indeed, any systematic art mode – automatically becomes a standard against which to judge those who through inability or recalcitrance do not adhere to it. The nations of Europe have carefully preserved as many masterpieces of classical antiquity as they have been able to, and have scrupulously also consigned to history the names of the classical artists, architects, sculptors and designers.
The Girl with a Glass of Beer
Niko Pirosmani
Oil on canvas, 114 × 90 cm
Georgian Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
What chance was there, then, for some lesser mortal of the Athens of the fifth century BC who tried to paint a picture, that he might still be remembered today when most of the ancient frescoes have not survived and time has not preserved for us the easel-paintings of those legendary masters whose names have been immortalized through the written word?
Motherhood
Morris Hirshfield
Museum Charlotte Zander, Bönnigheim Castle
The name of the Henri Rousseau of classical Athens has been lost forever – but he undoubtedly existed. The Golden Section, the ‘canon’ of the (ideal proportions of the) human form as used by Polyclitus, the notion of ‘harmony’ based on mathematics to lend perfection to art – all of these derived from one island of ancient civilization adrift in a veritable sea of ‘savage’ peoples: that of the Greeks.
St George Slaughtering the Dragon
Anonymous painter, glass painting
Serbia, region of Vojvodina
Private collection, Italy
The Greeks encountered this tide of savagery everywhere they went. The stone statues of women executed by the Scythians in the area north of the Black Sea, for example, they regarded barbarian ‘primitive’ art and its sculptors as ‘naïve’ artists oblivious to the laws of harmony. As early as during the third century BC the influence of the ‘barbarians’ began to penetrate into Roman art, which at that time was largely derivative of Greek models.
St Martin’s Gate
Louis Vivin
Oil on canvas, 50 × 61 cm
Museum Charlotte Zander, Bönnigheim Castle
The Romans believed not only that they were the only truly civilized nation in the world but that it was their mission to civilize others out of their uncultured ways, to bring their primitive art forms closer to the rigorous standards of the classical art of the Empire. All the same, Roman sculptors felt free to interpret form in a ‘barbaric’ way, for instance by creating a sculpture so simple that it looked primitive and leaving the surface uneven and only lightly polished.
Still Life with Butterflies and Flowers
Louis Vivin
Oil on canvas, 61 × 50 cm
Museum Charlotte Zander, Bönnigheim Castle
The result was ironically that the ‘correct’ classical art lacked that very impressiveness that was characteristic of the ‘wrong’ barbaric art. Having overthrown Rome’s domination of most of Europe, the ‘barbarians’ dispensed with the classical system of art.
A Fruit Shop
Mikhail Larionov, 1904
Oil on canvas, 66 × 69 cm
Russian Museum, St Petersburg
It was as if the ‘canon’ so notably realized by Polyclitus had never existed. Now art learned to frighten people, to induce a state of awe and trepidation by its expressiveness. Capitals in the medieval Romanesque cathedrals swarmed with strange creatures with short legs, tiny bodies and huge heads.
A Barn
Niko Pirosmani
Oil on cardboard, 72 × 100 cm
Georgian Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
Who carved them? Very few of the creators’ names are known. Undoubtedly, however, they were excellent artisans, virtuosi in working with stone. They were also true artists, or their work would not emanate such tremendous power. These artists came from that parallel world that had always existed, the world of what Europeans called ‘primitive’ art.
A Provincial Dandy
Mikhail Larionov, 1907
Oil on canvas, 100 × 89 cm
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Reflections on Naïve Art
‘Naïve’ art, and the artists who created it, became well known in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Who were these artists, and what was their background? To find out, we have to turn back the clock and look at the history of art at that time. It is interesting that for much of the intervening century, the Naïve artists themselves seem to have attracted rather less attention than those people responsible for ‘discovering’ them or publicizing them.
The Representatives of Foreign Powers Coming to Greet the Republic as a Sign of Peace
Henri Rousseau, 1907
Oil on canvas, 130 × 161 cm
Musée Picasso, Paris
Yet that is not unusual. After all, the Naïve artists might never have come into the light of public scrutiny at all if it had not been for the fascination that other young European artists of the avant-garde movement had for their work – avant-garde artists whose own work has now, at the turn of the millennium, also passed into art history.
View from the Bridge of Sèvres and the Hills of Clamart and Bellevue
Henri Rousseau, 1908
Oil on canvas, 80 × 120 cm
Pushkin
