European encounter with hitherto unknown peoples after the exploration of the Americas and Pacific Islands by Columbus and others.
During the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, arguments about the supposed superiority of indigenous peoples were chiefly used as a rhetorical device to criticize aspects of European society. In the realm of aesthetics, however, the eccentric Italian philosopher, historian and jurist Giambattista Vico
Giambattista Vico
Giovanni Battista ' Vico or Vigo was an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist....
(1688–1744) was the first to argue that primitive man was closer to the sources of poetry and artistic inspiration than "civilized" or modern man. Vico was writing in the context of the celebrated contemporary debate, known as the great Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns
Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns
The quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns was a literary and artistic debate that heated up in the early 1690s and shook the Académie française.-Description:...
, over which was better, the classic poetry of Homer and the Bible or modern vernacular literature.
In the 18th century, the German scholar Friedrich August Wolf
Friedrich August Wolf
Friedrich August Wolf was a German philologist and critic.He was born at Hainrode, a village not far from Nordhausen, Germany. His father was the village schoolmaster and organist...
identified the distinctive character of oral literature and located Homer and the Bible as examples of folk or oral tradition (Prolegomena to Homer, 1795). Vico and Wolf's ideas were developed further in the beginning of the 19th century by Herder
Herder
A herder is a worker who lives a possibly semi-nomadic life, caring for various domestic animals, in places where these animals wander pasture lands....
. Nevertheless, although influential in literature, such arguments were known to a relatively small number of educated people and their impact was limited or non-existent in the sphere of visual arts.
The 19th century saw for the first time the emergence of historicism
Historicism
Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it is in contrast to individualist theories of knowledges such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of...
, or the ability to judge different eras by their own context and criteria. A result of this new historicism, new schools of visual art arose that aspired to hitherto unprecedented levels of historical fidelity in setting and costumes. Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
in visual art and architecture was one result. Another such "historicist" movement in art was the Nazarene movement
Nazarene movement
The name Nazarene was adopted by a group of early 19th century German Romantic painters who aimed to revive honesty and spirituality in Christian art...
in Germany, which took inspiration from the so-called Italian "primitive" school of devotional paintings (i.e., before the age of Raphael and the discovery of oil painting).
Where conventional academic painting (after Raphael) used dark glazes, highly selective, idealized forms, and rigorous suppression of details, the Nazarenes used clear outlines, bright colors, and paid meticulous attention to detail. This German school had its English counterpart in the Pre-Raphaelites, who were primarily inspired by the critical writings of John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
, who admired the painters before Raphael (such as Botticelli) and who also recommended painting outdoors, hitherto unheard of.
Two phenomena shook the world of visual art in the mid-19th century. The first was the invention of the photographic camera, which arguably spurred the development of Realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
in art. The second was a discovery in the world of mathematics of non-Euclidean geometry
Non-Euclidean geometry
Non-Euclidean geometry is the term used to refer to two specific geometries which are, loosely speaking, obtained by negating the Euclidean parallel postulate, namely hyperbolic and elliptic geometry. This is one term which, for historical reasons, has a meaning in mathematics which is much...
, which overthrew the 2000 year-old seeming absolutes of Euclidean geometry and threw into question conventional Renaissance perspective by suggesting the possible existence of multiple dimensional worlds and perspectives in which things might look very different.
The discovery of possible new dimensions had the opposite effect of photography and worked to counteract realism. Artists, mathematicians, and intellectuals now realized that there were other ways of seeing things beyond what they had been taught in Beaux Arts École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
Schools of Academic painting, which prescribed a rigid curriculum based on the copying of idealized classical forms and held up Renaissance perspective Renaissance painting as the culmination of civilization and knowledge. Beaux Arts academies held than non-Western and tribal peoples had had no art or only inferior art.
In rebellion against this dogmatic approach, artists began to try to depict realities that might exist in a world beyond the limitations of the three dimensional world of conventional representation mediated by classical sculpture. They looked to Japanese
Japanese art
Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture in wood and bronze, ink painting on silk and paper and more recently manga, cartoon, along with a myriad of other types of works of art...
and Chinese art
Chinese art
Chinese art is visual art that, whether ancient or modern, originated in or is practiced in China or by Chinese artists or performers. Early so-called "stone age art" dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. This early period was followed by a series of art...
