Primitivism and the development of novel artistic expression Assignment

Primitivism and the development of novel artistic expression - Assignment Example The essay "Primitivism and the development of novel artistic expression" discusses the art of Primitivism. Primitive here has reference too to an idea during the time of primitivism’s first flowering of a more pristine, less corrupted and closer to paradise kind of sensibility that was supposed to be reflected in the art of less advanced societies. There is an element too in a return to the primitive to the artist’s rebellion against the loss of a more carefree, less repressed sexuality, among other things, with the effect too that in the works of some of the artists, such as Gauguin, there was an intentional focus on female sexuality and nudity among the artists’ subjects. Other attributions to primitivism made in more contemporary definitions of the movement especially paint the movement in a positive light, more so during the 19th century, when the movement was identified with such attributions as regeneration, ancestors, and fertility. This, even as the movem ent itself came to refine its focus of interest to art from the Islands of the Pacific as well as Africa. Moreover, a more generalized emphasis on primitive societies among other social science disciplines in the 20th century generally gave the West more immediate access to those societies, sans the filtering mechanisms that the primitivism art movement first introduced. This latter more direct access by general Western society through the sciences to those primitive societies generally weakened the interest of the west on primitivism.