Weimar

Weimar (pronounced vahy-mahr, wahy-mahr, veye-mahr or weye-mahr)

(1) A city in Thuringia, in central Germany, the scene (in 1919) of the adoption of the constitution of the German state which came (retrospectively) to be known as the Weimar Republic.

(2) A German surname (of habitational origin).

(3) As Weimar Republic, The sovereign German republic (1918-1933), successor state to the German Empire (1871-1918 and now sometimes referred to as the “Second Reich”) and predecessor to the Nazi regime (the “Third Reich”, 1933-1945).

Pre 1100: The construct was the Old High German wīh (holy; sacred) + meri (sea; lake; pond; standing water, swamp).  The name can therefore be analysed as something like “holy pond” or “sacred lake” but what religious significance this had or which aquatic feature was involved is not known.  A settlement in the area of what is now Weimar has existed since at least the early Middle Ages and there is a document dated 999 which makes reference to the town as Wimaresburg but how long this, or some related form had be in use is unknown.  Over time, the changes presumably reflected as desire for convenience and simplification (not an imperative always noted in evolution of the German language) and during the early centuries of the second millennium the place seems to have been known as Wimares, Wimari & Wimar before finally becoming Weimar.  In a manner not unusual in the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806), it was the seat of the County of Weimar, one of the administrative and commercial centres of Thuringia but in 1062 merged with the County of Orlamünde to form Weimar-Orlamünde, which existed until 1346 when the Thuringian Counts' War (a squabble between several local barons) erupted.  In the settlement which followed, Weimar was taken by the Wettin clan as an agreed fief and over time developed into a major city.  Weimar is a proper noun, Weimarization & Weimarize are nouns and Weimarian is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is Weimars.

One native to or an inhabitant of Weimar is a Weimarer (strong, genitive Weimarers, plural Weimarer, feminine Weimarerin).  The adjective Weimarian (of or relating to the Weimar period (1918-1933) in German can be used in any context but is most often applied to the art & culture associated with the era rather than politics or economics.  The comparative is “more Weimarian”, the superlative “most Weimarian”).  The noun Weimarization (a state of economic crisis leading to political upheaval and extremism) is used exclusively to describe the political and financial turmoil of the Weimar years.  The verb Weimarize (to cause to undergo Weimarization) is the companion term and is applied in much the same was as a word like “Balkanize” as a convenient word which encapsulates much in a way no other can.  The Weimaraner is a breed of dog, bred originally in the region as a hunting dog, the construct being Weimar + the German suffix -aner (denoting “of this place”).

In a constitutional sense, the Weimar Republic came into existence on 11 August 1919 when the national assembly of the German state met in the city to adopt the new Weimar Constitution.  Despite that, many historians use the label to cover the whole period between abdication on 9 November 1918 by Wilhelm II (1859 1941; German emperor (Kaiser) & King of Prussia 1888-1918) and the Nazis taking office on 30 January 1933.  The constitution created what structurally was a fairly conventional federal republic (known officially as the Deutsches Reich (German Reich)), the constituent parts of which were the historic Länder (analogous with the states in systems like the US or Australia though the details of the power sharing differed), each with their own governments, assemblies and constitutions.  Historians regards the inherent weakness of the structure as one of the factors which contributed to the political instability, economic turmoil and social unrest for which the era is remembered but the external forces are thought to have been a greater influence, notably the harsh terms imposed by the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the extraordinary level of war reparations, the latter particularly associated with the hyper-inflation of 1923.  However, it was a time of unusual social & political freedom and there was an outpouring of innovative cultural creativity.  One thing which tends to be obscured by what came later was that by 1928 the system had been stabilized and the economy was stable.  In the last election prior to the Wall Street Crash (1929), the Nazi vote has slumped to 3% and the party was an outlier with few prospects and it was only the depression of the early 1930s which doomed Weimar.

Lindsay Lohan in court, Los Angeles, 2011.

Actually, rather than the pleasant city in Thuringia which lent the constitution its name, it was Berlin, the national and Prussian capital which came most to be associated with the artistic and sexual experimentation of the republic.  Although most of went on in the place was little different than in other conservative German cities it was the small but highly visible numbers of those enjoying the excesses which attracted attention.  In his novel Down There on a Visit (1962) Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) wrote of the sort of warning respectable folk would in the 1920s offer to anyone who seemed to need the advice:

“Christopher - in the whole of Thousand Nights and One Night, in the most shameless rituals of the Tantra, in the carvings on the Black Pagoda, in the Japanese brothel-pictures, in the vilest perversions of the oriental mind, you couldn’t find anything more nauseating than what goes on there, quite openly, every day. That city is doomed, more surely than Sodom ever was."  And then and there I made a decision - one that was to have a very important effect on the rest of my life. I decided that, no matter how, I would get to Berlin just as soon as ever I could and that I would stay there a long, long time.

