INSPIRED BY TRIBAL ART

Kuba skirt at The Hamill Gallery

It all started when Maurice de Vlaminck was given a Fang Mask and he was so awestruck by its "primitive grandeur" that he wanted to show everyone in his art circle. When fellow painter Andre Derain saw it he had to have it, so he bought it from Vlaminck and rushed off to show Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse: Ambroise Vollard then borrowed it and cast it in bronze. Soon everyone was trying to obtain their own pieces of tribal art which began to influence the way they expressed themselves both in painting and sculpture. Thus a new spirit of freedom swept through 20th century art in the Western world.

Shell Cachet-sex from Papua New Guinea

Many artists are inspired by tribal art and I've gathered a few images that intrigue me.

George Peterson designs, carves, burns and paints old skate boards.

Hannes Harrs' mixed media collage made from old African textiles.

The Ngurrara Canvas. 10 Metres x 8 metres. One of the largest and most spectacular Aboriginal paintings of the Great Sandy Desert Region. read story, here.

Spade Sculpture by Roger Lee. See Flickr photostream, here.

Macrame from IRONIC's Flickr photostream.

Wave after wave has brought to our shores beautiful and mysterious treasures from unknown worlds: figurines, animals, fetishes, masks, ceremonial or useful objects. They are called Primitive for want of a better name...What could never have been written is there, all the dreams and anguishes of man. The hunger for food and sex and security, the terrors of night and death, the thirst for life and the hope for survival."- Dominique deMenil, Tribal Arts Spring 1998

Tribal by Rosalie Gascoigne at The Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

Group of my earliest totems.

GRID COMPOSITION IN ART

Mixed media by Rosalie Gascoigne

The grid forms the foundation of many artworks and sometimes it is so well hidden that you don't notice the underlying grid until someone happens to mention it, but in other pieces it is very obvious.

In this post I am featuring many of my old favourites as well as a few new ones. First and foremost, I LOVE Rosalie Gascoigne. Much of her work is based on an arrangement of shapes, squares and rectangles within a grid. Not that she would ever categorize her work. "Oh I don't do those deep thoughts" she said. "And in the end, okay, I was putting things in grids. But I didn't really know what a grid was. And that's the way it worked, it worked for me , you see."

Mixed Media by Rosalie Gascoigne . See more of her amazing art here.

Mixed Media with Kuba cloth collage by Hannes Harrs. See more here.

German artist Hannes Harrs became interested in Africa as a child when his uncle, who was a ships captain, returned from his travels with several African artefacts. Thus began Harrs obsession with the ancient arts of Africa. At the age of 23 he accomplished his dream when he settled in South Africa.

My dream is to own a Hannes Harrs. I love the rich earthy textures of the collages that incorporate old Kuba cloth and other African textiles.

Mixed Media with African textile collage by Hannes Harrs

Grid 2 (Driftwood, deer skull, found objects) by Bob Leibow. See more here.

Katrinas Garden. Mixed Media by Anita Cooke. This has to be seen enlarged to really appreciate it, here.

The list of materials used in Katrinas Garden is quite impressive. Canvas, acrylics, acrylic gel, thread, ceramic grog, embroidery thread, rope, wood, rug lathing, copper wire, window screening and twine !!!

Lady Liberty by Wosene Kosrof. See more here.

Wosene Kosrof is an old favourite who I've featured in blog posts several times before. He has lived outside of Ethiopia since the 1970s. In his art he engages in an energetic dialogue with his Ethiopian heritage.

Interior Landscapes. Hand-woven tapestry by South African artist, Susqya Williams. See more here.

Equus Red by Laura Wait. See more here.


Mana he aga, Manako by John Pule. See more here.

Ahipara girl introduced me to John Pule's work last year in this interesting post, here. Scroll halfway down to see the gorgeous fabric that caught my attention.