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Marc Chagall - Le Violiniste Bleu Henri Rousseau - The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897
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Primitivism
The tendency of artists of the late 19th century to take interest in the art of the Far East, and to look for new ways of expression, influenced Paul Gauguin, who traveled to Tahiti and painted the islanders. Gauguin, who, along with Van-Gogh, searched for the most direct way to express emotion in painting, and found the natural way in "primitive" art, unspoiled by strict academic rules common in the Western world. He admired the craft of the local natives, and tried to learn their view of reality. He was proud of the title "barbaric", used to describe his style. He painted in a simple, unsophisticated manner, using big colour stains, and created pictures that paid little attention to depth and perspective, being somewhat flat painting.
Primitivist artists took pride in their ability to speak to the common person. Unlike artists of other schools, whose greatness was difficult to comprehend by the larger audience, it is very easy to identify with a painting of this style. Followers of this trend prided themselves on their "closeness to the soil". Henri Rousseau, an amateur painter who learned to draw almost by himself (like Van-Gogh and Gogin), painted spontaneously, and without any experience, paintings that were later considered to match this trend, works that are a spectacular example of the simple, unpretentious painting. Marc Chagall combined the almost-childish painting idealised by the primitivists with the folklore of the Jewish town in which he grew up.
In music, Stravinsky tried, in the dawn of the 20th century, to rephrase a new musical language. Subjects of Paganism in the ballet "The Rite of Spring", like the rhythmical novelty including polyrhythm, and sharper dissonances in his pieces, were among the most important innovations of this century. His style was also called by critics (and those were numerous) "primitivism" and "barbarism". In contrast, one may see the tendency to paint in a style that would fit the common person as similar to Hindemith's "functional music".
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