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SITE FOR POSTING CLASS READING RESPONSES AS COMMENTS. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ON OTHER POSTS. History of Art, U.C. Berkeley. Instructor Sarah Hamill
FUR-LINED CUP, MERET OPPENHEIM, 1936
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- Minimalism: For Class 3/31
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Kelly Sun
ReplyDeleteResponse 5
February 2, 2009
In “Primitivism and the ‘Modern,’” Gill Perry goes into depth about the development of the ‘primitivist’ tradition and the shift from realism to modernist symbolism. Perry distinguishes how in the twentieth century, the ‘primitive’ term was a result of “a Western-centred view of an alien culture” (233) and is used for “defining that culture as different from our own.” In this sense, the judgment for how primitive a culture is becomes relative. I did find this as a term and manner of thinking that is elitist and could be extremely offensive and controversial.
I don’t agree that simply because a society might be ‘closer to nature’ means they are more primitive and less civilized. After all, many of the primitivist works were of peasants and farm life in the rural regions of France. I don’t see how the lifestyle of these peasants can really be considered any less civilized than those living in urban cities. For example, Stanhope Forbes’ painting A Street in Brittany, depicts a scene of peasants standing in a run down neighborhood. While the environment is definitely not considered particularly glamorous or high class, I would not consider it primitive. The run down environment is most likely a result of the lack of affluence characteristic of rural life. It does not mean that the peasants themselves are barbaric or less civilized. Why must the more impoverished lifestyle be considered primitive?
What I found mediatory towards the elitist view of what is considered primitive is the European perspective that the rural peasant was in fact seen as “a figure of great moral worth, uncorrupted by the sophistication and materialism of the modern world” (238). It was interesting to read that although people living in the urban areas saw themselves as more civilized than the peasantry, they admired the peasants for their morality and lives free of corrupted materialism. It was intriguing that even back then, the ‘civilized’ people were beginning to see the corruption that was coming with industrialization and modernism.
In addition, I found it interesting that symbolism came to be linked to primitivism; that a specific simpler visual language was developed in order to depict the more ‘primitive’ subject matter. Perry explains how the artist would use lines, colors, and forms to reveal meaning and emotions. This was clearly seen through Bernard’s clear erasure of three dimensions and depth in his paintings. He would instead use dark outlines to surround certain areas of color, which really abstracted the art. Primitivism became focused on “abstract(ing) from nature, rather than seek(ing) to record it”(245). Due to the common perception that the rural or primitive life was much simpler than urban lifestyles, artists found it appropriate to employ a simpler visual language.
Response 5 R1B
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Carl Einsteins essay on African art and Cubism, I was slightly confused about his separation of form and mass. He seems to be speaking of form in the sense that it is the concept of motion and all angles in the third dimension of a sculpture – a distillation of actual conceptualization put into the artwork to a mere giving of oneself into the artwork. In this way, I understand his use of the term form as something that comes through in sculpture as treating the artwork as if it is more than the maker – in other words, transcending the maker. The maker or artist is merely a worshipper who already sees the “godliness” of the artwork and so consumes himself in making not a visual effect, but honoring what is already present through an object. From this, the object becomes not a product of the artist, but the actual “god” or transcendence itself – which is alive and full of motion – bigger than the artist or worshipper themselves. Mass seemed to be the aesthetic and visual façade of a three dimensional object involving what Einstein calls the “depth quotient.” So, in effect, the mass is not the form since it is a visual effect. I am still not sure if this contrast / separation was his exact argument for the disproportional appearance of African sculpture.
Additionally, I like his definition of primitivism in a way, better than the other guy we had to read. He seemed to link primitivism with purity and the transcendence of the artwork itself above the artist and any abstract notion the artist may have. It is past a visual façade it seems and in this way, he is able to reprimand Western European society for its prejudice concerning Africans.
The totality of a cubist work is given its totality by an adherence to form as a separate entity from mass and the three dimensional effect. I think it ties in with the Foucault idea of discourse. Since discourse was defined in the sense that it is the all encompassing texts of a culture, a culture bigger than the artist himself, where the texts are anything from treatise, science, ads and literature. In this “discourse” and in representing this discourse devoid of any underlying abstract motives and concepts – only projecting the experience of something the artist has no power over, that which is above and larger than the artist – the cubist and the primitivist can achieve a true artwork. In this selflessness, the artwork is no longer a façade of mass or visual effect, but an experience in all dimensions and of motion.
The biggest problem I have with modern “primitivism” is nudity. It’s not just a matter of somebody being nude and is in a painting, but the way it is done in these kinds of paintings. It really appears that these artists took advantage of women who did not understand the significance of nudity in the Western culture.
