Page 48 - Studio International - September 1968

below left Cat circa 1840 artist unknown
16 x 20 in. oil on canvas
below Oneida Chieftain Shikellamy circa 1820
artist unknown 45 > 32 in. oil on canvas
coll. Philadelphia Museum of Art
facing page Edward Hicks The Cornell Farm 1848
36¾ x 49 in. oil on canvas

American Naive Painting at the `worked naturally in the old style of the Middle toretto and Cezanne. They never lived like artists:
Royal Academy of Arts Ages, not in the knowing and academic manner of they rarely thought or spoke in terms of art...'
September 6—October 20 the Italian Rennaisance'. (These words may not be I'm not sure which painters Monsieur Cassou
exact since I am translating from the French cata- writes about but his own naivety hardly matches
This selection of a hundred and one paintings from logue, the only one available at the time of writing). the many primitive painters working and exhibit-
the Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch Their vision, he continues, was not formed by the ing throughout the world to-day.
collection (which in toto numbers some 2000 works) classical models of Greece or ancient Rome, but Anatole Jakovsky, author of Peintres Naifs is
brings to London a famous, but little-seen aspect of by the pictorial style of medieval Northern Europe. actively defensive —' ... as soon as "naive" artists are
American art history. The Garbisch collection is but So portentous and pompous an approach to a re- mentioned one is immediately faced with preju-
one of many—the Karolik collection at Boston, the latively simple subject does not help us to under- dice, definitive and cutting, as if in an attempt to
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum at stand the role and artistic origins of these unique avert some undefined but real danger. Sometimes
Williamsburg, the collection at the Houston Art early Americans. they are simply laughed at, sometimes just shrugged
Gallery all testify to America's interest in its past. Another American writer Holger Cahill believes aside. They are the only ones not taken seriously.'
The exhibition is not only a delightful experience, `the work of these folk and popular artists has special You might well rub your eyes when you recall
a fascinating sidelight on American history, it significance for our generation because we have how often West End art galleries show primitives,
raises problems of definition—the inescapable diff- discovered that we can take seriously, once more, how well they sell to sophisticated audiences, what
erence between these eighteenth- and nineteenth- the idea of art for the people'; and in order to de- prices the masters in the genre fetch at sales and how
century American examples and the post-Rous- fend his enjoyment of primitives because they many naives are in museums.
seauesque twentieth-century naivety. embody this democratic application, he berates All this is to clear the ground for consideration of
Much nonsense is written about naive art. Critics critics to whom 'the phrase art for the people is a the Garbisch paintings in London. They have
feel constrained to excuse their interest or admira- contradiction in terms, and for many it became an little in common with the post-Rousseau type of
tion, to establish sound art-historical reasons for expression of contempt.' All of which has nothing naive painting now in vogue. For one thing early
their involvement. Thus in the catalogue to the to do with the case. American artists were often trained, albeit under
present exhibition at the Royal Academy, Albert In more heroic, sentimental vein the French `primitive' conditions and by teachers who, cut
ten Eyck Gardner, Director of American Painting writer Jean Cassou, thus introduced a mixed exhibit- off from European sources, were little more, some-
and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum, goes ion of primitives; 'The painters who concern us in times less competent than their pupils. If an eight-
to some length to justify his use of the term 'medie- this exhibition were innocent of the world. They did eenth- or nineteeth-century American painter had
val' to describe the vision and techniques of not know that when they began to paint they joined special talent or merit he made his way to Europe,
American primitives. He believes they consciously the brotherhood of Giotto and Delacroix, Tin- to seek greater expertise and the fame and fortune
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