Robert Layton states very clearly his opinion of “primitive art”, and the societies that created those art works, “Any community which possesses a tradition of artistic expression has more than a little sophistication in its culture.” (p. 3). The key part of that belief lay in its last few words, “…in its culture.” (3). This is what makes the discussion of “primitive art” problematic. These words are what make Ellen Dissanayake first describe the nature of what western society has come to label “primitive” society. She states: “`Primitive` societies are…characterized by small-scale settlements, a low level of technological development, an unspecialized economy and a nonliterate tradition, and generally slow-changing, unquestioned homogenous social institutions and practices relative to nonprimitive societies.” (p. 42-3). Therefore, now gifted with some sort of scope for the word “primitive”, we can begin to understand what Layton meant when he described “primitive art” as having, “…more than a little sophistication in its culture.” (p. 3). This statement refers to people of small-scale societies that not only possessed enough sophistication to identify hundreds or thousands of edible/non-edible plants, and how to track, hunt, kill, butcher and make use of all parts of an animal, but also had the intelligence to creatively express their spiritual/general beliefs regarding the world around them. To create a work of art with high significance and relevance to a society’s spiritual beliefs, for not only their-own, but also other generations to follow, takes a high amount of time, intelligence, and sophistication. I don’t see the art created by our human ancestors as primitive; I see it as the basis for all of our artistic expression because there is no difference between “primitive art” and western art. “Primitive art” is the creative expression by our human ancestors that describes how they view the world around them. How is this concept different from most western art? It’s not. If you look at arguably the most famous artistic period in human history, the renaissance, you see a similar pattern of artists expressing their feeling and beliefs about the time that they are living in. This time period was a dawning of many scientific theories, a reawakening of philosophical thought, and questioning the dominant institution of the time; the catholic church. This is all reflected in many of the artworks of the period. In art’s most basic sense as creative expression, there is no difference between the works produced by the people of the renaissance and those that created the cave paintings in France because both traditions are effectively portraying the world around them as those cultures knew it.
Both Layton and Dissanayake disapprove of the term “primitive art”. Dissanayake took multiple pages (p. 43-4) discussing why she is uncomfortable with the term. Layton on the first page of his textbook states: “…the term `Primitive Art` will not be used here…” (p. 1). True to his word, “Primitive Art” is not used much, if at all, in the first chapter of his book. Both authors discuss a great deal about the art of small-scale societies but both try to remain objective.
Sources for Images
I really like your argument about how the "primitive" cultures are not that primitive, and that what they represent in their art is no different than western art. the fact that you used the Renaissance as an example was interesting too. That art is just expressing the world around artist. The use of the photos was a nice touch.
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