ReplyDeleteTime and time again, we see a woman or women lying around comfortably. To them, it appears that nudity is not something private, but just a regular part of living. There is no attempt to hide breasts, to hide any body part. There are several that strike the most to me. One is Alphonse-Etienne Dinet’s On the Terraces, Moonlight at Laghouat. Laghouat is in Algeria and was only colonized by France several decades before. Hence, it is a “primitive” culture in Western standards. In the painting, the women are fully nude, sitting and lying comfortably in the sun. They are completely relaxed, showing no signs of tension or unease about someone watching them. There is no attempt to hide any body part. The high level of study of light and shadow upon the nude body indicates Dinet spent a lot of time watching. Think about it. He is just watching them, observing them. It is not like they get anything in return. In our society, if someone poses nude they are paid back monetarily. There isn’t that “employer-employee” dynamic in this painting. It’s just unsettling to think that he’s just sitting there watching these naked women sunbathe with no right to watch them at all.
A painting that I find even more unsettling is Gauguin’s Spirit of the Dead Watching. The painting draws inspiration from Manet’s Olympia: the diagonal position of the woman’s body, the location of the scene across, a person in the background interacting with this woman. However, something doesn’t feel right about Gauguin’s painting when in comparison with Manet’s. The woman in Gauguin’s painting doesn’t look like a woman at all. On the contrary, she looks like a young girl, barely in her teenage years. Instead of her body positioned towards us, she is turned away from us. From the viewer’s perspective, this puts her in a vulnerable position. She cannot confront us head on and defy us as Olympia did. She can only lie there and come under fire of our perceiving minds and eyes. However, we are only looking at a painting of the scene. Gauguin painted this piece with the scene in front of his eyes. To think that he was watching this young girl lie there naked while all she could do was wait for him to finish painting is disconcerting. He is depriving her of the innocence granted at that age. And to think it was only done so so he could study painting and improve upon his skill, all I can do is turn away and hope these artists didn’t do more than simply paint these women upon a canvas.
Danielle Beeve
ReplyDeleteHistory of Art R1B
Section 6
My problem with the entire notion of ‘primitive’ art is how high and mighty the artists presumed themselves to be, thinking that because they were able to compare the differences between city life and simpler cultures this made them somehow superior. A philosopher-historian Michel Foucalt says that primitivism “involves a relationship of power; he means, for example, that those within Western society who analyse, teach, paint or reproduce a view of the ‘primitive’ would, by this activity, be dominating, restructuring and having authority over that which they define as ‘primitive’ ” (232). Instead of viewing these simpler lifestyles as a way to find new perspectives on art, some artists, such as Paul Gauguin, believed that these peasant cultures were somehow bringing out a hidden genius that was always present in him: “the artist saw himself as a direct communicator, a kind of innate savage, for whom the objects and stimulus within an unsophisticated culture enable rather than simply inspire the expression of what is thought to be inherent in the artist. The artist is self-defined as a superior being, as creatively endowed” (247). Such notions of superiority were common at this time, and the word ‘primitive’ was generally thought to signify “backward, uncivilized peoples and their cultures” (233). Alphonse-Etienne Dinet’s painting On the Terraces, Moonlight at Laghouat depicts two Algerian women one lying down in a very sensual kind of inviting posture. The women in the painting were described by L. Leonce Benedicte in a rather disrespectful way, “These little quivering bodies, elegant, supple, catlike and agile, making you think of all sorts of graceful animals, tame and wild…Their candid and primitive souls are revealed…It seems the he can even make us pick up the wild and musky scent of these young and savage bodies” (236). Apparently, although it was quite popular to paint such ‘primitive’ cultures at this time, the subjects of these works were not respected or admired in any way.
Perry devotes a section of the essay to a discussion of how women are portrayed in these paintings which describes women as “the feminine, the ‘other’ of civilized masculine culture” (252). Earlier in the work, Perry defines the ‘other’ as “a critical category which describes a tendency to misrepresent another…social group as different or alien, as somehow ‘other’ to the speaker’s own culture and experiences” (233). Immediately then, the depictions of happy and carefree females in the majority of Gauguin’s Breton works can be understood: “the rural female was represented as close to nature, as a symbol of the ‘natural’ peasant life” (250). Later on, Gauguin used nude females as the subjects of his paintings, “who come to symbolize the opposite of civilized urban life” (252). I am not particularly fond of these forms of ‘primitive’ paintings either, in both the case of the painting of different cultures and of women the subject is not represented out of admiration but out of a sense of superiority or condensation on the part of the painter. However, the paintings give us useful information about the perceptions of people in the time periods they were created in, and an idea of what ‘primitivism’ in art may have meant.
Felby Chen
ReplyDeleteHA R1B
Section 6
In Gill Perry’s “Primitivism and the ‘Modern’”, Perry discusses how primitivism came to be and describes what primitivism is.
