Primitivism: Difference between revisions

Primitivism is a [[utopian]] style of art that means to represent the physical world of Nature and humanity's original [[state of nature]] with two styles: (i) ''chronological primitivism'' and (ii) ''cultural primitivism''.<ref name="auto">Lovejoy, A. O. and Boas, George Boas. ''Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1935).</ref> In Europe, chronological primitivism proposes the ostensiblemoral superiority of a primitive way of life wasrepresented expressed inby the myth of a [[Golden Age|myth of a golden age]] of pre-societal harmony with Nature, as depicted in the [[Pastoral]] genres of European representational art and poetry.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hamilton|first=Albert Charles|title=The Spenser Encyclopedia|publisher=University of Toronto Press|year=1997|isbn=0-8020-2676-1|location=Toronto|pages=557|language=en}}</ref>

TheNotable paintingsexamples of European cultural primitivism are the music of [[PaulIgor GauguinStravinsky]], andthe Tahitian paintings of [[PabloPaul PicassoGauguin]], and the music of [[IgorPicasso's Stravinsky]]African arePeriod|African notableperiod examplesartworks]] of artistic[[Pablo PrimitivismPicasso]]. Stravinsky's ''[[The Rite of Spring]]'' (1913) is primitivist [[program music]] about the subject of [[Paganism]], specifically the rite of [[human sacrifice]] in pre–christianpre-christian Russia. Foregoing the [[Aesthetics|aesthetic]] and technical restraints of Western musical artcomposition, in ''The Rite of Spring'', the composer Stravinsky employs harsh [[consonance and dissonance]] and loud, repetitive rhythms as a mode of [[Dionysian]] spontaneity in [[musical modernism]]. The critic Malcolm Cook said that “with"with its folk-music motifs and the infamous 1913 Paris riot securing its ''[[avant-garde]]'' credentials, Stravinsky's ''The Rite of Spring'' engaged in Primitivism in both form and practice”practice" whilstwhile remaining within the technical praxes of Western [[classical music]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cook|first=Malcolm|chapter-url=https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190469894.001.0001/acprof-9780190469894-chapter-3|chapter=A Primitivism of the Senses|date=2017-08-24|publisher=Oxford University Press|title=The Music and Sound of Experimental Film|editor1-last=Rogers|editor1-first=Holly|editor2-last=Barham|editor2-first=Jeremy|language=en|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190469894.003.0003}}</ref>

During the [[Age of Enlightenment]], intellectuals rhetorically used the [[idealization]] of indigenous peoples as political criticism of [[European culture]];<ref>Pagden, Anthony. “The"The Savage Critic: Some European Images of the Primitive”Primitive", ''The Yearbook of English Studies'', 13 (1983), 32–45.</ref> however, as part of the [[Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns]], the Italian intellectual [[Giambattista Vico]] said that the lives of primitive non-Europeans were more attuned to Nature's aesthetic inspirations for [[poetry]] than the arts of civilized, modern man. From that perspective, Vico compared the artistic merits of the [[epic poetry]] of [[Homer]] and of the Bible against the modern literature written in vernacular language.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bitterli|first=Urs|title=Cultures in Conflict: Encounters Between European and Non-European Cultures, 1492-1800|last2=Robertson|first2=Ritchie|publisher=Stanford University Press|year=1989|isbn=978-0-8047-2176-9|location=Stanford, CA|pages=12}}</ref>

The three-hundred-year [[Age of Discovery]] (15th c.–17th c.) exposed western European explorers to the peoples and cultures of Asia and the Americas, of Africa and Australasia, but the explorers’explorers' perspective of [[Difference (philosophy)|cultural difference]] led to [[colonialism]].<ref>Diamond, S. ''In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization'', (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1974), pp. 215–217.</ref> During the [[Age of Enlightenment]], the explorers’explorers' encounters with the [[Other (philosophy)|non-European Other]] provoked philosophers to question the Mediaeval assumptions about the fixed nature Man, of society, and of [[Nature]], doubted the [[social class|social-class]] organization of society and the mental, moral, and intellectual strictures of Christianity, by comparing the civilization of Europe against the way of life of the uncivilized [[Noble savage|natural man]] living in harmony with Nature.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Diamond|first=Stanley|title=In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization|publisher=Taylor & Francis|year=2017|isbn=978-1-138-08779-8|location=Oxon|pages=159}}</ref>