Weimar art: Der Künstler mit zwei erhängten Frauen (The Artist with Two Hanged Women), watercolour and graphite on paper by Rudolf Schlichter (1890-1955).   

Isherwood left London by the afternoon train for Berlin on 14 March 1929, taking a room next to the Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science from which he explored the city’s “decadence and depravity” enjoying just about every minute and by his own account every gay bar and club, of which there were many.  That niche was only one of many to which the Berlin of Weimer catered, all fetishes seemingly there from morphine, cocaine and opium houses to a club at which membership was restricted to a “coven of coprophagists [who] gorged a prostitute on chocolate, gave her a laxative and settled down to a feast.”  Actually, at the time, there was plenty of depravity among the Nazis, however much the public platform of the party might stress traditional values and they were as condemnatory as the Pope of such as communists, homosexuals and Freemasons (The Roman Catholic Church among the institutions Hitler admired along with the British Empire and comrade Stalin (and Stalin really was a construct)).  Indeed, in his writings and the recollections of his contemporaries about his discussions, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) didn’t much dwell on moral matters but he would spend much effort condemning those aspects of German culture he believed the Weimar generation were corrupting including “modernist architecture, Dadaist art, Jewish psychoanalysis, experimental theatre, short shirts, lipstick, bobbed hair, dances like the foxtrot and jazz” (the last of which he derided as “a degenerate negroid sound”).

Weimar art: Sonnenfinsternis (Eclipse of the Sun (1926)), oil on canvas by George Grosz (1893-1959).  Weimar was not untouched by surrealism.

The lurid tales of Weimar Berlin from the diaries of Christopher Isherwood et al now entertain rather than shock as once they would have managed but the expressionist art which flourished at the time remains striking.  A stridently experimental fork of the European avant-garde, the Weimar artists chose to ignore traditional aesthetic conventions and according to some critics the painters were fascinated by ugliness, the composers by atonal dissonance.  They were also artists who were predominately urban and focused upon the city, its decadence and corrosive influence upon the individual.  The Weimar period was the time also when the phrase magischer Realismus (magic realism) was coined, more accurately to describe what had come to be known as the Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity).  Magic realism is now thought of as a literary genre in which fantastical elements are interpolated into life-like depictions of the world but the first use was in 1925 by German art historian Franz Roh (1890–1965) who observed many artists in the Weimar Republic were rejecting (or at least ignoring) the idealistic style (fashionable before World War I (1914-1918) and which had combined naturalistic depiction with an amplification of beauty and virtue), in favor of something recognizably realistic yet blended with uncanny elements.  Roh’s understanding of magic realism was at least partially an acknowledgement of technology: the influence of photography and moving pictures (film).  Then as now, there was debate about whether there was some point at which realism stopped and surrealism began but the distinction was that magic realism was a distortion of the actual material world for some political or other didactic purpose whereas surrealism explored the abstractions which lurked in the subconscious mind. 

In the Weimar style: The Rt Hon Theresa May MP (2023), a portrait of (Lady May, b 1956; UK prime-minister 2016-2019) by Saied Dai (b 1958).

Painted by Tehran-born Saied Dai, it will hang in  Portcullis House, Parliament's office complex where many MPs have their offices and not since Graham Sutherland’s (1903–1980) portrait of Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) was unveiled in 1954 has a painting of one of the country’s prime-ministers attracted so much interest, the reception of such works not usually much more than perfunctory.  Sutherland was commissioned (as second choice; Sir Herbert Gunn's (1893–1964) fee deemed too high) by the ad hoc “Churchill Joint Houses of Parliament Gift Committee” to paint a portrait to mark the prime-minister’s eightieth birthday and on 30 November 1954, the members of the Commons & the Lords assembled in Westminster Hall to mark the occasion.  Paid for by parliamentary subscription (the idea of paying for such a thing from their own pockets would appal today’s politicians), it was intended the work would remain with Churchill until his death after which it would be gifted to the state to hang in the Palace of Westminster.

Winston Churchill (1954) by Graham Sutherland.

Things didn’t work out that way.  Churchill, not anyway much enjoying the aging process loathed the painting and felt betrayed by the artist, the preliminary sketches he’d been shown hinting at something rather different.  Initially, he sulked, first saying he wouldn’t attend the event, then that he’d turn up only if the painting wasn’t there but his moods often softened with a little coercion and he agreed to make a short speech of thanks at the unveiling, his most memorable lines being: “The portrait is a remarkable example of modern art. It certainly combines force and candour.”  It wasn’t hard to read between the lines and when delivered to Churchill’s country house, the painting was left in a storeroom, never unwrapped and never again to be seen, Lady Churchill (Clementine Churchill (Baroness Spencer-Churchill; 1885–1977) in 1956 incinerating it in what was described as “a huge bonfire”.  That she'd executed one of history’s most practical examples of art criticism wasn't revealed until 1979.  Curiously, when first she saw it in 1954 she admired the work, Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) who was with her at the time noting she “liked the portrait very much” and was much “moved and full of praise for it.”  Her view soon changed.