Perry explains that primitivism first came into play when “forms of representation that were explicitly or implicitly opposed to urban Western culture co-existed with and displaced those nineteenth-century notions of modernity that were concerned with the aesthetic potential of urban themes”. A shift away from the processes of modernization, composed of industrialization and urbanization in Western society, began, and a move towards a “positive discrimination in favour of so-called ‘primitive’ subjects and techniques” was made. After all, society is continuously changing and incorporating new elements into its culture. With this gradual move away from modernism towards primitivism, “many nineteenth century artists”, such as Gauguin, “sought out ‘primitive’ sources and societies”.
With the emergence of primitivism, one begins to question what primitivism actually entails. People, after all, tend to throw out terms, expecting others to know what each term incorporates. According to Gill Perry, “the characteristics of ‘primitive’ sources conform[ed], rather than simply inspire[d] the changing interests of modern artists”. Primitive images had already begun appearing in modern art, but one can view primitivism as a deviation from modernism. Primitive images include images of naked or semi-naked woman. Primitive images “were [also] somehow in touch with a pure, direct mode of artistic expression”. In other words, a painter does not know what an object from early times (for example, African and Iberian masks, as used by Gill Perry) looks like, but has an idea of how it looks like, and creates a piece of art out of the painter’s own idea of the object. Primitivism, to be more direct, is an artistic belief that the characteristics of early cultures are superior to contemporary cultures, which is why the example of African and Iberian masks was proposed by Perry in his descriptive essay on “Primitivism and the ‘Modern’”, with the focus on objects from earlier civilizations.
While the primitive and modernistic characteristics may mix in the early stages of primitivism, primitivism gradually moves away from modernism and becomes a completely new artistic theory.
Brendan Cronshaw
ReplyDeleteResponse 5
2.4.09
Gill Perry lays out a thorough analysis and explanation of ‘primitivism’ in modern art circa the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and what fascinates me is the fact the ‘primitivism’ can be so paradoxical, in numerous ways.
One of the first things that Perry talks about, which is an important piece in the backbone of ‘primitivism’, is that “merely by using the word ‘primitive’, rather than one which gives a geographical designation of the culture in question (such as ‘African’, ‘Egyptian’, ‘Polynesian’), we are defining that culture as different from our own, as ‘primitive’ according to our Western notion of what is civilized” (p233). Much like cultural relativism, Perry lays out the idea that when someone labels a culture or a people ‘primitive’, they are doing so in relation to standards set by there own culture and lifestyle, and thus it is not a necessary assessment. It can also be seen as degrading and belittling which is where one of the paradoxes of this type of art seems to lie.
Its seems to mean that paintings done by Gauguin and numerous other painters that completed ‘primitive’ works, somewhat represented the simplicity and thus inferiority of the subjects depicted, but at the same time the fact that so much attention was given to them heightens their status and brings their existence to foreground. Gauguin even describes places, including Brittany, as “savage, primitive” where he “hear[s] the dull, muffled, powerful note that [he] is seeking in painting” (p236). And thus we can get the impression that although not bluntly or often stated, Gauguin does feel some sense of superiority to his subjects and surrounding. And yet at the same time he and many others like him, who are all part of this ‘going away’ movement as Perry describes it, take the time, effort and focus to capture such scenes and subjects and present them not only to the public but critics as well.
Perry does however clarify why such scenes and subjects were elevated to such levels in the fact that “the contemporary European obsession with the myth of the rural peasant as a figure of great moral worth, uncorrupted by the sophistication and materialism of the modern world, was a crucial shard interest” (p238). And this fascination and inquisitiveness is understandable but I don’t see why the paintings are toned down and simplified, with “flattened areas of rich colour, the use of dark outlines and the distortions and simplifications” (p248). Why not elevate these subjects to a high level and do so while depicting them in a naturalist way or some other technique. And at the same time, these were not so much Impressionist paintings, so then again the artists might not have been putting there own thoughts and opinions into the work. For me it is just a little confusing to fully comprehend, although both sides make sense, when you put them together it just becomes a little bit hazy.
Julia Herron
ReplyDeleteResponse Paper #5
I have to admit that this article made me more appreciative of Primitivism than I was before. Like many critics of the movement, I saw Primitivism as a simplified, almost crude way of representing a subject. I now realize that it takes as much, if not more, skill to create a Primitivist work. These artists knew exactly how to render a subject naturalistically, but they chose to go back to simple and intuitive subjects and techniques to convey honesty and simplicity.
