PRIMITIVE ART

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23687, 20 December 1938, Page 5

PRIMITIVE ART

We cannot, among primitive peoples, speak of the artist's being "called." to his mission, writes Mr Julius Lips in his book, " The Savage Hits Back." The complicated and pretentious atmosphere that rightly or wrongly always envelops our painters and sculptors, the artistic refinements which we are only too ready to connect with the idea of artistic creation, the exaggerated stressing of an individual talent which is regarded as unique—all such ideas are in direct opposition to primitive thought. No one who has troubled to give primitive art even a cursory surr vey will ever think of the native artist in that light. This does not, however, mean that primitive peoples have no sense of quality and efficiency, that they are not proud of workmen who are specially clever in producing complicated implements and furniture. The profoundest roots of artistic production, a certain pious simplicity and introspection, are, with them, more of a natural gift than is the case with their white colleague, who at limes is driven by poverty of ideas to labour his work with an affected finesse For the indefatigable imagination, continual readiness to absorb, and keen observational faculty of primitive men are qualities which our European or American artists frequently have to acquire by long study—among coloured artists they usually exist from the out-