The better-received May portrait was commissioned this time by the Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art at a cost of Stg£28,000 (in adjusted terms somewhat less than the 1,000 guineas paid in 1954; this time all from the tax payer) and Mrs May (she doesn’t use the title she gained in 2020 upon her husband being knighted (for “political service”) in Boris Johnson’s (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) remarkable (and belated) Dissolution Honours List) was reported as saying she thought the portrait a “huge honour”.  When interviewed, the artist said his “…aim was to produce not just a convincing physical likeness, but also a psychological characterization, both individual and yet archetypal - imbued with symbolism and atmosphere.  A good painting needs to be a revelation and also paradoxically, an enigma. It should possess an indefinable quality - in short, a mystery.”

A work of careful composition, critics have found in it influences from the Renaissance and mannerism but it’s most obviously in the spirit of the German expressionists identified with the Weimar Republic and the addition of a convallaria majalis (the "lily of the valley" which flowers in May) was the sort of touch they would have admired.  Interestingly, Mr Dai expressed relief he’d not been asked to render Mr Johnson on canvas which is understandable because while an artist could permit their interpretative imagination free reign and produce something memorable, Mr Johnson over the decades has been a series of living, breathing caricatures and it would be challenge for anyone to capture his “psychological characterization”.  The Weimaresque May in oil on canvas works so well because it’s so at variance with the one-dimensional image of the subject which has so long been in the public mind.  Whether it will change the perception of Mrs May in the minds of many isn’t known but critics have mostly admired the work and views of her premiership do seem to have been revised in the light of the rare displays of ineptitude which have marked the time in office of her three successors.

After Weimar: Der Bannerträger (The Standard Bearer (circa 1936)) oil on plywood by Hubert Lanzinger (1880-1950).  The post card with the inscription Ob im Glück oder Unglück, ob in der Freiheit oder im Gefängnis, ich bin meiner Fahne, die heute des Deutschen Reiches Staatsflagge ist, treu geblieben (Whether in good fortune or misfortune, whether in freedom or in prison, I have remained loyal to my flag, which is now the state flag of the German Reich) was issued in 1939, one of many such uses of the image which depicts Hitler as a knight in shining armor on horseback, bearing a Swastika flag.  As he did whenever a  postage stamp with his image was sold, the Führer received a tiny fee as a royalty; multiplied by millions, he gleaned quite a income from his pictures.  In one of the many examples of the fakery which underpinned Nazism (and fascism in general), Hitler was “terrible on horseback".

Der Bannerträger was an example of the type of art which proliferated in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, works intended to enforce the personality cult around Hitler and comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) and reinforce the messaging of both regimes.  Hitler, although he dutifully acknowledged them when they were presented, really did regard them as a kind of kitsch and although he understood their utility as propaganda pieces, they aroused in him little interest.  What he really liked in a painting was beauty as he defined it and in this his differentiation was something like his views on architecture where the standards imposed on the “functional” varied from his expectations of the “representational”.  Hitler would admire modern architecture rendered in steel & glass if it was being used for a factory or warehouse; there it was a matter of efficiency and improving working conditions but for the public buildings of the Reich, he insisted on classical motifs in granite.  In painting, he distinguished between what was essentially “advertising” and “real” art which the expressionism of the Weimar era certainly was not; the “…sky is not green, dogs are not blue and anyone who paints them as such has a sick mind” was his summary of thought on the Weimar art movement.  His preference was for (1) the Neoclassical which drew inspiration from the Greek and Roman art of Antiquity and his fondness extended not only to the voluptuous female nudes historians like to mention but also to the idealized, heroic figures representing nobility and heroism; with these he identified, (2) realistic landscapes, particularly those of the German countryside at its most lovely, (3) German Academic Realism which produced intricately detailed realistic representations of subjects, (4) depictions from Norse mythology which created a link between the legends and the idealized vision of the Nazi project and (5), traditional portraiture, if realistic and flattering (certainly demanded of the many painted of him).

Women in Weimer art: Margot (1924), oil on canvas by Rudolf Schlichter (1890-1955) (left), Porträt der Tänzerin Anita Berber (Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber (1925)), oil and tempera on plywood by Otto Dix (1891–1969) (centre) and Bean Ingram (1928), oil on canvas by Herbert Gurschner (1901-1975) (right). 