The word “primitive”, like “impressionism”, was meant to be insulting or derogatory, but it accurately describes the artists’ goals. Gauguin saw himself as “a rediscoverer or prophet of some more direct, ‘primitive’ mode of expression” and felt that he had to escape to Brettany to find this new mode. Many other artists at this time felt the need to go away to the country, forming artists’ communities and colonies away from urban centers. Here they were able to paint en plein air and had a wealth of peasant subjects to study and paint.
One quality that we see throughout many Primitive works is distortion of scale and three-dimensional space. In Gauguin’s La vision après le sermon, the nuns in the foreground are flat and are on the same plane as Jacob and the angel. This creates closeness throughout the scene and makes the viewer feel more involved. Primitivist artists, like modern artists, “focus our attention as much on the actual processes of painting-on the surface of the canvas- as on the illusion created” (reader, p. 246).
Another Primitivist theme is gender, specifically women in nature. Although Post-Enlightenment art depicted women as being close to nature, Primitivists took a new approach, creating a feminine ‘other’. Religion, especially, is portrayed through this new female character, such as in the Worpsweder Madonna. Naked women come to symbolize the opposite of a civilized urban life.
We can’t know the extent to which African and Iberian artifacts influenced Picasso. But we can certainly see a resemblance between his works and “tribal” art, in the thick lines, the distorted faces and bodies, and the colors he chose in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. This resemblance brought about the argument that these works were not innovative. But it seems that any art can be traced to previous movements or artists, so I believe that Primitivism was an organic movement, influenced by tribal art or maybe not, but successful in its aim of looking at art and painting in a freshly simplistic and honest way.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCarl Einstein assesses the relationship of African art to religion vigorously in “African Sculpture-1915”. I found this interesting since, prior to this, religion rarely showed up in our readings. The way that he tied the religious element (one he describes as vital to African art) and the concept of the deity to art struck me as both surprising and enlightening.
ReplyDeleteEinstein reveals one clear connection between this religious art and the concepts we recently learned about regarding impressionist ideology. This is quite ironic, since the absence of faith and a priori knowledge represented impressionism, while religion represents the African art. Nonetheless, Einstein describes the art as “an immediate sensation (Einstein, 82)”. Beyond this, contrasts are apparent. In the case of this art, the fact that the viewer’s action is wholly excluded surprised me. I expected the religious element to convey itself through an interaction with the viewer—instead Einstein describes a portrayal of religion through pure transcendence that eliminates the possibility to approach the art “in decorative or ornamental terms (Einstein, 82)”.
Einstein also repeated the term “autonomous” throughout the reading. This further surprised me. He describes how the art exists only for itself, almost as if it is “too good” for the viewer. I found this slightly disturbing, though I admittedly am approaching the art in a far different manner than the African’s whom made the art did. I found the concept of autonomy to be especially strong in one way: the concept of the self-sufficiency representing “distance” between the viewer and subject. In these respects, Einstein very clearly explains his idea that the religious element is represented through autonomy. It goes without saying that religion, at least for these artists, contained deities of mythical proportions. As such, it makes sense for the deities to be depicted with clear separation from the mere mortal artists.
The way that Einstein contrasted the European art to African art furthered his point; I felt that his description of the role (or lack thereof) in the respective artistic styles revealed a clear facet of the African art to a further extent—that the art is emotionless and not symbolic in the least. It is what it is, and has no shame in being just that. While European artists, such as the ones we have observed thus far, all tied emotion and an active process into the creation of their artwork, these African artists did no such thing. I feel as though they approach the Classicists in their modus operandi, wherein the main focus is solely the final product.
I disagreed with Einstein’s argument that the sculpture needs a timeless element though; in my opinion, for the sculpture to maintain strong elements of transcendence, it needs autonomy to distance itself, but not necessarily an absence of time. On the contrary, an essence of eternal time could present an even stronger sense of transcendence in a form that could hold unequivocal significance throughout generations, without necessitating a sense of stagnancy.
Perry initiates his article by informing us that he will focus of the change that took place in order to decipher characteristic of beauty (aesthetic) versus modern. He then goes on to explain the coming-to-age of Primitivism.
ReplyDeleteFrom my understanding, “Primitive” has the connotation of uncivilized and socially transgressive. Nevertheless, there is a central connection between Primitivism and Modernism in that there is a mere shift away from the norm.
In my eyes, I believe there to be a fear of change. As I read each article in the reader, the introduction of new forms of art is constantly bashed. After the stage of ridicule, artwork is then accepted. This truth appears to me as something like a cycle. (i.e. Impressionism)
Looking at the Primitive artwork, I can indeed see why critics may label this form of art as uncivil or degrading. Sure—there are many naked women and distorted figures, but after all, the form of art is subject to change.
