Primitivism (art)
The term primitivism was first used in France in the 19th century as an art-historical term and meant an imitation of the primitive, whereby the "primitives" were initially understood to mean the Italians and Flemings of the 14th and 15th centuries.
In Webster of 1934 the term was expanded: "Belief in the superiority of primitive life, return to nature".
Primitivism does not designate the art of indigenous peoples , the earlier tribal art , primitivism is a phenomenon first of the European modernity, a "modern art movement that can be inspired by the art of the primitive" ( Duden , 1973).
There were also primitivist currents in literature , for example in Sweden ( Artur Lundkvist ).
development
The work of Paul Gauguin , who achieved a change from an art of optical perception ( impressionism ) to an art of spiritual conception, is considered the starting point of modern primitivism - although its primitivism was more philosophical than aesthetic in nature. He was only interested in Polynesian art to a limited extent and Gauguin used it as decorative aids or symbols. He also saw cultures as primitive ( Egypt , Cambodia etc.) which are no longer considered as such today.
In 1882 the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro already had a vivid ethnographic collection of art objects from overseas, but artists were not yet interested in them. It was not until 1906 that the Fauvists began to set up collections, primarily collecting those objects which, because of their relatively pronounced realism, most corresponded to the definition of “primitive” handed down from the 19th century. Often this stylized realism was influenced by Western missionaries. An influence of indigenous styles can be seen in the works of the Fauvists.
With Picasso's picture Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of 1907, a decisive turning point in the development of primitivism reveals. A great interest in indigenous art was aroused in Paris and Picasso and the Cubists "created" the primitivism of the 20th century by directly addressing individual works by indigenous artists. The art of the Cubists now had a concrete, narrower and more aesthetically oriented meaning. The Baud Collection , one of the few collections of African folk art created during the French colonial era, which coined the term “ L'Art Négre ” , had a significant influence .
Other avant-garde artists such as Paul Klee , Joan Miró and Alexander Calder used the motifs of primitive peoples as a metaphor for the forces of nature.
After the Second World War , artists rarely referred to individual objects - it is a looser, more indirect and, above all, more intellectually influenced primitivism. The inspiration comes from the history of ideas and sociology, i.e. more from texts (by Georges Bataille , Michel Leiris , Claude Lévi-Strauss and others) than from works of art.
Paul Gauguin's primitivism
Paul Gauguin is the progenitor and undisputed forerunner of primitivism. As a child, he was raised by his widowed mother in Peru for 9 years and then spent the rest of his life in the metropolis of Paris as a bank clerk. But then he separated from his wife and child and from all of the bourgeois society he hated and moved first to "primitive" Brittany , then to Panama , Martinique , Tahiti and finally he ended his life on the Marquesas Islands .
Gauguin as heir to a long tradition
Even in ancient times there were fonts that complained about the loss of simplicity. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans encountered unknown societies on their voyages of discovery and appreciated their way of life. They considered these “noble savages” unspoiled, innocent and wise. They would have achieved their purer virtues through simple thoughts - in complete contrast to the superficial and effeminate artificiality of European society. In the 18th century the Enlightenment took up these ideas and saw in "primitive life" the state of happiness they strived for. This euphoria and glorification became a central aspect of progressive political, but also religious ideas. The fruits of this rethinking can be found in Gauguin - however, he represented that primitivism that referred to cultural aspects and not to ideological ones (living according to a natural order). In the 19th century, in addition to this tendency to rethink, there was also an anti-primitivist countercurrent. This defended the racially determined cultural hierarchy and asserted the animal rawness of the " barbarians ".
Gauguin, a restless and inwardly shattered person, strived for self-healing and promised himself this in the study of the original, the primitive. According to philosophical thought, the basic was more important than the sophisticated. This meant a superior power of simplified forms and thus increased the value of the primitive. Paul Gauguin's questions about the origin of human creativity and communication led him to the “retarded” Brittany, where he led a simple life.
This was also the place where Gauguin made a decisive advance in art - he achieved a turn away from impressionism and thus an anti- naturalistic attitude. For Gauguin, in Impressionism, the brain was a slave to the senses. But he believed in the superiority of spirit over matter. An important milestone in this development is his picture from 1889 "The vision after prayer - Jacob's fight with the angel". It shows a new will to form, which is determined more by the imagination than by impressions of nature. The picture combines the visible (praying women) and the visionary (fight with angels).
See also
literature
- Robert Goldwater : Primitivism in Modern Art , 1966. First in 1938, in a form limited to painting, as Primitivism in Modern Painting . Most recently in an edition with two additional articles at Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1986
- William S. Rubin (Ed.): Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art . Prestel, Munich, 1996, ISBN 3-7913-1716-4
Individual evidence
- ↑ Klaus von Beyme: The Age of the Avant-gardes: Art and Society 1905–1955 , p. 448 , accessed on January 8, 2011