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| Material Type: | Government publication, State or province government publication |
|---|---|
| Document Type: | Book |
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Frances S Connelly |
| ISBN: | 0271013052 9780271013053 027101105X 9780271011059 |
| OCLC Number: | 28723661 |
| Description: | xii, 154 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. |
| Contents: | Introduction: Framing the Question -- 1. The Sleep of Reason: "Primitive" Art as the Inverse of Classicism -- 2. Poetic Monsters and Nature Hieroglyphics: The Precocious Primitivism of Philipp Otto Runge -- 3. "Primitive" Ornament and the Arabesque: Paul Gauguin's Decorative Art -- 4. Grotesque and Monstrous Idols: Meryon's Stryge and Picasso's Demoiselles -- Conclusion: Modernist Appropriations of "Primitive" Arts. |
| Responsibility: | Frances S. Connelly. |
Abstract:
Art historians have in the past narrowly defined primitivism, limiting their inquiry to examples of direct stylistic borrowing from African, Oceanic, or Native American imagery. The drawbacks of such an approach have become increasingly apparent, the most problematic being its perpetuation of the notion that certain traditions are indeed "primitive." Frances Connelly argues that "primitive" art was not a style at all, but a cultural construction by modern Europeans, a cluster of concepts principally forged during the Enlightenment concerning the nature of the origins of artistic expression. She contends that, instead of the paintings of Gauguin, the publication of Vico's New Science in 1725 lies much closer to the origins of primitivism because it first articulated the essential framework of ideas through which Europeans would understand "primitive" expression.
Based upon a close reading of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources, including voyage accounts, ethnographies, aesthetic theories, and popular journals, The Sleep of Reason establishes that the term "primitive" art did not refer so much to actual stylistic traditions but to a collection of visual attributes that Europeans construed to be universal characteristics of "primitive" expression, specifically the hieroglyph, the grotesque, and the ornamental. Further, these attributes show that "primitive" expression was constructed as the inverse of the classical ideal. Connelly provides case studies of artists and aestheticians who advocated, attempted, or realized the assimilation of these "primitive" characteristics, including some artists never before associated with primitivism as well as significant reevaluations of Gauguin and Picasso.
Connelly's study offers a more complex and historically grounded view of primitivism, making a timely and significant contribution to the renewed discussion of primitivism.
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