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Nobody knows exactly when the first naïve artists appeared on the scene, as from the very first manifestations of art right up to the days of the 'Classic Modern,' naïve artists quite unconsciously bequeathed us unmistakable signs of their creative activity. At all events, naïve art can be regarded as having occupied an "official" position in the annals of twentieth-century art since - at the very latest - the publication of the Der Blaue Reiter <The Blue Rider> almanac in 1912. Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, who brought out the almanac, presented 6 reproductions of paintings by ‘le Douanier' Rousseau , comparing them with other pictorial examples. However; 1885, when the painter Paul Signac became aware of the talents of Henri Rousseau and set about organizing exhibitions of his work in a number of prestigious galleries, is widely held to be the year in which naïve art was in fact "discovered." The oeuvre of a good artist reveals his attitude towards the world we live in, the naive artist in particular being rooted with absolute immediacy in his environment as, untrammelled by all theories, he strives to give pictorial form to his personal vision - on canvas, paper, wood, pasteboard, or whatever. His way of seeing the world cannot be acquired and makes for highly individualistic art. This art cannot be copied, and any attempt to paint in "naïve style" is doomed to failure from the start. The naïve artist has no academic background. To a certain extent he also works without formal technical qualifications and with a remarkable indifference to perspective. Naieve artists come from every conceivable socio-economic background and have the most widely differing occupations. Uninflu-enced by art traditions, they come to grips with their personal experiences and paint pictures mirroring their memories, desires and dreams. The themes they choose are frequently related to their childhood, the place they were born in, the surroundings they grew up in, their workaday routine and festive occasions, but also encompass political, historical and social problems, not to mention fantasy utopian worlds. Naïve artists are thus genuine personalities, distinguished by an original and unmistakable stylistic independence. They also have a relatively unabashed approach to art's formal demands, often delineating the significant detail with the most meticulous precision. These - together with a deeply felt seriousness of approach - are the main characteristics of naïve art. The naive artist's attempts at perspective and spatial effects are evident to anyone looking at his pictures, but he is indifferent to such missing attributes, being concerned solely with the impact of the picture as a whole. Selecting the colours is never a problem. SeIf- assured, as if following the instructions of an innate colouring handbook, he applies the colours of his instinctive choice, sometimes surprisingly and boldly, yet invariably harmoniously. This is precisely the area in which the naive artist most obviously displays his inborn talent. Furthermore, national character in environmental, religious and social terms is more forcefully expressed in naïve art than in any other art form, folk art excepted. The naive painter is more closely linked to these personal experiences of his than any other type of artist. It is hardly surprising, then, that appreciable differences exist between naïve art hailing from, say, France, Russia, Germany, Brazil, Poland and ex-Yugoslavia, to take various countries at random. The pseudo-naive pictures painted in the ,7O,s for exclusively commercial purposes are nothing but feeble imitations of real naive art. The Sunday Painters and Housewife Painters, who often tend towards dilettantism, are just two examples of such faux-naïve painters. It is precisely in their ranks that the majority of epigones are to be found, with their sorry attempts at imitating the work of great, independently-minded naive artists. Naive art must be rigorously distinguished from pseudo-naïve art. The non-authentic "naïve" greenhorn will try to imitate genuine naive models, perhaps even endeavouring to perfect his technique by attending evening classes at adult further education institutes. In the hope of attaining the optimal naive effect he seeks, the "copy-cat," pseudo-naïve painter resorts to so- called "naïve stylistic methods." Ihe craftily calculated and disingenuous products thus produced, generally geared as they are to commercial success, have nothing to do with authentic naïve art. As mentioned above, naïve art is very much individualistic art, the real naive artist usually operating in isolation without any formal training or artistic models, following the dictates only at his own fundamental urge to paint and drawing solely on his own internal creative resources. This is one of the factors distinguishing naïve art from folk art, which is bound up with usage, custom and tradition Naïve art also differs from the art produced by primitive tribes, which is generally bound up with mystic and cultural influences. Naïve art also rules out all formal groups of artists, as it can be neither taught nor leamt. The distortions that we notice in naive pictures do not indicate, as in the case of children's paintings, any lack of practice in reproducing the object observed. The naïve artist - who, incidentally, often starts painting when he has time on his hands" in old age has a lifetime of "lived" experiences and practical skills at his disposal. His artistic signature remains unchanged, a signature abstracted from the start from a ready-made vocabulary of forms. In contrast, the child, having passed through a phased developmental process, will be able to overcame his initial clumsiness by the formal acquisition of learning - provided that he receives an appropriate educatian and is talented enough to benefit from it. Both the naïve artist's form of representation and the representational content itself remain largely unchanged. What such an artist shows us of the world he lives in and at his own experiential territory bear the stamp of narrative authenticity. Naïve art in no way came into being as a negative reaction or an all too rosy antidote to intellectually over-burdened modern art. lt would be far more accurate to regard the independent self-containment of its images as frequently acting as a stimulus to modern art. Paralleling the movements of 2Oth-century art, naive art is in a class of its own.