In the 18th century, Western artists and intellectuals participated in “the"the conscious search in history for a more deeply expressive, permanent human nature and cultural structure in contrast to the nascent modern realities”realities", by studying the cultures of the primitive peoples encountered by explorers.<ref>Diamond 1974, p. 215.</ref> The spoils of European colonialism included the works of art of the colonisedcolonized natives, which featured primitive styles of expression and execution, especially the absence of linear perspective, a simple outline, the presence of [[hieroglyph]]s, distortions of the figure, and the meaning communicated with repeated patterns of ornamentation.<ref>Goldwater, Robert, ''Primitivism in Modern Art'', Revised Edition (New York: Vintage, 1967) p. 0000.</ref> In the event, theThe African and Australasian cultures provided artists an answer to their “white"white, Western, and preponderantly male quest”quest" for the the ideal of the primitive, "whose very condition of desirability resides in some form of distance and difference."<ref>See Solomon-Godeau 1986, p. 314.</ref>

[[File:Paul Gauguin- Manao tupapau (The Spirit of the Dead Keep Watch).JPG|thumb|right|350px|'''Primitivism:''' ''Spirit of the Dead Watching'' (1892), by Paul Gauguin.]]

Gauguin's European perspective of Tahiti as a sexual utopia free of the religious sexual prohibitions is in line with the perspective of [[pastoral]] art, which idealisesidealizes rural life as better than city life. The similarities between Pastoralism and Primitivism are evident in the paintings ''Tahitian Pastoral'' (1892) and ''[[Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?]]'' (1897–1898).<ref>About the painting ''Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?'' (1897–1898), the art historian George T.M. Shackelford said: "Although, [Gauguin] downplayed the painting's relationship to the murals of Puvis, on the grounds of procedure and intention, in formal terms he cannot have hoped that his figured landscape — for all its apparent rejection of classical formulas and execution — could escape comparison with the timeless groves that Puvis had popularized in murals for the museums in Lyon and Rouen, as well as the great hemicycle of the Sorbonne."</ref>

The artist Gauguin said that his paintings celebrated Tahitian society, and that he was defending Tahiti against French colonialism; nonetheless, from the [[postcolonial]] perspective of the 20th century, feminist art critics said that Gauguin's taking adolescent mistresses voids his claim of being an anti-colonialist.<ref>Solomon-Godeau 1986, p.324.</ref> As a European man, his sexual freedom derived from the [[male gaze]] of the colonist, because Gauguin's artistic primitivism is part of the "dense interweave of [[Racism|racial]] and sexual fantasies and [[Power (social and political)|power]], both colonial and [[Patriarchy|patriarchal]]", which French colonialists invented about Tahiti and the Tahitians;<ref>Solomon-Godeau 1986, p.315.</ref> European fantasies invented in "effort to [[Essentialism|essentialize]] notions of primitiveness", by [[Other (philosophy)|Othering]] non-European peoples into colonial [[Subaltern (postcolonialism)|subordinates]].

[[File:Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.jpg|thumb|right|300px|In the painting ''[[Les Demoiselles d'Avignon]]'' (1907) the two figures at the right indicate the stylistic origin of thePablo Picasso's African period of the artist Pablo Picasso.]]

In the 1905–1906 period, a group of artists studied the arts from [[Sub-Saharan Africa]] and from [[Oceania]], because of the popularity of the Gauguin's paintings of Tahiti and the Tahitians. Two posthumous, retrospective exhibitions of Gauguin's works of art in Paris, one at the [[Salon d'Automne]] in 1903, and the other in 1906, much influenced [[fauvism|fauve movement]] artists such as [[Maurice de Vlaminck]] and, [[André Derain]], and [[Henri Matisse]], andbut also [[Pablo Picasso]]. In particular, Picasso studied [[Iberian sculpture]], [[African sculpture]], and [[African traditional masks]], and other historical works, such as the [[Mannerism|Mannerist paintings]] of [[El Greco]];, infrom thewhich event,aesthetic study Picasso painted the masterpiece of ''[[Les Demoiselles Dd'Avignon]]'' (1907), and invented [[Cubism]].<ref name="Cooper, 24">Cooper, 24</ref>

