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
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.