PRIMORDIALISM and PRIMORDIALIST ART©

The late-works of Elaine DeKooning first explored PRIMORDIALISM as an artistic tendency, creating canvases inspired by Paleolithic cave paintings primarily in France and Spain. She was the first to see a need for contemporary art’s return to its primal roots (animism, shamanism, and other elemental concerns). During a painting-workshop in Florida, José Rodeiro studied with Elaine DeKooning. Furthermore, a decade prior to her death; Charles Hayes (the founder of “Primordial Realism”©) interviewed her (on tape) about her creative process. Unlike Ms DeKooning’s astonishing late-works, the allusions presented by current Primordialists (Primordial Realists©, i.e., Charles Hayes, Alan Britt, and José Rodeiro; via their “primeval” images) are not (like DeKooning’s) derived directly from specific art historical caves or other well-documented prehistoric sites. Rather, 21st century Primordialists approach their atavistic art-making by creating new and poetic Paleolithic art-works upon the cave walls of their minds, which are then artistically transferred to 2-D surfaces (paintings and poems) or sundry 3-D/4-D manifestations, as well as germinating unique elemental poems and performances, by means of all available technologies, including the most ancient. Primordialists are aware that several scientific-scenarios exist in geo-physics and global-electromagnetism, which will inevitably terminate all forms of electricity (ending all polar-magneticism) on the earth (for a while – a few hundred years); hence, indubitably there are a half-dozen inevitable and forecasted probabilities that might bring to an end global-electricity. Thus, a future return to neo-prehistoric conditions (“cave-dwelling”) is quite feasible. Primordialists use this potential eventuality as an inspirational fire kindling their art. Thus, Arts’ true future will belong to an extremely rare and elite handful of shamanic-animists “real” artists capable of vividly expressing visionary perceptions, feelings, and ideas via their human hands and eyes in concert with their divine soul(s). (Research John Keats’s “Negative Capability” and Percy Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry”).

José Rodeiro Niaux 1, gouache, 10” x 10,” 2010 (Collection of the artist).