, which was learned and sophisticated and did not employ Renaissance one-point perspective. Non-euclidean perspective (Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
) and tribal art
Tribal art
Tribal art is an umbrella term used to describe visual arts and material culture of indigenous peoples. Also known as Ethnographic art, or, controversially, Primitive Art, tribal arts have historically been collected by Western anthropologists, private collectors, and museums, particularly...
fascinated Western European artists who saw them as portraying the reality of the spirit world. They also looked to the art of untrained painters and to children's art, which they believed depicted interior emotional realities that had been ignored in conventional, cook-book-style academic painting.
Tribal and other non-European art also appealed to those who were unhappy with the repressive aspects of European culture, as pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
art had done for millennia. Imitations of tribal or archaic art also fall into the category of nineteenth-century "historicism", as these imitations strive to reproduce this art in an authentic manner. Actual examples of tribal, archaic, and folk art were prized by both creative artists and collectors.
Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
's paintings, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
's paintings and Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's music are sometimes cited as examples of primitivism in art. Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring, original French title Le sacre du printemps , is a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; and concept, set design and costumes by Nicholas Roerich...
, is "primitivist" in that its programmatic
Program music
Program music or programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music...
subject is a pagan rite: a human sacrifice in pre-Christian Russia. It uses dissonance and loud, repetitive rhythms to depict "Dionysian" modernism, i.e., abandonment of inhibition (restraint standing for civilization). Nevertheless, Stravinsky was a master of learned classical tradition and worked within its bounds. In his later work he adopted a more "Apollonian" neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
, to use Nietzsche's terminology, although in his use of serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
he still rejects 19th-century convention. In modern visual art, Picasso's work is also understood as rejecting Beaux Arts artistic expectations and expressing primal impulses, whether he worked in a cubist, neo-classical, or tribal-art-influenced vein.
The Origins of Primitivism in Western Art of the Modern Age
Age of Discovery
The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration and the Great Navigations , was a period in history starting in the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century during which Europeans engaged in intensive exploration of the world, establishing direct contacts with...
”, which introduced the West to previously unknown peoples and simultaneously opened doors for colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
and the direct scrutiny of radically different peoples. As the European Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
and the collapse of feudalism
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
ensued, philosophers started questioning many fixed medieval assumptions about the nature of man, the position of man in society, and the dogmatic Catholic cosmology. They began questioning the nature of humanity and its origins through a discussion of the natural man, which had intrigued theologians since the European encounter with the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
.
From the 18th century onwards, Western thinkers and artists continued to engage in the retrospective tradition, that is "the conscious search in history for a more deeply expressive, permanent human nature and cultural structure in contrast to the nascent modern realities". Their search led them to parts of the world that they constituted as representing alternatives to modern civilization.
Up until the 19th century only a very few explorers were able to travel and bring back objects. But the 19th-century invention of the steamboat made indigenous cultures of European colonies and their artifacts more accessible to the direct observation and analysis of art lovers. European-trained artists and connoisseurs prized in these objects the stylistic traits they defined as attributes of primitive expression: absence of linear perspective, simple outlines, presence of symbolic signs such as the hieroglyph, emotive distortions of the figure, and the energetic rhythms resulting from the use of repetitive ornamental pattern. These energizing stylistic attributes, present in the visual arts of Africa, Oceana, and the Indians of the Americas, could also be found in the archaic and peasant art of Europe and Asia, as well.
Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
sought to escape European civilization
Civilization
Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...
and technology when he took up residence in the French colony of Tahiti
Tahiti
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...
and adopted a simple lifestyle which he felt to be more natural than the one he had left behind.
Gauguin’s search for the primitive was manifestly a desire for more sexual freedom than was available in 19th-century Europe, and this is reflected in his such paintings asThe Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch
Spirit of the Dead Watching
Spirit of the Dead Watching is an 1892 oil on burlap canvas painting by Paul Gauguin, depicting a nude Tahitian girl lying on her stomach. An old woman is seated behind her...
