Naïve art | Tate (2024)

FAQs

What does naive art mean? ›

Naïve art is simple, unaffected and unsophisticated – usually specifically refers to art made by artists who have had no formal training in an art school or academy.

Artists often use basic shapes, bright colors, and straightforward compositions. Lack of Perspective. Naïve artists typically do not employ traditional techniques of perspective or depth. Their works often depict objects and figures in a flat, two-dimensional manner.

Naïve artists are aware of "fine art" conventions such as graphical perspective and compositional conventions, but are unable to fully use them, or choose not to. By contrast, outsider art (art brut) denotes works from a similar context but which have only minimal contact with the mainstream art world.

There is also a characteristic absence of perspective, which creates the illusion that figures are anchored in the space, with the result that figures in naïve paintings are often “floating.”

Naive art could easily be dismissed as art that's created by people who “don't know what they're doing”, but that undermines the raw creativity found within works of the movement and its uninhibited and instinctive approach to materials, composition and ideas.

synonyms: outsider art, primitive art, self-taught art, vernacular art.

Leaving aside these so-called rules, the naive create works that appear to be “geometrically wrong” with distorted perspectives and rough shapes, with active use of pattern and bold color regardless of composition, and with dramatic intensity in both the foreground and background.

Adams suggests that for the naïve artist, art is a natural form of expression, whereas the sentimental artist is self-aware and tries to find the lost unity of the naïve – “he is essentially a searcher”.

Some contemporary artists exploring naive or faux-naive styles include Jules de Balincourt, Tal R, Nellie Mae Rowe, Lee Godie, and Janko Brašić.

One of the most influential naïve artists was Henri Rousseau, nicknamed Le Douanier (“the customs officer”), who was a self-taught painter known for the unique style of his works.

What is the value of naive art? ›

Naïve art breaks free from this mould; it celebrates the perspective of the artist and rejects the insincere sophistication that is upheld as a core value within more traditional forms of art. As a viewer, the naïve offers a different perspective to a scene.

With this origin, Naïf Art began to state itself as a current which approaches artistic contexts in a spontaneous way, with total aesthetic and expressive freedom, and its followers define it today as “the art that is free of conventions”.

too ready to believe someone or something, or to trust that someone's intentions are good, esp. because of a lack of experience: It was naive of her to think that she would ever get her money back.

Adams suggests that for the naïve artist, art is a natural form of expression, whereas the sentimental artist is self-aware and tries to find the lost unity of the naïve – “he is essentially a searcher”.