Books of which the Nazis didn’t approve could be burned and the proscribed music not played but the practical public servants in the finance ministry knew much of the Entartete Kunst (degenerate art) removed from German (and later Austrian) galleries was highly sought by collectors in other countries and valuable foreign exchange was obtained from these sales (some of which in the post-war years proved controversial because of the provenance of some pieces sold then and later; they turned out to have been “obtained” from occupied territories or Jews).  Hitler despised Dadaism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism and expected others in the Reich to share his view but an exhibition of Entartete Kunst in Munich in 1937 proved an embarrassing one-off for the regime because people from around the country travelled to see it and it was the most attended art show of the Third Reich.  It was Weimar’s revenge.

Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan (pronounced koz-muh-pol-i-tn)

(1) One free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments; an internationalist.

(2) One with the characteristics of a cosmopolite.

(3) A cocktail made with vodka, cranberry juice, an orange-flavored liqueur, and lime juice.

(4) Sophisticated, urbane, worldly.

(5) Of plants and animals, wildly distributed species.

(6) Common name for the vanessa cardui butterfly. 

1828:  An adoption in Modern English, borrowed from the French cosmopolite (citizen of the world), ultimately derived from the Ancient Greek kosmopolitēs (κοσμοπολίτης), the construct being kósmos (κόσμος) (world) + politēs (πολίτης) (citizen); word being modeled on metropolitan.  The US magazine Cosmopolitan was first published in 1886.

An aspect of Soviet Cold War policy under comrade Stalin

The phrase rootless cosmopolitans was coined in the nineteenth century by Vissarion Belinsky (1811-1848), a Russian literary critic much concerned about Western influences on both Russian literature and society.  He applied it to writers he felt “…lacked Russian national character” but as a pejorative euphemism, it’s now an anti-Semitic slur and one most associated with domestic policy in the Soviet Union (USSR) between 1946 and comrade Stalin’s death in 1953.  Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR 1922–1953) liked the phrase and applied it to the Jews, a race of which he was always suspicious because he thought their lack of a homeland made them “mystical, intangible and other-worldly”.  Not a biological racist like Hitler and other rabid anti-Semites, Stalin’s enemies were those he perceived a threat; Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), Grigory Zinoviev (1883–1936) and Lev Kamenev (1883–1936) were disposed of not because they were Jewish but because Stalin thought they might threaten his hold on power although the point has been made that while it wasn’t because he was Jewish that Trotsky was murdered, many Jews would come to suffer because Stalin associated them with Trotsky.

Comrade Stalin signing death warrants.

It was the same with institutions.  He found disturbing the activities of Moscow’s Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and did not approve them being accepted by Western governments as representing the USSR.  Further, he feared the JAC’s connections with foreign powers might create a conduit for infiltration by Western influences; well Stalin knew the consequences of people being given ideas; the campaign of 1946-1953 was thus more analogous with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) opposition to the Falun Gong rather than the pogroms of Tsarist times.  Authoritarian administrations don’t like independent organisations; politics needs to be monolithic and control absolute.  In a speech in Moscow in 1946, he described certain Jewish writers and intellectuals, as “rootless cosmopolitans” accusing them of a lack of patriotism, questioning their allegiance to the USSR.  This theme festered but it was the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, fostering as it did an increased self consciousness among Soviet Jews, combined with the Cold War which turned Stalin into a murderous anti-Semite.

Rootless cosmopolitan Comrade Trotsky, murdered with an ice axe on comrade Stalin's orders.

Before the formation of the state of Israel, Stalin's anti-Semitism was more a Russian mannerism than any sort of obsession.  For years after assuming absolute power in the USSR, he expressed no disquiet at the preponderance of Jews in the foreign ministry and it was only in 1939, needing a temporary diplomatic accommodation with Nazi Germany, that he acted.  Having replaced the Jewish Foreign Commissar, Maxim Litvinov (1876–1951; People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union 1930–1939) with Vyacheslav Molotov (1890-1986; USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs 1939-1949 & 1953-1956), he ordered him to purge the diplomatic corps of Jews, his memorable phrase being "clean out the synagogue".  Concerned the presence of Jews might be an obstacle to rapprochement with Hitler, Stalin had the purge effected with his usual efficiency: many were transferred to less conspicuous roles and others were arrested or shot.

Meeting of minds: Joachim von Ribbentrop (left), comrade Stalin (centre) and comrade Molotov (right), the Kremlin, 23 August 1939.

