Art History: BVA 312 - 02/06/2019 (What does Modern art owe to the Primitivism)

Art History 

Primitivism and Modern art. What relationships can we find? 

Suggested question:

·     How Primitive art shaped modern art? 

·     The style of Primitive art dominants the art movement during the Modern era. What is the relationship between the Primitive art and modern art?  

·     How museum space shifted as modernist artist was highly inspired by the style of Primitivism.

What does Modern Art owe to the primitives? (C.Mcgill, 1984)

This art exhibition present the relationships between Primitive art and Modern Art. Theseart works were presented side by side to shows a better contrast of its similarity.

The meaning of primitivism: 

** When Picasso declared that ‘primitive sculpture has never been surpassed’ 

(Find the meaning at another book) 

Why Primitive art appeal to Westerners in 1984 

**Tended to reassure people with its message that the world was ordered and manageable by an animistic system of belief. 

-      We are getting back to certain roots, not just artistically, but of our own humanity and psychology. 

-Mr. Rubin's exhibition attempts to overthrow the conventional belief that the major influence of tribal art on modern art was in the formal and esthetic realm.

-Redefining for modern artists the very nature of art and art-making itself.

The phenomenon is that nearly every major museum, and several smaller ones, are mounting exhibitions of ''primitive'' art - art of tribal peoples from Africa, Oceania and North America - this month or next. The largest and most scholarly of the exhibitions begins this Thursday at the Museum of Modern Art, where the curator William Rubin and co-curator Kirk Varnedoe have produced a show that exhaustively documents the profound effects of tribal art on the development of modern art. Entitled '' 'Primitivism' in the 20th Century: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern,'' the show will run to Jan 15.

the Museum of Modern Art show is the only one that directly addresses the riddle of primitive art in the modern age. It consists of 150 modern and contemporary pieces and 200 pieces of tribal art, often displayed side by side for comparative purposes. A two-volume, heavily illustrated catalogue, filled with 20 essays by Mr. Rubin, Mr. Varnedoe and other art historians, and one of the artist is Pablo Picasso.

Picasso: 

''What Picasso told me was exactly the opposite of what I expected,'' Mr. Rubin said. ''The received wisdom was that he was interested in primitive art because of its abstract nature, as a kind of proto-Cubism. What he made clear to me, though, was that he was even more interested in its magical force, its sense of the irrational, which he found very strong. He believed that Western art had gotten too far from what might be called the magical roots of image-making. He felt that with 19th-century traditions of salon painting, art had gotten washed out, lost all of its power and juice. He wanted to restore it by going back to its roots.''

-Picasso on Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (First exorcism influenced by the form of Africa)

[Highlight this work, define more. what element was used and why it became such a master piece]

-The great Picasso was triggered by the abstraction, it gave him a sense of irrational. He believed that western at had gotten too far from what might be called the magicial roots of image -making. 

            - 19^thcentury traditional salon has gotten Art washed in its power and juice. 

            *restoring the roots. 

- Contemporary art works, according to Mr. Varnedoe, express wide- ranging types of new affinities being found by modern artists exploring primitive art.

Museum’s exhibition on Primitive art 

The relationship between Contemporary participants and third world peoples 

Dr. Mary Schmidt-Campbell, the director of the Studio Museum of Harlem, said that that the acceptance of African art into mainstream modern culture is a healthy trend,

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