Primitivism in art is usually regarded as a cultural phenomenon of Western art, yet the structure of primitivist idealism is in the art works of non-Western and anti-colonial artists. The nostalgia for an idealized past when humans lived in harmony with Nature is related to critiques of the negative cultural impact of Western modernity upon colonized peoples. The primitivist works of anti-colonial artists are critiques of the Western stereotypes about colonisedcolonized peoples, whilstwhile also yearning for the pre-colonial way of life. The processes of [[decolonization]] fuse with the reverse [[teleology]] of Primitivism to produce native works of art distinct from the primitivist artworks by Western artists, which reinforce colonial stereotypes as true.<ref>Etherington, Ben. ''Literary Primitivism'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018) p. 000.</ref>

As a type of artistic primitivism, the artworks of the [[Négritude]] movement tend to nostalgia for a lost [[golden age]]. Begun in the 1930s, by [[Geographical distribution of French speakers|francophone]] artists and intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, the Négritude movement was readily adopted throughout continental Africa and by the [[African diaspora]]. In rejection of Western [[rationalism]] and European colonialism, the Négritude artists idealized pre-colonial Africa with works of art that represent pre-colonial Africa as composed of societies who were more culturally united before the Europeans arrived to Africa.

Neo-primitivism replaced the symbolist art of the [[Blue Rose (art group)|Blue Rose movement]]. The nascent movement was embraced due to its predecessor's tendency to look back so that it passed its creative zenith.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bowlt|first=John E.|title=Russian Art, 1875-1975: A Collection of Essays|publisher=MSS Information Corporation|year=1976|isbn=0-8422-5262-2|location=New York, NY|pages=94}}</ref> A conceptualization of neo-primitivism describes it as anti-primitivist Primitivism since it questions the primitivist's [[Eurocentrism|Eurocentric]] [[universalism]].<ref name=":0a">{{Cite book|last=Li|first=Victor|title=The Neo-primitivist Turn: Critical Reflections on Alterity, Culture, and Modernity|publisher=University of Toronto Press|year=2006|isbn=0-8020-9111-3|location=Toronto|pages=ix, 18, 19}}</ref> This view presents neo-primitivism as a contemporary version that repudiates previous primitivist discourses.<ref name=":0a" /> Some characteristics of neo-primitivist art include the use of bold colors, original designs, and expressiveness.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bachus|first=Nancy|title=The Modern Piano: The Influence of Society, Style, and Musical Trends on the Great Piano Composers|last2=Glover|first2=Daniel|publisher=Alfred Music Publishing|year=2006|isbn=0-7390-4298-X|location=Los Angeles, CA|pages=26|language=en}}</ref> These are demonstrated in the works of [[Paul Gauguin]], which feature vivid hues and flat forms instead of a three-dimensional perspective.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bachus|first=Nancy|title=Beyond the Romantic Spirit 1880-1922|last2=Glover|first2=Daniel|publisher=Alfred Music Publishing|year=2003|isbn=978-0-7390-3217-6|location=Los Angeles, CA|pages=24}}</ref> [[Igor Stravinsky]] was another neo-primitivist known for his children's pieces, which were based on Russian folklore.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Foxcroft|first=Nigel H.|title=The Kaleidoscopic Vision of Malcolm Lowry: Souls and Shamans|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|year=2019|isbn=978-1-4985-1657-0|location=Lanham, MD|pages=22}}</ref> Several neo-primitivist artists were also previous members of the [[Blue Rose (art group)|Blue Rose group]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Brooker|first=Peter|title=The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Volume III|last2=Thacker|first2=Andrew|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2013|isbn=978-0-19-968130-3|location=Oxon|pages=1289}}</ref>

