Primitivism: Difference between revisions

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 colonised peoples, whilst 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>

 

 

Notable among the artists of the Négritude movement is the Cuban artist [[Wifredo Lam]] who was associated with Picasso and the [[Surrealism|surrealists]] in Paris, in the 1930s.<ref>Stokes Sims, Lowery. ''Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-garde, 1923–1982'', University of Texas Press, 2002 p. 000.</ref> On returning to Cuba in 1941, Lam was emboldened to create dynamic tableaux that integrated human beings, animals, and Nature. In ''The Jungle'' (1943), Lam's polymorphism creates a fantastical jungle scene featuring African motifs among the stalks of sugar cane to represent the connection between the neo-African idealism of Négritude and the history of plantation slavery for the production of [[Sugar|table sugar]].