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that naive art has always existed but that its evaluation is a relatively modern phenomenon. The beginnings of such evaluation in the Netherlands are linked up with the oldest preserved naive painting. As far as I know, the painting dates from 1752 and it may therefore be assumed that a turning point oecurred somewhere in the middle of the l8th century in evaluating the works of formerly unrecognised artists. Economic considerations certainly had a hand in this. The middle class, growing in strength, demonstrated a desire for decoration. Not in a position to pay wellknown artists, they frequently had recourse to house painters or local and itinerant craftsmen. It was probably a house painter who produced the large, early naive paintings exhibited in the period furniture room of the Fries Scheepvaart Museum in Sneek. Also, it was the custom in Holland around 1800 to cover the walls not with wallpaper from floor to ceiling but with painted canvases. There were special workshops (for instance in Hoorn) engaged in this activity. It is possible, but not certain, that these works were personal in character. Some craftsman or house painter, finding himself with more free time than before, especially after retirement, may have become a naive artist, reviving his past and at the same time revealing his talent. This is a contemporary sociological phenomenon. It is difficult to determine just what change in mentality gave impetus to early naive art. One thing is certain - that in the l8th century a development occurred that led to what was known as Romanticism. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, champion of the return to nature, inspired many romantics. The naive artist is a prime example of acceptance of the militant motto of the romantics: "Back to nature!" As an amateur, the naive artist is always natural and direct. From Romanticism on - with the abolition of guilds after the French Revolution - dilettantism and amateurism acquired a role in culture present to this very day. In the l9th century, naive art slowly took on a personal character. Not all preserved works were produced on commission. It is true of Holland, too, that only after modern art had proved the value of freedom of expression did people begin to respect in naive talents the specific features setting their art apart from academic works. Just as in France the appearance of Henri Rousseau marks the end of early naive achievements, so can the same boundary line be drawn in Holland from the first pictures by Sal Meijer at the beginning of this century. His well-known "Cat in a Hatbox," which he painted in several versions, dates from 1909. With the exception of his works, not many naive paintings have been preserved from the first half of this century. Probably much work was done, because in 1941 an art critic wrote on the occasion of a naive art exhibition in the Town Museum of Amsterdam: "Attempts by talented men of the people are more in fashion than ever." Painters worthy of note from that period are the pastry-maker Sipke Houtman (1871-1945), who began to produce after retirement, and Willem C. Ruysbroek (1911- 1961). Sipke Houtman's works are in the Town Museum in Amsterdam while Ruysbroek has an extremely interesting canvas in the International Museum of Naive Art of Anatol Jakovsky, from which it may be concluded that he was one of the most outstanding naive painters of Holland. It was only in the sixties that more attention began to be paid to naive art. A large number of naive painters were discovered, thanks in substantial part to Dr Louis Gans, the art historian. In 1966, Dr Gans became the Chairman of the Albert Dorne Foundation, whose task it was to give impetus to amateur art and set up a collection of international naive art, known as the Albert Dorne Collection. The sponsor of this foundation was the "Famous Artists School," a commercial institution offering instruction and selling written lessons in drawing. The Albert Dorne Collection contains a hundred or so pictures by naive painters from all Europe, including some thirty works by Netherlands artists. In 1973, the Collection was taken over by the Clemens-Sels Museum in Neuss (Federal Republic of Germany). The generation of naive artists discovered by Dr Louis Gans (including Pieter Hagoort, Leo Neervoort, Jentje van der Sloot), is almost gone today, but those men were exceptional, serving as examples for a definition of naive art, which was often mistakenly associated with technical imperfection. Their place is being taken by a younger generation of painters, better informed and searching for new roads in naive painting: Ilona Schmit, Joop Plasmeijer, Gorki Bollar. Now that naive art has rid itself of modishness, young talents can develop more freely. Clearly, however, the younger painters wish to transmit their spiritual development to their paintings, even if it means departing from naive art. Naive art has always existed and will always exist, of that there is no
doubt. It is characteristic, however, that in the new generation of the retired,
there are almost no new talents. Is modern passivity in utilisation of free
time, spent in looking at television, a danger to naive art? Primitive or naïve art emerged in the past 50 years as one of contemporary art's most important phenomenon. Throughout the twentieth century, naïve art has outlasted the ever-changing variety of aesthetic styles. Despite a strong national character found in artists across the world, primitive painters, unaware of each other, display a remarkable unity of style. Naïve style eludes all simple definitions. It does not seek to explore, scrutinize or analyze, rather, it represents a serene world of simplicity. It carries an original message and represents scenes of everyday life, memories, dreams and fantasies with a love of colors and shapes. Although the difference between folk and naïve art is often blurred, naïve art is less concerned with static social structures and traditions than folk art. Uninfluenced by art traditions, naïve artists are self-taught and stylistically independent. They work without formal technical qualifications and with a remarkable indifference to perspective. They frequently represent scenes related to their childhood, places they were born and raised, and their everyday routine and festive occasions. In turn, these personal experiences resonate with political, social and religious issues. In their everyday lives, many artists feel driven by strictly regulated, uncreative mechanical routines. Yet they are not discontented. They are jovial and free-spirited people, who simply want to convey a world beyond the stifling realities of their daily life, onto their canvases. They search for a simpler way of life, a state of innocence akin to childhood, through the magical evocation of the imagination. The perspective, or third dimension, does not seem to interest most painters and as a result, it is often wrong. Succession of images unfold on the same plane. The use of color effects and graphics give the illusion of space. By stressing the narrative aspect of the picture, the primitive artist can prevent the eye from wandering. He induces the viewer's attention to converge on certain details, emphasizing some while forgetting others. Only the essential keeps the work in a pure state of innocence. "The essence of all genuine art is ultimately naïve if we understand this to mean purity of heart and thought." |