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Visual arts

Interpreting primitive culture

Pit Kassel and James Warren-Smith

Until tomorrow

German artist Pit Kassel is tuned into a tradition of interpretation of primitivism
that stretches back to the turn of the century. That was when artists recognised
that the art of other cultures was just as significant as Western tradition developments.
In the paintings of Gaugin; then the paintings and sculpture of the Fauves and in the
breakthrough painting by Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, in 1907, the influence of
Oceanic, then northern African and Iberian cultures impregnated modern art.
The primitive line can be detected in work by surrealists such as Ernst and Miro and
later in the figurative abstractions of Americans such as Gorky and De Kooning. 
In Australla, Margaret Preston's art changed in response to her interest in oriental styles,
then painters such as Ian Fairweather introduced primitive iconography in their art.
The proposition in socalled "primitivism" that other cultures were indeed superior to the
Western version was attractive to bohemian artists, often instinctively humanist by nature. 

Pit Kassel emigrating from Germany later this year to live in Adelaide, shows the continuing 
influence of primitivism in his reduction of the figure to a simple line, in crayon drawings
and large, abstract motifs. His large paintings are effective, almost acting as stage sets,
the best of which capture, in a direct, sketchy style, artists at work, such as the jazz musicians
in Taking a Break, Native Dancer and, not as energetic or interesting, the Brancusi-like sculpter
in Artist.
Kassel needs scale to exploit his gift for free drawing and spontaneous painting, as the mostly
white figures are outlined by black crayon and the backgrounds quickly blocked in with earthy
colors over the sandy texture of bitumen. Less successful are his initial responses to the local
landscape. Australlan Earth I and II. and Crow, an expressionost caricature which lacks the
compositional application of the larger works.
Is this Whyalla? and Was He Black or White? are more abstract, relying on large black calligraphic
strokes, reminiscent of Miro or Klein, or even Mervvyn Smith's watercolors.

The artist's personality is conveyed in his large sketchy works, with a humorous observation
of human activities in many, such as the knot of buttocks and Iimbs in Another Version of
Aristophanes' Thesis. James Warren Smith is a young sculptor who is trying subjects and
techniques to establish grounding for future work. There is comment on art, art movements
and individual artists in some of this work, which signifies a questioning rather than imitative
mind at work. The bronze moulding of a butternut pumpkin is an unusual high or low point
In Dionysius Triptych. With Interstices, a more conceptual series of Agamemnon-like masks set
on steel circles, he achieves more, particularly when displayed as a cluster.

Adam Dutkiewicz