Primitivism

This article is about primitivism in the visual arts. For the social movement, see anarcho-primitivism. For the American art style, see Primitive decorating. For art by self-taught artists, see naïve art. For other meanings of "primitivism" or "primitive", see Primitive.
In a Tropical Forest Combat of a Tiger and a Buffalo (1908–1909), by Henri Rousseau

In the arts of the Western World, Primitivism is a mode of aesthetic idealization that means to recreate the experience of the primitive time, place, and person, either by emulation or by re-creation. In Western philosophy, Primitivism proposes that the people of a primitive society possess a morality and an ethics that are superior to the urban value system of civilized people.[1]

In European art, the aesthetics of primitivism included techniques, motifs, and styles copied from the arts of Asian, African, and Australasian peoples perceived as primitive in relation to the urban civilization of western Europe. In that light, the painter Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian imagery to his oil paintings was a characteristic borrowing of technique, motif, and style that was important for the development of Modern art (1860s–1970s) in the late 19th century.[2] As a genre of Western art, Primitivism reproduced and perpetuated racist stereotypes, such as the "noble savage", with which colonialists justified white colonial rule over the non-white other in Asia, Africa, and Australasia.[3]

Moreover, the term primitivism also identifies the techniques, motifs, and styles of painting that predominated representational painting before the emergence of the Avant-garde; and also identifies the styles of naïve art and of folk art produced by amateur artists, such as Henri Rousseau, who painted for personal pleasure.[4]

  1. ^ Hirsch, Edward (2014). A Poet's Glossary. New York: HMH. p. 485. ISBN 978-0-15-101195-7.
  2. ^ Atkins, Robert. Artspoke (1993) ISBN 978-1-55859-388-6
  3. ^ See: Marianna Torgovnick. Gone primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Ben Etherington, Literary Primitivism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018).
  4. ^ Camayd-Freixas, Erik; Gonzalez, Jose Eduardo (2000). Primitivism and Identity in Latin America: Essays on Art, Literature, and Culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-8165-2045-9.