Naive Art. Nathalia Brodskaya

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      The biggest boost to the new form of Romantic art came in the form of a massive influx of works from the ‘primitive’ world – some from Central and South America, but most from Africa – that poured into Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, chiefly through colonial agents. Until this time, the only conceivable description of works of art from these areas was as ‘primitive’. The marvellous gold artefacts fashioned by native Peruvians and Mexicans, which flooded Europe following the discovery and colonisation of their lands, were regarded simply as precious metal to be melted down and reworked. Museums did keep and display items from Africa and the Pacific, but little interest was shown in obtaining them.

      However, by the end of the nineteenth century, the territories of the world open to European exploration and trade had expanded so dramatically that far-off countries became objects not only of curiosity but also of study. A new science – anthropology – was born. In 1882 an anthropological museum opened in Paris. An Exhibition of Central America took place in Madrid in 1893. And in 1898 the French discovered a rich source of tribal art in their West African colony of Benin (called Dahomey from 1899 to 1975).

      So it was that although the first Exhibition of African Art was mounted in Paris only in 1919, young artists had by then already been familiar with African artefacts for quite a while. According to one art-dealer, some of the Parisian artists had fair-sized personal collections from black Africa and Oceania. It is more than possible that the German Expressionist painter Karl Schmidt-Rottluff developed an interest in collecting such items even earlier. His fellow Expressionist Ernst Kirchner claimed that he had ‘discovered’ black African sculpture back in 1904, in the anthropological museum.

      One event in particular marked a significant stage in the interface between European and African art, in that it presaged the rejuvenation of the former by the latter. The story was later narrated by the artist Maurice de Vlaminck and his friends.

      Vlaminck was travelling back from doing some sketches up in Argenteuil, to the north-west of Paris, when he decided to stop at a bistro. There, he was surprised to espy – between the racked bottles of Pernod – wooden statuettes and masks, all of which had been brought from Africa by the bistro-proprietor’s son. Vlaminck purchased the lot there and then. Once he had got home he showed them to his studio-companion André Derain, who was so impressed that in turn he persuaded his friend to sell them all on to him. Presumably, Derain next took them over to Matisse’s studio to show him and the same thing happened yet again, because Picasso was amazed to be shown them when he was invited to dinner specially by Matisse. The story was concluded by Max Jacob, who recounted how he discovered Picasso the next morning poring over a stack of sketch-papers, on each one of which was an increasingly simplified head of a woman.

      Vlaminck perceived what was the most valuable point of things ‘primitive’. ‘Black African art manages by the simplest of means to convey an impression of stateliness but also stillness.’[5] Nonetheless, having passed through the hands of Vlaminck, Derain and Matisse – all of them great artists – African sculpture directly affected only Pablo Picasso. Vlaminck dated this story to 1905, although most likely it actually happened a bit later. In any case, all the artists involved were by then in a mood to accept primitive art as a complete and entire phenomenon, not simply as a mass of individual and multifarious items.

      Most significantly, Picasso gradually worked out how to reveal the primal nature of objects thanks to the expressivity of African sculpture. It was this discovery that provided the impetus for him to go on to develop Cubism.

      Ivan Vecenaj, Dinner of the Night.

      Gallery of Modern Art, Zagreb.

      However primitive the sense of form presented by black African sculpture might seem to the European eye, it represented an aesthetic school that was centuries old and a tradition of craftsmanship inherited from remote ancestors. That a system exists means that it is possible to study it, to learn from it and to work to it. This is why the influence of African carving on European art has been so marked during the twentieth century.

      Today, then, the art courses of many educational establishments focus on the interrelationship between twentieth-century painting and black African art, together with the influence of the art forms of native North America, Oceania and Arabic/Islamic Africa on European and North American artists from Gauguin up to the Surrealists. As art expert Jean Laude has said, the ‘discovery’ of black African art by Europeans ‘seems to be an integral part of the general process of renewing sources; it is certainly a contributory factor’.[6] It was at the peak of this wave of enthusiasm, at the very moment of ‘the decline of the West’, that the naive artists emerged. There was no need to go searching for them in Africa or in Oceania.

      Discovery – the Banquet in Rousseau’s Honour

      Impressionism actually had more of an effect upon art in general than it initially seemed to. The rebellion against the ‘tyranny’ of the old and traditional system of Classicism that it fomented – the establishing of the principle of freedom in content, form, style and context – led to a broadening of the whole concept of ‘art’ itself.

      Janko Brašic, Dance in Circle next to the Church.

      Private collection.

      Towards the end of the Impressionist ‘period’ – so much so that they are forever labelled Post-Impressionist – Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh joined the Impressionists’ ranks. What they lacked in training they made up for in hard work. Indeed, only in the very early pictures of Gauguin is any deficiency of skill evident. And when Van Gogh arrived in Paris in 1886, no one expressed any doubts as to his worthiness to take his place among the international clique of artists in the community in Montmartre which by that time had existed there for nigh on a century. Perhaps inevitably, the pair did not, however, find acceptance in the salon dedicated to the most classical forms of contemporary art. They were nonetheless able to exhibit their works to the public, especially since Parisian art-dealers – marchands – were opening more and more galleries. In 1884 the Salon des indépendants was launched. This had no selection committee and was set up specifically to put on show the works of those artists who painted for a living but were yet unable or unwilling to meet the requirements of the official salons. Of course there were many such artists – and of course among the overwhelming multiplicity of their mostly talentless works it was not always easy to identify those pictures that were exceptional in merit.

      Henri Rousseau served as a customs officer at the Gate of Vanves in Paris. In his free time he painted, sometimes on commission for his neighbours and sometimes in exchange for food. Year after year from 1886 to 1910 he brought his work to the Salon des indépendants for display, and year after year his work was exhibited with everybody else’s despite its total lack of professional worth. Nevertheless he was proud to be numbered among the city’s artists, and thoroughly enjoyed the right they all had to see their works shown to the public like the more accepted artists in the better salons.

      Emma Stern, Self-Portrait, 1964.

      Oil on canvas, 61 × 46 cm.

      Clemens-Sels-Museum, Neuss.

      Sava Sekulic, Portrait СКАЧАТЬ