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ABOUT NAIVE ART by MARTINE GENICOT

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."

NAÏEVE ART IN THE NETHERLANDS BY NICO VAN DER ENDT (AMSTERDAM)

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?
Nico v.d. Endt Amsterdam