Primitivism

The term primitivism was first used in France in the 19th century as an art historical term, meaning an imitation of the primitive, first being understood the Italians and Flemings in the 14th and 15th century under the " primitives ".

In the Webster of 1934 the term was extended: " belief in the superiority of the primitive life, return to nature ".

Primitivism not is the art of indigenous peoples, the former tribal art, primitivism is a phenomenon first European modernism, a "modern art movement that can be inspired by primitive art " ( Duden, 1973).

Development

The work of Paul Gauguin, which reached a transformation from an art of visual perception ( Impressionism ) to an art of spiritual conception, is the starting point of modern primitivism - with its primitivism was more philosophical than aesthetic in nature. He was interested in the Polynesian art only limited and Gauguin used as decorative tools or symbols. He also saw cultures as primitive in (Egypt, Cambodia, etc.) are no longer considered as such today.

1882 could produce a vivid ethnographic collection of art objects from overseas the Musée d' ethnography of Trocadéro already, but showed no interest in this artist. It was only in 1906 began the Fauves collections to create, where they mainly gathered those objects that corresponded most because of their relatively strong realism of the traditional 19th-century definition of " primitives ". Often these stylized realism of Western missionaries was affected. An influence of indigenous styles can be seen in the works of the Fauves.

With Picasso's Les Demoiselles d' Avignon picture of 1907, a decisive turning point in the development of primitivism can be seen. In Paris, a great interest in indigenous art was awakened and Picasso and the Cubists " created " the primitivism of the 20th century by addressing directly to individual works of indigenous artists. The art of the Cubists now had a specific, narrower and more aesthetically oriented importance.

More avant-garde artists such as Paul Klee, Joan Miró and Alexander Calder used the motifs of indigenous peoples as a metaphor for the forces of nature.

After the Second World War, artists took only rarely with respect to individual objects - it's a looser, indirect and especially more intellectually embossed primitivism. The inspiration comes from the history of ideas and sociology, so more texts ( by Georges Bataille, Michel Leiris, Claude Lévi -Strauss and others) as 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 9 years, and then spent his life in the metropolis of Paris as a bank clerk. He then separated from his wife and child, and generally hated by the entire bourgeois society and drew him first in the "primitive" Brittany, then to Panama, Martinique, Tahiti and finally he ended his life in the Marquesas Islands.

Gauguin as heir to a long tradition

Even in ancient times, there were writings that mourned the loss of simplicity. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans encountered on their voyages of discovery to them unknown companies and evaluated their lifestyles. This " noble savage " thought they were wholesome, innocent and wise. Your purer virtues they had achieved by simple thoughts - as opposed to the superficial and effeminate prestigious artificiality of European society. In the 18th century Enlightenment philosophers took up these ideas and saw in the " primitive life " by them desired state of happiness. This euphoria, and exaltation became a central aspect of the progressive political, but also religious ideas. The fruits of this rethinking can just find at Gauguin - but he represented those primitivism, which related to cultural aspects and not on ideological ( life after a natural order ). In the 19th century it came alongside this tendency to rethink and to an anti - primitivist counterflow. These defended the racially conditioned culture hierarchy, claiming the animal brutality of the "barbarians".

Gauguin, a restless and internally disordered person sought a self-healing and promised this in the study. The Original, the primitive After the basic philosophical thought was more important than the Advanced. This meant a superior force of simplified forms and thus increased the value of the primitives. Paul Gauguin's questions about the origin of human creativity and communication led him to the " backward " Brittany, where he led a simple life.

This was also the place where Gauguin was a significant advance for the art accomplished - he reached a turning away from Impressionism and thus an anti- naturalistic attitude. For Gauguin Impressionism in the brain was a slave of the senses. But he believed in the superiority of spirit over matter. An important milestone in this development is his picture from 1889 D "ie vision after prayer - Jacob wrestling with the angel ." It shows a new form of will, which is determined more by the imagination than on nature impressions. The image combines visible (praying women) and Visionary ( battle with angels).

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