Negotiations began in the summer of 1939, concluding with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) leading a delegation to Moscow to meet with Molotov and Stalin.  It proved a remarkably friendly conference of political gangsters and agreement was soon reached, the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (usually called the Nazi-Soviet Pact or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) being signed on 23 August.  The pact contained also a notorious secret protocol by which the two dictators agreed to a carve-up of Poland consequent upon the impending Nazi invasion and the line dividing Poland between the two was almost identical to the Curzon Line, a demarcation between the new Polish Republic created in the aftermath of World War I (1914-1918) and the emergent Soviet Union which had been proposed by Lord Curzon (1859–1925; UK foreign secretary 1919-1924).  At the Yalta Conference in 1945, during the difficult negotiations over Polish borders, Molotov habitually referred to "the Curzon Line" and the UK Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden (1897–1977; thrice UK foreign secretary & prime minister 1955-1957), in a not untypically bitchy barb, observed it was more common practice to call it the “Molotov-Ribbentrop line”.  "Call it whatever you like" replied Stalin, "we still think it's fair and just".  Comrade Stalin rarely cared much to conceal the nature of the regime he crafted in his own image.  When asked by Franklin (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) if Molotov had been to New York during his visit to the US. Stalin replied: "No, he went to Chicago to be with the other gangsters".

Whatever the motives of Stalin, rootless cosmopolitans has joined the code of dog-whistle politics, a part of the core demonology to label the Jews a malign race, a phrase in the tradition of Christ killer, Rothschild-Capitalist and Untermenschen (the sub-humans).  Despite that, there are always optimists, Jewish writer Vincent Brook (b 1946), suggesting the term could convey the positive, a suggestion the Jews possess an “adaptability and empathy for others”.  It’s not a view widely shared and rootless cosmopolitan remains an anti-Semitic trope although it's not unknown for Jews to use it ironically.

Lindsay Lohan, Cosmopolitan, various international editions: April, May & June, 2006.

Cosmopolitan Magazine was launched in 1886 as a family journal of fashion, household décor, cooking, and other domestic interests.  It survived in a crowded market but its publisher did not and within two years Cosmopolitan was taken over by another which added book reviews and serialized fiction to the content.  This attracted a specialist house, John Brisben Walker, which assumed control in 1889, expanding its circulation twenty-fold to become one of America’s most popular literary magazines.  The Hurst Corporation acquired the title in 1905, briefly adding yellow-journalism before settling on a format focused on short fiction, celebrities and public affairs.  The formula proved an enduring success, circulation reaching two million by 1940 and this was maintained until a decline began in the mid 1950s, general-interest magazines being squeezed out by specialist titles and the time-consuming steamroller of television.

It was the appointment in 1965 of Helen Gurley Brown (1922–2012) as editor which signalled Cosmopolitan’s shift to a magazine focused exclusively on an emerging and growing demographic with high disposable income: the young white women of the baby boom.  In what proved a perfect conjunction, a target market with (1) economic independence, (2) social freedom, (3) an embryonic feminist awareness and (4) the birth control pill, the magazine thrived, surviving even the rush of imitators its success spawned.  Gurley Brown had in 1962 published the best seller advice manual, Sex and the Single Girl and Cosmopolitan essentially, for decades, reproduced variations on the theme in a monthly, glossy package.  It was clearly a gap in the market.

The approach was a success but there was criticism.  Conservatives disliked the choices in photography and the ideas young women were receiving.  Feminists were divided, some approved but others thought the themes regressive, a retreat from the overtly political agenda of the early movement into something too focused on fun and fashion, reducing women yet again to objects seeking male approbation.  Still published in many international editions, Australian Cosmopolitan was a rare casualty of market forces, closed after a final printing in December 2018.

Primitive

Primitive (pronounced prim-i-tiv)

(1) Being the first or earliest of the kind or in existence, especially in an early age of the world.

(2) Early in the history of the world or of humankind.

(3) Characteristic of early ages or of an early state of human development.(4) In anthropology, of or relating to a preliterate or tribal people having cultural or physical similarities with their early ancestors: no longer in technical use; denoting or relating to a preliterate and nonindustrial social system.

(5) Unaffected or little affected by civilizing influences; uncivilized; a savage (some historians once distinguished between barbarians and savages on what was essentially a racist basis).

(6) Being in its earliest period; early; old-fashioned.

(7) In art, an artist of a preliterate culture; a naïve or un-schooled artist; an artist belonging to the early stage in the development of a style; a work of art by a primitive artist; an artist whose work does not conform to traditional, academic, or avant-garde standards of Western painting, such as a painter from an African or Oceanic civilization

(8) In fine art, a painter of the pre-Renaissance era in European painting (usually as "Italian primitive"); the works of these artists or in their recognizable style.

(9) In mathematics, a geometric or algebraic form or expression from which another is derived or a function of which the derivative is a given function; a function the derivative of which is a given function; an anti-derivative.

(10) In linguistics, the form from which a given word or other linguistic form has been derived, by either morphological or historical processes, as take in undertake (the most recent common ancestor (although sometimes hypothetical)).

(11) In biology, of, relating to, or resembling an early stage in the evolutionary development of a particular group of organisms; another word for primordial.