On page 273, plate38, there is a distorted figure of a naked woman breast-feeding a naked child who has breast as well. Sure—this is an odd sight, yet there is definitely a meaning behind the figure. Symbolism is widely used in order to represent a natural image with no erotic reference or sense. In addition, the brushstrokes of the image are clearly visible and the background is slightly blurred. This difference merely serves as an invitation into how the artwork is made—which happens to be a major concept of modern art, (246).
Primitivism is said to: “break the form of naturalism,” (245), nevertheless that is what the change and development of art is all about. There is a portrayal of difference of culture in this form of artwork, which is originally basked and demeaned through critic’s fear of change. After all, non-naturalistic portraits are the backbone to development and the key to modernism.
Individual perception and feelings are key to this “culturally altered” (244) form of artwork, names Primitivism. Critics, unfortunately, attempt to hinder the growth of new artwork by degrading it. As I previously stated, I believe there to be a fear of change when new form of artwork are introduced—a fear that will continue until the end of time.
Gill Perry lays out the range and derivatives of primitivism in "Primitivism and the Modern." He first and most thoroughly speaks of Paul Gauguin's work more than any other artist. Then Perry introduces other artists who have a different take on primitivism. Gauguin is the pioneer for primitivism and had an unnaturalistic style with deformations. Other artists, such as Fritz Mackensen and Otto Modersohn, has a more naturalistic conveyance of their paintings. Nonetheless, the commonality in both is the woman/women interacting with nature.
ReplyDeleteWomen's gender roles lend them to this position. Whether they are simply placed in nature or nursing their child, it almost expected of them to be this way. Primitive lands also have men as well. Males surely are in touch with nature when they live in primitive lands - where modernization has not affected yet. How come, then, are they not portrayed in these images? Are not hunting men working as closely with nature as women nurturing children? Another interesting thing about primitivism to me is that in urban areas, there seems to be a degendering process. If nature brings out the true and pure role of the woman, how much of a woman retains in those involved with modernity? Perhaps genders are not lost with modernization, but changed.
Modernization brings changes to many things besides gender roles. For example, it has revolutionized agriculture and ramped up commercialization. Although these technologies seem advanced, Perry almost gives the impression that the Western world is not a place to respect. He speaks of primitive lands as a symbol of purity, simpleness, and good morals. Anything non-Western is primitive. This is the message that Gauguin tries to convey in his paintings. Many artists escaped to rural areas, like Brittany, in order to observe these primitive attributes. Idealizing the primitive indicates the running away from urbanization. Gauguin went so far as to Tahiti to live and work.
This desire to escape from urban culture reflects the philosophy of some anti-modernism figures of the time as well. In Kunstpolitik, some say that "art must lead the struggle for a new 'freedom'." Primitivism seems like the opposing force, and thus, good solution for modernism. The artists however, use primitivism as a pure means of expression. They can only use art to lead to a new freedom if that is what they choose to express, not something that they feel they have to do because of society.
Response Essay 4
ReplyDeleteHOAR1B
Michael Dreibelbis
In “Primitivism and the Modern” Gill Perry comments a lot on what the idea of what “primitive” was in the minds of the populace in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He tells of how it was used to describe the cultures of the world that were outside the realm of Western Civilization, and that made them “uncivilized” or “primitive”. He goes on to note that the idea of primitive being used to describe a civilization was somewhat of a Eurocentric thinking and definitely more from what the “Western notion of what is civilized”. Who are we (Westerners) to determine what is or is not “primitive”? Do we write the cultures off that Perry notes: African, Egyptian, Polynesian, etc. merely because they had not fully industrialized at the time? I feel like they had forgotten that many advances in higher level mathematics etc. and even forms of government came from these so called primitive nations and to label them as such seems to me a fault of the superiority complex that Europeans and other westerners had (and may still have).
Moving on to art. I found it interesting that Perry notes how the idea of primitivism and this new modern way of art was not that innovative. In the opening paragraph, he uses a Robert Goldwater quote to note that the ideas presented for the art that came from artists such as Picasso etc. were laid out before they came. He questioned whether we should praise the art of Picasso as being that of a truly innovative mind if art had been moving in that direction in the first place. Though I find that point valid, I must disagree that we should discredit Picasso’s work as being innovative because I believe that it was. Though the groundwork may have been set for art like his to come out and push the limits of “modern”, no one had yet done it. And reason we should credit Picasso and Gauguin etc. as being fathers of primitivism.
