Art History: BVA 312 - 03/06/2019 (Reference book: The story of art, The Meaning of modern art, African influences in modern art)
The story of art(Gombrich, 2006)
We call these people ‘primitive’ nor because there are simpler than us – their processes of thought are often more complicated than ours – but because they are closer to the state from which all mankind once emerged. (PG37)
The value of ‘art’ is different during the primitive era and modern era. The primitive is sometimes even more vague about what is real and what is a picture. (PG39) EG: when a European artist made drawings of cattle in an Afican village, the inhabitants were distressed: ‘If you take them away with you, what are we to live on?’
The first discovery on Primitive art was during the nineteenth century on the walls of caves and rocks in Spain and southern France. Archaeologists refused to believe that such life like representations of animals could have made during the ice age.
PG40: The oldest relics of that universal belief in the power of picture-making. (animal is able to succumb to their power)
- People of our own day who have still preserved their ancient customs.
- Scratch pictures of animals on rocks for magic purpose.
- They believe dances that involve wearing like an animal is able to give them power over their prey. Fairy tale manner, wolf tribe , raven tribe, frog tribe.
- Animal Totem
We are not aware of Primitive art around us.
PG42
Tribal craftsmenship is indeed astonishing. On the contrary, many remote tribes has developed a truly amazing skill in craving, in basket work, in the preparation of leather, or even in the working of metals. ** We can only marvel at the patience and sureness of touch which these primitive craftsmen have acquired through centuries of specialization.
What is the meaning of tribal art?
PG42
The Maoris of New Zealand have learned to work veritable wonders in their woodcraft. We misunderstand the beauty of tribal art, identifying them as odd and assuming that their work looks odd. The degree of beauty among nowadays’ and their age was different.
The meaning of real through craving.
He takes the impressionit makes as a token of its magic power.
Example: Polynesian’s God of war. The Polynesian are excellent carvers, but they obviously did not find it essential to make this a current representation of a man. Using geometric shape to form the face consider as a new discovery for the native artist.
Meaningful meaning underlays on native art’s sculpture art. It doesn’t just represent some simple meaning of life in what they thought was ugly built. It was a tale, a mythical tale showing, oral value, and believers. It also represents a person’s totem. * the shape of nature is transform into a consistent pattern.
Summary: If we try to enter into the mentality which created these uncanny idols, we may begin to understand how image-making in these early civilizations was not only connected with magic and religion but was also the first form of writing.
Modern Art (PG423)
Artist: Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) from southern France.
· Gauguin was not the first artist to have these qualms about civilization. Ever since artist had become self-conscious about ‘style’ they felt distrustful of conventions and impatient of mere skill. At first he studies peasant art, but it did not hold him for long. He needs must get away from Europe and live among the native of the South Seas as one of them, to work out of his salvation. Looking so savage and primitive.
· He was proud to be called a ‘barbarian’. Even his colour and draughtsmanship should be ‘barbaric’ to do justice to the unspoilt children of nature he had come to admire during the stay in Tahiti.
· He studies the primitive art and strove to bring his own portraits of the natives into harmony. So he simplified the outlines of forms and did not shrink from using large patches of strong colours.
· Learned how to represent nature, how to draw correctly and how to use paint and brush.
Pg 427
He was dissatisfied with life and art as he found them. He longed for something much simpler and more direct and hoped to find it among the primitives.
Gombrich’s mentioned that modern art grew out of these feelings of dissatisfaction. [the felling of dissatisfaction from Cezanne, Van gogh and Gauguin became the ideals of three movements in Modern Art. Cezanne: Cubism, Van Gogh: expressionism, Gauguin: Primitivism.]
Modern Art… the break of tradition… remind people of the “good old days”.
WHY??
Pg 421
Going back to the France Revolution of 1789, artist has become self-conscious about Stylethat initiated the launch of new movement, the born of new ‘ism’.
The future belonged to those who decided to begin afresh and to rid themselves of this preoccupation with style or ornaments, were it old and new.
Pg 432
The modernism has unconsciously merge into our life, commercial, fashion, illustration etc.
- The answer seems to be that art has lost its bearings because artist have discovered that the simple demand that they should ‘paint what they see’ is self-contradictory. [Citing back how primitive art form a portrait]
- Learning of to see. We can never neatly separate what we see from what we know. A person who is born blind, and who gains eyesight later on, must learn to see.
Pg 434
The sense of impression is important, like primitive art. We should face the basic facts of image-making honestly. The modernist turns to primitive art for more inspiration.
During the revolution in art that mounted to its climax before the first world war, an admiration of Negro sculpture was indeed one of the enthusiasms that bound together young artist of the most varied tendencies.
Pg 435
When looking at one of the masterpieces of African sculpture, we figure why such an image could appeal so strongly to a generation that looked for a way out of the impasse of Western art.
The meaning of Modern Art (Russel, 1981 )
Gauguin is a very important figure. He inspiration towards primitive art creates many influencers “young artist”, that lead to a new movement during the early 20thcentury. He set artist free from copying the beauty of nature.
Pg 35
He believed that desperate situation called for desperate remedies. When he went to the South Seas it was not to ‘escape forever’ but to save himself – perhaps Europe too – from inanition. Him ideas after coming back was spread to Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Kirchner and his colleagues and many others before 1914.
