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  • Matthew Gale

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    Marta Jiménez Suárez
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    The document discusses the encounters between trained artists and untrained "primitive" artists like Alfred Wallis and James Dixon in the early 20th century. These encounters led trained artists to value authenticity over artistry as they saw the personal views of reality expressed by the untrained artists. While the untrained artists lived simply, their work was complex. Trained artists sought to become more "primitive" themselves, though their work was still influenced by their training. The document examines the relationships between trained and untrained artists and how the former introduced the work of the latter to a wider audience through exhibitions, establishing their association with this raw creativity.

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    Matthew Gale, "Artistry, Authenticity and the Work of James Dixon and Alfred Wallis"

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    The document discusses the encounters between trained artists and untrained "primitive" artists like Alfred Wallis and James Dixon in the early 20th century. These encounters led trained artists to value authenticity over artistry as they saw the personal views of reality expressed by the untrained artists. While the untrained artists lived simply, their work was complex. Trained artists sought to become more "primitive" themselves, though their work was still influenced by their training. The document examines the relationships between trained and untrained artists and how the former introduced the work of the latter to a wider audience through exhibitions, establishing their association with this raw creativity.

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    16 views2 pages

    Matthew Gale

    Uploaded by

    Marta Jiménez Suárez
    The document discusses the encounters between trained artists and untrained "primitive" artists like Alfred Wallis and James Dixon in the early 20th century. These encounters led trained artists to value authenticity over artistry as they saw the personal views of reality expressed by the untrained artists. While the untrained artists lived simply, their work was complex. Trained artists sought to become more "primitive" themselves, though their work was still influenced by their training. The document examines the relationships between trained and untrained artists and how the former introduced the work of the latter to a wider audience through exhibitions, establishing their association with this raw creativity.

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    Matthew Gale, "Artistry, Authenticity and the Work of James Dixon and Alfred Wallis" in Two Painters: Works

    by Alfred Wallis and James Dixon, exhibition catalogue (1999)

    James Dixon Portrait of Wallace Clarke, n.d. oil on paper

    ... The encounters between artists and primitives resulted in an unlearning of conventions by the trained in the face of these personal views of reality, independently expressed. In essence, this reflected the prevailing concerns and currents of industrialized society, which ensured that authenticity was valued over artistry. The apparent simplicity of this value system belies the complexity of the relationship born of encounters between professional artists and such painters as Alfred Wallis and James Dixon. Aspects of these relationships between the participants will be examined here. So seductive was the call of the simple life that a number of artists sought to become primitive themselves. The example of Paul Gauguin is often cited, although his primitivizing art is recognizably based on a whole swath of learned sources. In the twentieth century there were also artists within the mainstream of Modernism such as Marc Chagall whose work was at various times considered primitive. Christopher Wood is another of these, as his painting is often described as Nave. This exposes the inadequacy of the terms, as he (who trained briefly as an architect and was encouraged to study art in Paris by Augustus John and Alphonse Kahn) and Wallis (the retired rag-and-bone dealer from St. Ives) clearly enjoyed different circumstances. It is telling how the badge of untrained

    artist was proudly worn by professionals, reflecting the view of art education as a crushing weight. It was in these circumstances that the search for authenticity was undertaken.... The promotion of Rousseaus work by avant-garde artists before and after his death in 1910 is echoed in comparable situations across the Western world.[1] Thus, when Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood discovered Wallis in 1928, and Derek Hill discovered Dixon around 1960, all were participating in a well-established pattern. Its repetition across the years exposes these discoveries as, in effect, meaning introduced into the system. The Modernists brought the primitives to a wider public by establishing the climate for the acceptance of such work. Whether or not they stood to gain materially, the Modernists established their association with this raw creativity. [1] See Kenneth Coutts-Smith, "Some General Observations on the Problem of Cultural Colonialism," (1976; reprint London and New York: Routledge, 1991). Excerpt source: Matthew Gale, "Artistry, Authenticity and the Work of James Dixon and Alfred Wallis" in Two Painters: Works by Alfred Wallis and James Dixon, exhibition catalogue (London: Merrell Holberton Publishers Limited in association with Irish Museum of Modern Art and Tate Gallery St. Ives, 1999) 16-17.

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