It is interesting that the term primitivism is used to describe these paintings that are shown in the Perry reading. In most of the paintings depicting a “primitive” society, the women are seen nude or mostly nude. Now I may be one to contend that this is what the artist saw when he went to see “primitive” societies (Gauguin comes to mind) but I feel that also it was a way for the artist to show that the nude in contemporary life is not sacrilege. If we recall the outrage that Olympia made when Manet revealed it, then we can see how showing the western world that in many places the female nude is not seen as something to hide would be beneficial to the public. Here the artists are showing the women, usually in leisure, and their nudity seems to fit well with the surrounding scene. It is not an obscenity, nor is it a statement, but merely a showing of daily life. I find this to be refreshing in contrast to the seemingly out of place nudes that had been shown in earlier paintings
Danielle Lee
ReplyDelete2/4
Art welcomes human curiosity. My favorite artworks are those that embrace the questions I have about the pieces. These questions focus on the relationship between the subject and artist, the medium he/she chose to use, the colors, the perspective, the use of negative space, etc. Gill Perry questions one of Picasso’s paintings, “Les Demoiselles” in great depth but never gives us an exact answer.
I like that Perry never affirmed any of his theories or questions with answers because art is open to interpretation. In his essay “Primitivism and the ‘Modern’” he introduces the readers to the back-story of the painting. Picasso painted it in context to women at a brothel, but he claimed that he had not been to the Trocadero Ethnographical Museum before painting this image. (Perry. 232) Perry poses the question “where did this influence come from?” and more importantly “what does it mean in the context it’s inserted?”
I don’t necessarily agree that the style and influence was an “intuitive form of primitivism.” I believe that it is possible that Picasso had at some time before this painting been exposed to African and Iberian masks even if he claims to have visited the Ethnographical Museum after the painting. But the more important question deals with the subject and context of the painting. Why did Picasso choose this African “primitive” theme and place it in within a scene of a brothel? Perry offers the possibility that Picasso; a left winged figure could be using his “African motifs…as a deliberate challenge to Western colonialist views of Africa…(Perry.232)”
This theory is visible and apparent in the painting once pointed out. When I looked at the painting after learning that the style is related to African and Iberian masks and taken place at a brothel, I can see what Perry is proposing. The subjects of his painting are prostitutes. I imagine that Picasso is using them as metaphors for the colonized countries in Africa. Like prostitutes, the colonized are taken advantage of, looked down upon, and treated like dirt. Perhaps, like Perry said, Picasso is making a political statement out of his artwork. When I look at the painting there is no negative space. Every inch of the canvas is covered not only in color but also in sharp lines and divisions of colors. The lack of negative space could symbolize the imprisonment of these colonies. Like prostitutes they are owned and confined. The figures and postures of the women could contribute to another comparison. The women are all exploiting and unveiling themselves. They’re body arrangements are confrontational and controversial. The prostitutes are displayed for what they are, objects of sexual desire. The colonized like prostitutes were also exploited, taken advantage of and used by the colonized. The information presented by Perry allows me to make my own judgments while recognizing his proposal.
Perry’s article on “primitivism” questioned Picasso’s artwork and the meaning behind it while at the same time allowing readers to develop their own questions and answers. He proposes the idea that the African influenced theme could be a political metaphor for colonial views of Africa, and after looking at the painting once more, I could see his theory. The composition and arrangement of the women could well represent the confinement and brutality the African colonies suffered through.
Primitivism
ReplyDeleteGill Perry, in his essay “Primitivism and the 'Modern'” tries to explain the meaning of Primitivism. From what I understand, it is an art and cultural movement. A “Western interest in, and/or reconstruction of, societies designated 'primitive', and their artefacts.” Primitive “has been used … to distinguish contemporary European societies and their cultures … that were then considered there considered less civilized.”(5) It refers to ancient Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Japanese, Peruvian cultures. Interestingly enough, Perry says “Many artists whom we now label 'modern' were in fact opposed to the processes of modernization (by which I mean the forces of industrialization and urbanization in Western capitalist society)”(1). He goes on to talk about how artists moved to the country because it was cheap and easy to move there, and because of the copious beautiful scenery.
He titles his next section 'The Going Away' because of this transition of Gauguin, Dagan-Bouveret and others to 'primitivism'. A metaphysical going away, from the contemporary culture, looking back to an older culture. He uses the phrase “the cult of 'the going away'”(10), because of the sudden movement of the artists from the art institutes to the countrysides. Gauguin himself moved to Polynesia. The people of these more primitive cultures were viewed as wholesome and moral. These themes can be seen in the artists paintings from that time. The women in the pictures are usually conservatively dressed in rustic backgrounds. The picture The Cultivation of Rice by Katsushika Hokusai features several asian people working in the fields. They are all bent over and heaving or picking different things. The whole picture has an honorable feel to it, with everyone doing their respective work in the field; each with their purpose. These themes were a major part of the primitivism movement.
Gauguin I feel started taking the movement in a different direction. He started using “naked women... to symbolize the opposite of a civilized urban life.”(24) He paints pictures of nude women lounging and frolicking in the water. One of his pictures is titled Eve – Don't Listen to the Liar, and features a nude woman sitting with her hands on her face under an abstract tree. This is a direct opposite to civilized life, because in the garden of eden there was no urban network. The title Don't listen to the liar represents his anti urbanization feelings as he is telling not to eat from the tree of knowledge, not to grow metaphorically.