(12) In geology, pertaining to magmas that have experienced only small degrees of fractional crystallization or crystal contamination; of, relating to, or denoting rocks formed in or before the Paleozoic era (obsolete).

(13) In Protestant theology, of, relating to, or associated with a minority group that breaks away from a sect, denomination, or Church in order to return to what is regarded as the original simplicity of the Gospels.

(14) In computer programming, a data type that is built into the programming language, as opposed to more complex structures; any of the simplest elements (instructions, statements) in a programming language.

(15) In digital imagery, artistic training and certain aspects of engineering and architecture, a set of basic geometric shapes which can be used individually or from which more complex shapes can be constructed.

(16) In grammar, original; primary; radical; not derived.

1350-1400: From the Middle English primitif (of an original cause; of a thing from which something is derived; not secondary (used as both noun and adjective and originally in the sense of "original ancestor")), from the Middle French primitif (very first, original) from the Latin prīmitīvus (first or earliest of its kind), from primitus (at first), from prīmus (first).  The alternative spelling primative is long obsolete.  Primitive is a noun & adjective and primitiveness & primitivism are nouns; the noun plural is primitives.

The meaning "of or belonging to the first age" was from the early fifteenth century and was applied especially in the Christian church in the sense of "adhering to the qualities of the early Church."  The secular version of this meaning "having the style of an early or ancient time" was a nostalgic expression, an allusion to the (supposed) simplicity of the "old days" emerged in the 1680s.  The use during the era of European colonial expansion to mean "an aboriginal person in a land visited by Europeans" is from 1779, thus the idea of a primitive being an "uncivilized person".  To the colonial powers it was quite an important point to make because, being "uncivilized" (1) there could of course not be a legal system and thus no conception of the "ownership" of land and (2) such lands the Europeans "discovered" could be declared Terra nullius (from the Latin meaning "nobody's land" (literally "land belonging to nobody").  In Western anthropology, the idea persisted and by the late nineteenth century it was applied to cultures which, through isolation, had continued to operate at a technologically simple level, and even by the mid-late twentieth century it was common for mainstream historians to distinguish between "civilizations" and mere "cultures".  Reflecting both the snobby disdain for the pre Renaissance Italian primitives and perhaps as an allusion to prehistoric cave art, critics in the early 1940s applied the label "primitive" to artists thought "untrained", water-colorists seemingly a particular target.

The Italian Primitives

Technically, the phrase “Italian primitives” refers to works of art created between late eleventh and early fourteenth century with a particular emphasis on the later years.  It wasn’t until the late eighteenth century that historians and collectors first showed notable interest in Italian primitives and it’s indicative of the attitudes of the time that the artists of the era were often classified as “Italian pre-Renaissance” or “proto-Renaissance” painters; as late as the 1970s, “Italian primitives” was something of a pejorative term, such was the reverence for the works of the later Italian Renaissance, especially the High Renaissance (1495–1520), and Mannerism (1520–1600).

Two works by Cimabue (Cenni di Pepo, circa 1240–1302): Castelfiorentino Madonna (circa 1283), tempera & gold on panel (left) and Santa Trinita Maestà (circa 1295), tempera on panel (right).  The early Italian primitive style contrasted with a work representing the later intrusions of technique and dimensional imagination.  It is however misleading to speak of "early" and "late" Italian primitives in the sense of a definable stylistic shift, works with the classic Byzantine lines and form still being painted (for a receptive market) even in the early Renaissance and there would of course be a revival of sorts in some of the schools of early twentieth century modernism.

The role the Italian primitives played in the transition from the Byzantine artistic tradition to the more naturalistic and humanistic style that would later characterize the Italian Renaissance was of course acknowledged but the works themselves were usually treated as something imitative or at least derivative of the earlier techniques despite there being an obvious move away from the strict stylization and abstract qualities of Byzantine art, elements of naturalism, spatial depth, and even an exaggerated emotional expression appearing.  The Renaissance was not one of those moments in art when there was an abrupt shift from one stylistic tradition to another and the Italian primitives were part of series of developments in art, architecture and culture that typify the forces which become epoch-making.  The emphasis on perspective, anatomical accuracy and depictions of the range of human emotion so associated with the Renaissance owes much to the Italian primitives, not only in technique but also what came to be regarded as acceptable subject matter for art and one might suspect the Renaissance masters, revolutionary though they were, perhaps regarded the earlier tradition with more reverence than the critics who were so seduced by the sumptuousness of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

Crucifix of Santa Maria Novella (circa 1280), tempera on wood by Giotto (Giotto di Bondone, circa 1267-1337).  Among the Italian primitives, the works of Giotto provide some of the finest illustrations of the emergence of elements which the Renaissance masters would refine and perfect.  His Crucifix of Santa Maria Novella is very much in the vein of earlier works by Giunta Pisano (circa 1180-circa 1260) and Cimabue and details how the Italian primitives didn't wholly abandon the hieratic solemnity of Byzantine iconography but weren't constrained by their formulaic traditions, returning to a realism which would have been familiar in antiquity.  The use of embryonic techniques of perspective and chiaroscuro created a depth and volume which would later become the dominant motif in European art.