(1892), Parau na te Varua ino (1892), Anna the Javanerin (1893), Te Tamari No Atua (1896), and Cruel Tales (1902), among others. Gauguin's view of Tahiti as an earthly Arcadia
Arcadia (utopia)
Arcadia refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name which dates to antiquity; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an...
of free love, gentle climate, and naked nymphs is quite similar, if not identical, to that of the classical pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
of academic art, which has shaped Western perceptions of rural life for millennia. One of his Tahitian paintings is even called "Tahitian Pastoral" and another "Where Do We Come From"
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? is one of Paul Gauguin's most famous paintings. Gauguin inscribed the original French title in the upper left corner: D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous. The inscription the artist wrote on his canvas has no question mark, no...
. In this way Gauguin extended the academic pastoral tradition of Beaux Arts schools which had hitherto been based solely on idealized European figures copied from Ancient Greek sculpture to include non-European models.
Gauguin also believed he was celebrating Tahitian society and defending the Tahitians against European colonialism. Feminist postcolonial critics, however, decry the fact that Gauguin took adolescent mistresses, one of them as young as thirteen. They remind us that like many men of his time and later, Gauguin saw freedom, especially sexual freedom, strictly from the male point of view. Using Gauguin as an example of what is "wrong" with primitivism, these critics conclude that, in their view, elements of primitivism include the “dense interweave of racial and sexual fantasies and power both colonial and patriarchal”. To these critics, primitivism such as Gauguin's demonstrates fantasies about racial and sexual difference in "an effort to essentialize notions of primitiveness” with “Other
Other
The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...
ness”. Thus, they contend, primitivism becomes a process analogous to Exoticism
Exoticism
Exoticism is a trend in art and design, influenced by some ethnic groups or civilizations since the late 19th-century. In music exoticism is a genre in which the rhythms, melodies, or instrumentation are designed to evoke the atmosphere of far-off lands or ancient times Exoticism (from 'exotic')...
and Orientalism
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
, as conceived by Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
, in which European imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
and monolithic and degrading views of the "East" by the "West" defined colonized peoples and their cultures. In other words, although Gauguin believed he was celebrating and defending the Tahitians, to the extent that he allegedly saw them as "other
Other
The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...
", he participated in the outlook of his time and nationality to a greater extent than he realized and in the guise of celebrating them victimized the Tahitians all over again.
Pablo Picasso
During the early 20th century, the European cultural elite were discovering African, MicronesianMicronesian
Micronesian may refer to:* Something of, from, or related to Micronesia, a subregion of Oceania composed of hundreds of small islands in the Pacific Ocean...
and Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
art. Artists such as Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
and Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those cultures. Around 1906, Picasso, Matisse, André Derain
André Derain
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...
and other artists in Paris had acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture
Iberian sculpture
Iberian sculpture, a subset of Iberian art, describes the various sculptural styles developed by the Iberians from the Bronze age up to the Roman conquest...
, African art
African art
African art constitutes one of the most diverse legacies on earth. Though many casual observers tend to generalize "traditional" African art, the continent is full of people, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual special culture. The definition also includes the art of the African...
and tribal masks
African tribal masks
Ritual and ceremonial masks are an essential feature of the traditional culture and art of the peoples of Subsaharan and West Africa. While the specific implications associated to ritual masks widely vary in different cultures, some traits are common to most African cultures: for example, masks...
, in part because of the compelling works of Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
that had suddenly achieved center stage in the avant-garde circles of Paris. Gauguin's powerful posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne
Salon d'Automne
In 1903, the first Salon d'Automne was organized by Georges Rouault, André Derain, Henri Matisse, Angele Delasalle and Albert Marquet as a reaction to the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon...
in Paris in 1903 and an even larger one in 1906 had a stunning and powerful influence on Picasso's paintings.
From 1906 to 1909 Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
's paintings explored the impact of Primitivism through Iberian sculpture
Iberian sculpture
Iberian sculpture, a subset of Iberian art, describes the various sculptural styles developed by the Iberians from the Bronze age up to the Roman conquest...
, African sculpture
African sculpture
African sculpture varies widely with location. Each region has a unique style and meaning to their sculptures. The type of material and purpose for the sculpture reflects that of the region of creation.-Regional variations:...
, African traditional masks, and other historical works including the Mannerist paintings
Mannerism
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
of El Greco
El Greco
El Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...
, resulting in his masterpiece Les Demoiselles D'Avignon
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
He followed his success by developing into his Rose period from 1904 to 1907, which introduced a strong element of sensuality and sexuality into his work...
and the invention of Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
.