I also found it interesting how he paints a copy of Manet's L'Olympia. What was he trying to accomplish by recreating a work of another painter 30 years later? He paints it almost in the same style, with almost identical figure positioning. The masculine hand, the assertive pose, the black servant, the black cat, and the flowers all appear in his version. I find it strange that this picture fits in so well with his other paintings. No, it does not include some of the distortions and abstract images featured in his other works, but it represents the same images.
Jenny Zhang
ReplyDeleteHA R1B Section 6
Reading Response 5
I think primitivism and impressionism is very similar in the sense that the artists try to recreate visual images based on their sensations/experiences in real life. Their art is different from academic painting in which the artist tries to just capture an image of what he simply sees and often distorts objects in his paintings based on “a priori” knowledge. However, primitivism is also distinct from impressionism because their creators are specifically concerned about “going away” to a primitive or un-modernized location like Brittany’s Pont-Aven, in order to paint in the purest form of expression. I thought the arrival to the conclusion that primitive is most pure is interesting because it is began 19th century as a way for addressing cultures and countries that were different from that of Western society. Personally, I think that perspective didn’t just start in the 19th century, because the Western world has always looked down at or was skeptical of the non-Western world. However, the word “primitive” became more commonly used because it was related to the beginnings of colonialism; colonialism was a period in which European nations colonized many islands around the globe in hopes of rejuvenating the economies in their countries and in turn justifying their actions by promising to modernize/improving the colonies through westernization of their culture. So during that time, Western cultures believed that they were superior to all other civilizations unlike them. Eventually, philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau shed like to the positive side of a country’s primitivism. That idea said that that the Western societies were “over-civilized” (234) and “notions of the noble savage” (234) also arose. This paved way for the “‘primitivist’ tradition” that believed primitive people were simple creatures who were capable of expression pure emotions and thoughts; hence, making primitives like peasants and rural folk as sources of artistic creativity. Eventually the use of primitive subjects in art became increasingly popular because artists must have realized that the paintings were becoming more marketable or “fashionable.”
What I found interesting about the reading was one the headings: “‘the going away’-a preparation for the ‘modern’” (236); and it reminded me of Tuesday’s reading, The Wild Men of Paris? because Picasso was also believed to have gotten his inspiration for Cubism from African art pieces like masks; and it is believed that this inspiration helped him give his paintings a sculptural appearance. Likewise in tonight’s reading, Paul Gauguin’s paintings were also inspired from life and culture of the primitive people and their culture. Furthermore his painting techniques were noted for looking primitive, almost like a cartoon picture because the people and surrounding look so two dimensional and his brush strokes are very distinct, with the effect of looking as if it were drawn in chalk. I find this quality of painting also present in paintings by Van Gogh during the impressionist era. Hence, although the subjects of primitivism paintings are narrower compared to impressionism, the techniques used are very similar. I also thought that the attitudes of the primitivism painters were a bit more aggressive compared to artists of past genres of painting that we have studied. I got this impression first when Gauguin said (247) that he saw himself as a modern painter and that his reason for going away to the rural areas of world was not just so that he can seek for painting inspiration but because he was part of a chosen group of painters (chosen or enabled by “an unsophisticated culture) to express the primitive culture on a canvas. Furthermore, on that same page (247), it is noted by Perry that in these confessions by Gauguin, there was never the notion that female painters were part of this elitist group of painters. In that sense, I got the impression that he was slightly more arrogant that he should be and is possibly sexist. I recall that Perry also mentioned that many of Gauguin’s later works of nude women (next to waves) were inspired by a Wagnerian belief in that women can only “reach fulfillment…in her most ‘natural’ and most submissive [to men] state.”