Graphics Primitives in Digital Images

Lindsay Lohan constructed in graphic primitives by MeygaHardy on DeviantArt.

In digital imagery (vector graphics, CAD systems et al), graphic (sometimes called geometric) primitives are the simplest form of shape which can be rendered and scaled for display on a screen (although in advanced engineering, as mathematical expressions, there are pure geometric primitives which can’t be displayed although they can be manipulated) and are sometime thus described as “irreducible” or “atomic”.  The origin of all graphics primitives are the point (technically the representation of a point as a point exists in space as a dimensionless address) and the straight line (that which extends from one point and another).  These lives were the original vectors and the earliest computers could handle only lines and points, thing like triangles and squares being constructed from these.  Graphic primitives are now more extensive and from assembling these, more complex shapes can be built.  Among mathematicians, there are debates about just what can be said to constitute a pure primitive, some suggesting that if a shape can be reduced to two or more shapes, it doesn’t qualify but for most they’re just handy objects and the technical squabble passes unnoticed.  The principle of graphic primitives underpinned the techniques of the early cubist artists.

Primitif by Max Factor (1956).  The use of the French adjective Primitif lent the product a continental connection but it's the masculine form, the feminine being primitive.

Zettai ryouiki

Zettai ryouiki (pronounced Zah-thai-rye-ouk-i)

(1) In an anime game (dating from 1995), an asset obtainable which playing which afforded the player something like the “invulnerability” or “unlimited damage” concepts familiar in gaming.

(2) As pop culture slang in women’s fashion (dating from 2014), the area of visible bare skin above the socks (classically the above-the-knee variety) but below the hemline of a mini-skirt, shorts or top.

1995: From the Japanese 絶対領域 (zettai ryōiki) (literally “absolute territory” and used variously in anime gaming (and the surrounding cultural milieu) and pop-culture fashion.  The form of Romanization most common in the West is zettai ryouiki, the alternative spelling zettai ryōiki (ぜったいりょういき).  Zettai ryouiki is a noun.

A often heard phrase in English ie “the (French / Germans / Jews / Koreans etc) have a word for everything”.  It’s not literally true and given the huge size of the English vocabulary it’s probably more true of English than any other.  Nobody is quite sure just how many words there are in English and given the frequency with which words are created and fall from use, there can only ever be estimates.  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says there are between 170-200,000 words currently in use but that estimate doesn’t include the most specialized technical and scientific terms or words from regional dialects and other specialized fields.  English of course steals (the polite term among lexicographers is “borrowed”) much from other tongues and were all these and the technical terms and their variants to be included in the count, some have suggested the total might approach a million.  What “the x have a word for everything” implies is a sense of surprise that anyone has a word for a thing or concept which seems variously funny, bizarre or unnecessary.

Sock heights in Japan can all be used with the zettai ryouiki look although the classists insist the genre is restricted to those in over-knee & thigh-high socks.

Zettai ryouiki in the anime tradition.

The term zettai ryouiki began in anime gaming in 1995 with the sense “holy space into which no other can intrude”, much along the same lines as “invulnerability” or “unlimited damage” in other games.  It was obvious transferrable beyond gaming sub-culture and among Japanese youth, entered slang in the context of “one’s own personal space” which others shouldn’t transgress.  Around 2013, the phrase was appropriated to describe the area of visible bare skin above the socks (classically above-the-knee socks) but below the hemline of a miniskirt, shorts or top.  It isn’t certain but the use seems to have been adopted after an advertising agency organized a campaign involving young women, for various commercial purposes, applying temporary tattoos high on their thighs, suggesting they pair the look with dark socks or stockings, the top of the socks and the hem of their mini skirts framing the message.  As a visual device, the intent was to focus on the flesh (and thus the logo) and this the fashionistas replicated although they wanted eyeballs only on their skin.  Within months, the shop Zettai Ryōiki opened in Akihabara, Tokyo, dedicated to long socks and tights.

Zettai ryōiki: Lindsay Lohan exploring the possibilities.  

The original use of zettai ryōiki described only the pairing of a miniskirt with over-knee or thigh-high socks which meant the visible skin area, though not dimensionally specific, existed within narrow parameters.  Conceptually however, the idea eventually encompassed all styles which featured an expanse of skin between the top of the sock and the hem of whatever was worn above although the purists continue to decry the use of shorter socks.  Helpfully, the most uncompromising of the sub-culture provided a mathematical formula in the form of a coefficient which was calculated using (1) the length of the miniskirt, (2) the visible skin and (3) the length of the sock which sits above the knee.  Thus not height-dependent, known as the “golden ratio”, a tolerance of +/- 25% was allowed which permitted slight variations.