Postcolonial criticism
According to postcolonialist critics, Primitivism is associated with:- A concern with cultural phenomena on the periphery of European society—particularly sexuality, madness, spiritual punishment, violence, and alterityAlterityAlterity is a philosophical term meaning "otherness", strictly being in the sense of the other of two . In the phenomenological tradition it is usually understood as the entity in contrast to which an identity is constructed, and it implies the ability to distinguish between self and not-self, and...
. - Celebration of the "unconscious," often with the implication that non-western cultures are more "in touch" with the unconscious. A concern with dreams and symbols, often assumed to be "universal."
- Abstraction of the figure, particularly facial and bodily proportions, n. Inspired by "non-Western" arts, especially African, Oceanic, and Native American artworks. OccidentalOccidentalOccidental may refer to:* Occidental, California, a town in Sonoma County, California* Occidental Mindoro, a province of the Philippines located in the MIMAROPA region in Luzon...
primitivist artists were inspired by the visual abstraction of African artAfrican artAfrican art constitutes one of the most diverse legacies on earth. Though many casual observers tend to generalize "traditional" African art, the continent is full of people, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual special culture. The definition also includes the art of the African...
works, which favor the abstract over naturalistic representation. This is because their artworks tend to represent objects or ideas related to religious meanings or cosmology. - Focus on rhythmic and percussive elements, presence of repetition and pattern, especially in music and ritualRitualA ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
performance. - Overt sexuality, particularly when combined with exaggeration and exposure of the genitals. The assumption is that "non-Western" cultures have a greater appreciation of sexuality or sensuality than European and European settler societies. In the U.S., this movement was often associated with Africans or African-Americans, particularly the popularity of Josephine BakerJosephine BakerJosephine Baker was an American dancer, singer, and actress who found fame in her adopted homeland of France. She was given such nicknames as the "Bronze Venus", the "Black Pearl", and the "Créole Goddess"....
, jazzJazzJazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, and the broad characterization (esp. in France) of Africans as embodying the "soul of rhythm." - Flatness and geometric designs inspired by "non-Western" art forms.
- Application of paint in a rough, manipulated style, so as to connote "rawness."
- The history of Anthropological theory.
See also
- Anarcho-primitivismAnarcho-primitivismAnarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation...
- DecadenceDecadenceDecadence can refer to a personal trait, or to the state of a society . Used to describe a person's lifestyle. Concise Oxford Dictionary: "a luxurious self-indulgence"...
- Eco-communalismEco-communalismEco-communalism is an environmental philosophy based on ideals of simple living, self-sufficiency, sustainability, and local economies. Eco-communalists envision a future in which the economic system of capitalism is replaced with a global web of economically interdependent and interconnected...
- EthnologyEthnologyEthnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
- Paul GauguinPaul GauguinEugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
- Les Demoiselles D'AvignonLes Demoiselles d'AvignonHe followed his success by developing into his Rose period from 1904 to 1907, which introduced a strong element of sensuality and sexuality into his work...
- Naïve artNaïve artNaïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true...
- Neo-primitivismNeo-primitivismNeo-primitivism was a Russian art movement which took its name from the book Neo-primitivizm , by Aleksandr Shevchenko. In the book Shevchenko proposes a new style of modern painting which fuses elements of Cézanne, Cubism and Futurism with traditional Russian 'folk art' conventions and motifs,...
- Outsider artOutsider ArtThe term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...
- OrientalismOrientalismOrientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
- Social progressSocial progressSocial progress is the idea that societies can or do improve in terms of their social, political, and economic structures. This may happen as a result of direct human action, as in social enterprise or through social activism, or as a natural part of sociocultural evolution...
- Social regress
- Henri RousseauHenri RousseauHenri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector...
- Jean-Jacques RousseauJean-Jacques RousseauJean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
- XenocentrismXenocentrismXenocentrism is a political neologism, coined as the antonym of ethnocentrism. Xenocentrism is the preference for the products, styles, or ideas of someone else's culture rather than of one's own...
- John ZerzanJohn ZerzanJohn Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
External links
- John Zerzan, Telos 124, Why Primitivism?. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Summer 2002. (Telos Press).
- Articles on Primitivism
- "Primitivism meaning and methods""Primitivism, or anarcho-primitivism, is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. Primitivists argue that the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation. "