Through the series of assigned readings, certain themes are consistently addressed, but each is seen through a different artistic and cultural context. An obvious and simple focus is the ‘truth’ that art and artists seek to discover and expose. In this week’s reading by Perry, artists of the Primitivist and Worpswede neo-Romantics movements sought truth via anti-modernism means. Each can be viewed as a negative reaction to industrialization and an appreciation of nature and natural lifestyles. The concept of innovation is addressed through the works of Gauguin and Picasso, and we are introduced to the controversial view of their works. Within the historical context and the role of industrialization, it seems these artists only innovate insofar as they are able to contribute to the evolution of art, as well as to shape and dictate the way the spectator should interpret art. I argue this because there seems to be a reoccurring focus on the success of those who oppose culture. Earlier we saw Impressionism as an opposition to maybe realism. This week we see Gauguin’s opposition to modernism through primitivism. This view particularly makes sense to me, because I live in an industrialized urban world. In fact, I spend a great amount of my time fantasizing about escape and living closer to nature. Just like the movie ‘Into the Wild’. This urge displays the “grass is always greener” philosophy in action, and it undoubtedly plays a strong role in shaping artistic interpretation. I believe the reason there is constant rethinking to art is because it follows this pattern. For example, if everyone was producing primitive symbols and two-dimensional figures, then there would undoubtedly be a movement that strives to create illusionistic and three-dimensional paintings. The depiction of Guaguin as an artist who prized the primitive shows the opposite is occurring. He states: “we are indebted to the barbarians, to the primitives of the 1890, for bringing certain essential truths back into focus. Not to reproduce nature and life by approximations… but on the contrary to reproduce our emotions and our dreams by representing them with harmonious forms and colors.”(31) Perry also states that Gauguin was the “antithesis of Impressionism.”(30) Additionally, we learned that Cubism contrasts this thought by valuing a priori and the conceptual truth.
ReplyDeleteAnother focus of Perry’s article was the feminine role in Guaguin, the neo-romantics and other primitivist art. I believe this to be powerful. There is something incredibly, humanly natural to a woman with her child in an outdoor setting. I initially opposed Perry’s comparison to Manet’s Olympia, and claim that Guaguin builds on this painting. However, after furthur contemplation I found a similarity in the faithfulness and attention to the natural human. Sure Manet and Guaguin represent women completely differently: Manet blurs gender roles through masculine depiction, while Guaguin believes that female submission is the natural state. Yet, regardless of this they both find common ground through an opposition to traditional view and desire to show natural reality.
Although I touched upon this already, I believe the concept of innovation has become clearer in my mind. It’s fairly obvious that there was nothing original in Guaguin’s journey to Brittany or Tahiti in search for inspiration; others were currently and formerly undergoing the same search. It seems Guaguin’s success and viewed “innovation” was either the result of persistent self-promoting or a unique utilization (even plagiarism?) of indigenous art. Yet, at the same time there is little doubt that Guaguin had a profound impact on the evolution of art. I believe then that the classifying of work as innovative is not through its inherent ability to completely create a new genre, but instead to redefine an existing genre or contribute to a new direction.
Bing
ReplyDeleteResponse 5
Gill Perry, in “Primitivism and the ‘Modern’”, touches upon primitivism as an art movement, which I have never really heard of, and as a cultural fascination in Europe, which I am almost disgusted with. He defines primitivism as a “complex network of sociological, ideological, aesthetic, scientific, anthropological, political and legal interests, which feed into and determine a culture,” and it involves a “relationship of power” (232). Instead of the complex network that I see, however, Westerners use “primitivism” as “primitive”, thus assuming dominance over civilizations that are alien to the Western civilization and that may seem less civilized in comparison. While Perry also explains that “primitive” may have also been used in a positive manner, with the people deemed “primitive” seeming more pure, simple, and natural, the word “primitive”, for me, has such a negative connotation that I balk at even calling a civilization that. Also, in my courses in history, I have seen the term “noble savage” and “primitive people” coined about people in the African civilizations or the alike that Westerners encounter, but I have never applied these terms to the peasantry culture, as this article suggests. While life as a peasant may be a lot more simple and pure as compared to the urban dwellers, simplicity does not mean primitive, which equates to uncivilized in my dictionary, and these people should not have been the center of artistic fascination simply because of their “savage” and “primitive” ways.
Moving on to the artistic genre of “primitivism”, which is based off of the Western fascination of the “primitives” in peasant and non-Western culture, I must agree with the general concept discussed in this article; the “going away” to remote lands and taking primitivism as an escape route to a make-believe paradise. It exploring “primitivism”, Gauguin, the artist discussed in length in this article, took flight to first Brittany then far away Tahiti, delving into the land of “savages” and attempting to find innovation in his artwork. The art technique used in primitivism also ventures away from the classical naturalism that depicts every detail. Instead, Gauguin defines primitivism as simple, severe, and lack of naturalism, using flat colors, lines, and forms to reveal ideas and emotions of the “primitive” instead of recording what he sees. These lack of embellishments and classical perfection in artistic technique are used to further emphasize the idea of simple and pure in the cultures Gauguin observed and to remind viewers of the unsophisticated civilization that he paints in an unsophisticated manner. This style of painting, put in this light and in connection with “primitive”, almost angers me, because of how uncivilized and unsophisticated the cultures observed are being portrayed by Gauguin’s brush and strokes. Being simple and pure could be a manner of dress that may be emphasized throughout paintings and sketches, not necessarily needed to use flat colors and lines to trap simplicity on a canvas. While I may understand primitivism a lot more now because of this article, I will not say that I like it now or will like it in the future.