Kawai Maid Cafe & Bar Akiba Zettai Ryoiki, 3-1-1 Sotokanda 1F Obayashi Bldg., Chiyoda 101-0021 Tokyo Prefecture.  Japanese futurists predict that when robotics are sufficiently advanced, among the first humanoid bots in Tokyo's bars and cafés will be in the style of the zettai ryoiki girls, adding they'll be dimensionally modeled on the basis of anime, not typical female human frames.  The artistic motif will thus be mannerism rather than realism.

Japanese schoolgirls, long the trend-setters of the nation's fashions, like to pair zettai ryouiki with solid fluffy leg warmers.  So influential are they that this roaming pack, although they've picked up the aesthetic, they're not actually real school girls.  So, beware of imitations: Tokyo, April 2024.

Collage

Collage (pronounced kuh-lahzh or koh-lahzh)

(1) The technique, most associated with visual abstract art, of composing a work of art by pasting on a single surface various materials not normally associated with one another, as newspaper clippings, parts of photographs, theater tickets, and fragments of an envelope.

(2) A work of art produced by this technique.

(3) An assemblage or occurrence of diverse elements or fragments in (1) and unlikely or unexpected juxtaposition or (2) a coherent result.

(4) In film, a series of seemingly unrelated scenes or images or shifts from one scene or image to another suddenly and without transition.

(5) Any work created by combining unrelated (or at least definably different) styles; in literature, a combination of styles within the one work; in music a combinations of genres.

1915–1920: From the French collage, the construct being coll(er) (paste, glue) + -age.  Coller was from the Ancient Greek κόλλα (kólla) (glue) of uncertain origin but may ultimately be from the primitive Indo-European kol- and cognates included the Russian кле́й (kléj) and the Middle Dutch helen. The –age suffix was from the Middle French -age, from Old French -age, from the Latin –āticum (influential in words like rivage and voyage) which was used to form nouns or collective nouns in the sense of "action or state of being (a) X, result of Xing" or (more rarely), "action related to X".  Although the historical suffix has had many applications (eg family relationships or locations), it’s now almost wholly restricted to the sense of "action of Xing", and many terms now have little to no connection with the most common uses something especially notable in forms descended from actual Latin words such as fromage and voyage.  Collage & Collagist are nouns, collaged & collaging are verbs (used with object); the noun plural is collages.

Of the accidental & intentional

It not certain exactly when collage was first used in the sense its modern meaning.  It's sometimes credited to English painter and critic, Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) who used the term in a 1919 publication but that’s contested given the word had appeared earlier though there’s some doubt whether that was in reference to the mechanical technique or the final product.  What became known as collage certainly long pre-dates 1919; papier collé was used by both Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Georges Braque (1882–1963) early in the century and artists, authors & painters had for centuries been producing work from disparate components.  In the digital age, the somewhat misleadingly named software eCollage (and many others) allowed collages to be created on screen although, technically, these programs were as often used to render photomontage as collage.  The opportunistically named iCollage is an image-assembly app for iOS.

A montage of Che Guevara collages.  The difference between collage and montage is that while a collage weaves together things of difference to create a unified whole, a montage uses complete things of some similarity to create something visually coherent although, with some modern artists, coherence can prove elusive.

Colleges by Giuseppe Arcimboldi; Left to right: Four Seasons in One Head, oil on canvas, (circa 1590), Fire, oil on wood, (1566), Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor painted as Vertumnus, Roman god of the seasons, oil on canvas, (circa 1591), The Librarian, oil on canvas, (1566) & Summer, oil on canvas, (1563).

In Western portraiture, the collage is not a recent form.  Although also a conventional court painter of portraits and sacred art, Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldi (1527–1593) was noted for his portraits rendered as collages, the heads fashioned from objects such as vegetables, fruits, flowers & fish.  Very much the modern art of his day, his fanciful work seems to have been well received and critics have linked his work to the tradition of Mannerism.  Examples of collage have been found which pre-date Antiquity and the idea of assembling some representation of something from whatever items fall to hand is thought likely to have been one of the earliest forms of human artistic expression. 

Colleges by Jason Mecier; Left to right: Sigmund Freud, Frida Kahlo, Barack Obama, Lindsay Lohan & Donald Trump.

Los Angeles based pop artist Jason Mecier (b 1968) operates in a particular niche of the collage world, his mosaic portraits fabricated from unconventional materials, sometimes thematic (Sigmund Freud rendered in pills) and most famously, trash.  Perhaps surprisingly, Mr Mecier seems never to have fashioned a likeness of crooked Hillary Clinton; even when working with trash, presumably one has to draw the line somewhere.