In November 1910, [[Roger Fry]] organized the exhibition titled ''Manet and the Post-Impressionists'' held at the [[Grafton Galleries]] in London. This exhibition showcased works by [[Paul Cézanne]], [[Paul Gauguin]], [[Henri Matisse]], [[Édouard Manet]], [[Pablo Picasso]], and [[Vincent van Gogh|Vincent Van Gogh]], among others. This exhibition was meant to showcase how French art had developed over the past three decades; however, art critics in London were shocked by what they saw. Some called Fry “mad”"mad" and “crazy”"crazy" for publicly displaying such artwork in the exhibition.<ref>Frances Spalding, “Roger"Roger Fry and His Critics in a Post-Modernist Age,”" The Burlington Magazine 128, no. 1000 (1986): 490.</ref> Fry's exhibition called attention to primitivism in modern art even if he did not intend for it to happen; leading American scholar Marianna Torgovnick to term the exhibition as the "debut" of primitivism on the London art scene.<ref>Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives, Nachdr. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990), 104.</ref>

In 1984, [[The Museum of Modern Art]] in [[New York City|New York]] had a new exhibition focusing on primitivism in modern art. Instead of pointing out the obvious issues, the exhibition celebrated the use of non-Western objects as inspiration for modern artists. The director of the exhibition, [[William Rubin]], took Roger Fry's exhibition one step further by displaying the modern works of art juxtaposed to the non-Western objects themselves. Rubin stated, “That"That he was not so much interested in the pieces of ‘tribal’'tribal' art in themselves but instead wanted to focus on the ways in which modern artists ‘discovered’'discovered' this art.”"<ref>William Rubin et al., eds., “Primitivism”"Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (New York : Boston: Museum of Modern Art ; Distributed by New York Graphic Society Books, 1984).</ref> He was trying to show there was an ‘affinity’'affinity' between the two types of art. Scholar [[Jean-Hubert Martin]] argued this attitude effectively meant that the ‘tribal’'tribal' art objects were “given"given the status of not much more than footnotes or addenda to the Modernist avant-garde.”"<ref>Jean-Hubert Martin, The Whole Earth Show, interview by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, July 1989.</ref> Rubin's exhibition was divided into four different parts: Concepts, History, Affinities, and Contemporary Explorations. Each section is meant to serve a different purpose in showing the connections between modern art and non-Western ‘art'art.’'

In 2017, the [[Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac]] in collaboration with the Musée National Picasso – Paris, put on the exhibition ''Picasso Primitif''. Yves Le Fur, the director, stated he wanted this exhibition to invite a dialogue between “the"the works of Picasso – not only the major works but also the experiments with aesthetic concepts – with those, no less rich, by non-Western artists."<ref>Yves Le Fur, “Picasso"Picasso Primitif,”" Exhibition Leaflet, Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, 2017, 2.</ref> ''Picasso Primitif'' meant to offer a comparative view of the artist's works with those of non-Western artists. The resulting confrontation was supposed to reveal the similar issues those artists have had to address such as nudity, sexuality, impulses and loss through parallel plastic solutions.

In 2018, the [[Montreal Museum of Fine Arts]] had an exhibition titled ''From Africa to the Americas: Face-to-Face Picasso, Past and Present''. The MMFA adapted and expanded on ''Picasso Primitif'' by bringing in 300 works and documents from the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac and the Musée National Picasso – Paris. [[Nathalie Bondil]] saw the issues with the ways in which Yves Le Fur presented Picasso's work juxtaposed to non-Western art and objects and found a way to respond to it. The headline of this exhibition was, “A"A major exhibition offering a new perspective and inspiring a rereading of art history.”"<ref>“From"From Africa to the Americas: Face-to-Face Picasso, Past and Present,”" The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, accessed December 3, 2018.</ref> The exhibition looked at the transformation in our view of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas from the end of the 19th century to the present day. Bondil wanted to explore the question about how ethnographic objects come to be viewed as art. She also asked, “How"How can a Picasso and an anonymous mask be exhibited in the same plane?”"<ref>Ian McGillis, “MMFA"MMFA Show Shines a Light on How Picasso Tapped into Africa to Redefine Art in the 20th Century,”" Montreal Gazette, May 4, 2018.</ref>

*Connelly, S. Frances. ''The Sleep of Reason: Primitivism in Modern European Art and Aesthetics, 1725-19071725–1907''. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.