Gauguin also showed how colourcould be heightened in the interests of truth to individual human feeling. ** “Heighten colour, simplify form” was the sense of what Gauguin has told his audience.
Journal: The Influence of Primitive Art.
Strangely enough, Gauguin was the only one of the five directly influenced by primitive art but not by the art of Tabiti. The exotic color and rhythms that developed in his paintings came chiefly from the jungle environment and the natural mode of living of the Ta hitians. His primitive influence came from Egyptian paintings he had seen in the Louvre in Paris. (Pg3)
painting in Europe had changed its style slowly with each new movement evolving from or rebelling against the preceding movement. It seems strange that suddenly around 1900, painters and sculptors should choose to find their influences in the extremely different primitive art. However, this was not the nrst time foreign influence had appeared in western Europe. The eighteenth century had seen a strong invasion of Chinese porcelains, textiles, and lacquer-work which became popular in the decoration of interiors. By the 1870's, soon after Japan was opened to westem trade, colored wood-cuts from that country were flowing into the art markets of Europe.
Artist slowly understand the importance of conveying message through space with drawing, not by decorative. This is able to correspond to Primitive art .
Gauguin, and Van Gogh. Deep space in these prints was controlled more by visual than by illusionistic means.
Pg 4
Later, when Matisse, Rouault, and Vla minck began to see the sculptures from Negro Mrica and the South Seas as works of art rather than exotic curiosities, they realized that the creators of these works were sincere and completely unself-conscious. They began to combine the Hat bright colors of Gauguin and Van Gogh with the simplification found in primitive art to reach new heights of personal expression. These men first exhibited as a group in the Salon d'Automne in 1905.Because of their bright colors and freely distorted drawing, they soon became known as "Les Fauves"-"the Wild Beasts".
Most primitive art has a practical reason for its existence-it is a means to another end. Usually this purpose is re ligious with men seeing the various idols of wood and stone as embody ing their various gods. In the presence of these objects, they have an experience of both immanence and transcendence. But the artists of Europe, when viewing these objects in the ethnographic museums, knew nothing of their specific religious meanings and were free to see them as a means to esthetic enjoyment.
Matisse, Rouault, Nolde, and Kirchner recognized the impOltance of this integrity when the publicly-accepted art in Europe was academic, traditional, literary, sterile and shallow-anything but sincere.
Modern art became an important influence rapidly.
Pg 5
It is because primitive man does not divide the important activities of his life. His religious beliefs truly fmm a core around which and to which all other activities are related. He does not separate the religious from the esthetic and the practical. Hence, everything he does expresses this integration.
As sincerity of expression, simplicity of form, and arbitrary color in primitive art influenced the Expressionists, the tendency toward abstract forms i n primitive sculpture influenced the Cubists and Abstractionists. Cezanne stated in one of his letters: «Everything in nature may be re solved into the sphere, the cone, and the cylinder." When Picasso and Braque first became acquainted with primitive sculpture around 1905, they also saw it, not as idols representing gods and goddesses, but as works of art which they experienced esthetically.
Picasso saw them as variations based on the figure and offering new experiences to the observer. He saw the primitive artist as one who analyzed and separated the various parts of the body and then re-assembled them into a new esthetic synthesis.
Pg 6
In the development of Cubism,Picasso and Braque took many ideas from the abstract characteristics found in Mrican sculpture. From 1906 through 1912, they were gradually flattening out the picture plane until there was hardly any depth at all.
Pg 7
symbolic significance of primitive works, we see them as examples of abstract art.
It is the same how other historian pictures Modern art with primitive art. We need to be honest to our self, and open-minded enough to see and accept it.
We must learn to integrate our lives
rather than fragment them, to speak in truths rather than rationalizations, and to destroy the illusions that blind us to reality.We must learn to ex press ourselves honestly in relation to what we are and to what we can become. This is the meaning that serious artists have found in primitive art.It is also a message that the art of our times has for us if we are open-minded enough to see it.
African Influences in Modern Art
Museum exhibition
They were placed on view in museums such as the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris, and its counterparts in cities including Berlin, Munich, and London. At the time, these objects were treated as artifacts of colonized cultures rather than as artworks, and held so little economic value that they were displayed in pawnshop windows and flea markets.
Focusing on Paul Gauguin, Picasso, Henry Matisse and Primitive Art.
Picasso: The discovery of African tribal art by Picasso around 1906 was an important influence on his painting in general, and was a major factor in leading him to cubism. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/primitivism
Works Cited
C.Mcgill, D. (1984, September 23). What does modern art owe to the primitives?Retrieved from The New York Times : https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/23/arts/what-does-modern-art-owe-to-the-primitives.html
Gombrich, E. (2006). The story of Art .United Kingdom: Phaidon .
Kilgore, R. (1964 ). The Influence of Primitive Art .Retrieved from Honorees for teachibg excellence : https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=teaching_excellence
Russel, J. (1981 ). The Meaning of Modern Art .London : Thames and Hudson .
tate . (n.d.). Primitivism .Retrieved from TATE: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/primitivism
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