- What is primitive art?
- Characteristics of primitive art
- history of primitive art
- Importance of primitive art
- examples of primitive art
We explain what primitive art is and its characteristics. Also, why it is a controversial concept and various examples.
What is primitive art?
In the history of art Primitive art is called different artistic trends that have in common being traditionally considered as marginal or ancient, from the point of view of Western art.
It is therefore a highly discussed and criticized category, accused of valuing European art above the traditions and manifestations of the rest of the planet (that is, of Eurocentrism). It is also a category that includes artistic forms as different from each other as a Mesopotamian vessel, an African mask and a Frida Kahlo painting.
Broadly speaking, primitive art would be that which is prior to concept of art itself, such as ancient art or the art of the so-called "primitive cultures" of the prehistory. Thus, it would apply to the works of the Paleolithic superior, some of which may date as far back as 20,000 or 10,000 years B.C. Seen in this way, primitive art would actually be the "art of primitive peoples" or the "art of prehistoric peoples".
The problem is that this notion of the "primitive", that is, the old and little developed, the backward, the remote, was also used between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries to name the art of pre-Columbian African, Asian and American peoples. Considered from the European colonialist point of view of the time, they were "primitive" as they were typical of less industrialized or less technologically developed regions.
This criterion survived, for example, in the way in which the "primitive stages" or "primitivist" of the artistic career of great European painters such as Pablo Picasso or Paul Gauguin are known, that is, the phases of their career in which they were influenced by African or Asian art.
In a similar way, the term primitive art can also be used for those plastic works by authors who are not academically trained, that is, by self-taught painters and/or sculptors, as is the case of the Mexican Frida Kahlo, whose works reflect a “uneducated” relationship with art, that is, an intuitive relationship, more “wild”, more spontaneous.
As can be seen, in all these cases the notion of the "primitive" is used in opposition to the worship, to the academically correct.
Finally, it is possible to find paint the term "primitive" to refer to the first masters of a local European tradition, as is the case of the Flemish Primitives (the masters of Flemish painting in its initial centuries, from the fifteenth to the sixteenth), the Italian Primitives (the master painters Italians of the late Middle Ages), etc.
Characteristics of primitive art
As can be seen from the initial explanation, it is difficult to detail the universal characteristics of primitive art, since it is a very broad category and is highly questioned in the classification of art. However, a characterization of primitive art should highlight that:
- These are art forms that are far removed from the traditional Western artistic canon, or that have a marginal relationship with the tradition of Western art history. This may be because they date from much earlier times and cultures very distant, or because they are the result of the "wild" talent of an author autodidact, without academic training in art.
- Old, naive, childish, spontaneous, popular art forms or those that deliberately pursue any of these traits are attributed to him. Thus, a consecrated painter may have a "primitive" stage in which he tries to "recover" the "primitive" or "pure" forms of expression of ancient humanity or pre-modern peoples.
- In the event that they are prehistoric works, they reflect the culture, religion, practices and considerations of the world of its people, through its forms, strokes and materials used.
- In the event that they are works by self-taught authors, they generally move away from all kinds of artistic movements or schools established in their time, and follow their own course, oblivious to trends or traditions.
- In the event that they are works by established authors, then they deliberately pursue a "return" to the basics, to the simple and the little elaborate, features associated with the "primitive".
- In the event that we speak of the first masters of European local traditions, we will see in their works the first marks of what later became a classical style or a consecrated artistic school.
history of primitive art
Painters like Paul Klee sought to return to the fundamentals of art.
The category of the "primitive" began to be used in art in the Europe colonial. For this reason, from the beginning it was imbued with a derogatory connotation: the primitive was typical of "backward" peoples.
This is how he understood the Europe of the mercantilism and the Industrial Revolution to the other latitudes from which it extracted the raw material for its development. Therefore, the term must have been born sometime between the 16th and 18th centuries.
However, at the end of the 19th century two schools of painting emerged under the name of primitivism:
- The Western school involving painters such as Paul Gaugin, Mikhail Larionov and Paul Klee and also the "naive" art of the time.
- The Eastern school born in Russia around many painters of the movement known as the Page of Diamonds. It was considered a movement against the French influence on European painting at the time.
However, it is convenient not to confuse primitive art and primitivism, even if they somehow form similar manifestations of the same idea of “the primitive”.
Importance of primitive art
The importance of primitive art is difficult to pin down in general terms. It is a highly criticized and rejected category.
This concept reveals a complex aspect of modern ideas of art history: that the influence of Europe has been so powerful in recent times, that the entire trajectory of art, from the dawn of humanity to today, is often thought of in terms of Europe as the center, as the "normal" of art, when in real terms it is a small sector of humanity, comparatively speaking.
However, primitivism as a category also reflects the desire for renewal and "back to basics" that is characteristic of many artists at some point in their careers. The movements of primitivism had that precise idea: to return to the fundamentals of art in order to renew it.
examples of primitive art
Some examples of primitive art in its very diverse possibilities are the following works:
- The paintings cave found in the cave of Altamira in Spain, and which are around 36,000 years old.
- A death mask found in Nigeria, Africa, belonging to the Idoma people.
- A naive landscape painted by an anonymous popular painter and sold to tourists.
- Picture ship mahana ship by the French painter Paul Gauguin, belonging to his Tahitian period (in other words, inspired by Tahiti).
- Self-portrait The two Fridas of the self-taught Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.