750, art 6 hrs
Vincent666
ARTH207essay1.docx
1
ARTH 207-05
Professor Andrew M. Nedd
Qihan Jiang
October 11, 2021
What did the "primitive" mean to three artists of your choice? How did they express primitivism in these works?
Henri Rousseau depicts his primitive as a dream. In his work, The Sleeping Gypsy. There is a black woman fall asleep under the night sky. Next to her is an instrument and a jar. A lion is watching her when she is sleeping. This is a dream-like painting. The gypsy, lion, instrument and moonlight are grouping weirdly but wonderful. Without the influence of industrialized society, in Rousseau’s escapism. This painting makes viewers feel poetic. Rousseau described his painting: "A wandering Negress, a mandolin player, lies with her jar beside her, overcome by fatigue in a deep sleep. A lion chances to pass by, picks up her scent yet does not devour her. this illogical scene represents as primitive.
"under an eternally summer sky, on a marvelously fertile soil…the…happy inhabitants of the unknown paradise of Oceania know only the sweetness of life."
—Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin was so enthralled with the primitivism of non-Western civilizations. The freedom of living without the stuck-up restrictions a higher-class society has brought upon European life. He escaped European civilization and technology to the nature.
In the painting The Seed of the Areoi, areois are the historical local people of Tahiti. Relates to the myth of the race that the sun god mated with the most beautiful woman Vairaumati to foster a people. Gauguin portrays one of his Tahitian mistresses as the goddess Vairaumati. She is holding a flowering seed, which is the symbol of fertility. The bright, complementary color makes the world Gauguin creates become more idealistic. The young, semi-nude women sitting in the middle promoting symbolic of fertility and the rawness of nature as well as extending a long-standing European tradition that associated women with nature.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is one of the most famous work of Pablo Picasso, depicts five naked females in different poses, three of them wearing a mask. As a combination of his reference, the sculpture of African and Iberian, the naked women described as savage. The research of Picasso shows these female characters are in a brothel, represent as irrational instinct. Picasso uses his work to separate cultured society of modern people with his “primitive” world.
Henri Rousseau, The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897
Paul Gauguin, The Seed of the Areoi, 1892
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907. 7.7
What are the characteristics of "analytic" and "synthetic" Cubism? What sort of response did Italian Futurism and Russian Suprematism offer to Cubist ideas?
In the painting Violin and Palette by Georges Braque, what we can see is different parts of a violin combine together in different view, the violin itself is broke into geometric shape, the form of it is fractured. From the top of the violin, the scroll is twisted compare to the body. Those parallel lines represent as the strings, which separated to two parts. Double symmetrical S shape means the hole on the violin. The pentagon shape between the S shape means the bridge, we can tell the bridge is tilted so represent as a pentagon shape.we can see a lot of complicated patterns of overlapping planes in the painting. Braque painted the parts from different view, this is how he analyses the object in space.
Compared to Analytical Cubism, Synthetic Cubism artwork are focused on more vibrant colors, softer lines and simpler shape. In the painting Still Life with Compote and Glass by Pablo Picasso, we can see the colorful fruit (I think it might be a pear)on the bright white compote on the top middle of the painting, with a soft shape. The colorful marble surfaces show everywhere in the painting.
For Cubism and Futurism, they both use a new way to observe and express daily life, like human body and un-abiding subject like movements. Futurism artwork focused on movements. Futurists express the speed, motion and forceful dynamism in their work. They be influenced by Cubism that how to represent the line of force. As a perfect example, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by Umberto Boccioni expresses how the line of force works, it depicts a human figure apparently in motion.
Suprematism is the invention of Kazimir Malevich, this style of art expresses “supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts”. The Suprematism art can always see the basic geometric forms like square, circle, and rectangles. Suprematism surpassed the sense of space of cubism with its confrontational flatness. As the influence of Cubism, Suprematism like use color and shape to create the sensation of movement in space. In Kazimir Malevich’s White Square on White, we can only see geometric forms with no precisely symmetrical or imprecisely defined boundaries. The slight tilt of the square represents movement.
Georges Braque, Violin and Palette, 1909. 7.16
1914–15, Still Life with Compote and Glass, oil on canvas, 63.5 × 78.7 cm (25 × 31 in), Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913. 9.17
Kazimir Malevich, White Square on White, 1918. 9.29
Citation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleeping_Gypsy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Demoiselles_d%27Avignon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_Forms_of_Continuity_in_Space
