The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (387 page)

priming
.

A thin layer applied on top of the
ground
to make it more suitable to receive paint. For example, if the ground is too absorbent the priming may make it less so, or the priming may supply a tint.

 
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primitive
.

Term used with various meanings in the history and criticism of the arts. In its widest sense it is applied to art of societies outside the great Western, Near Eastern, and Oriental civilizations, even though much of it was produced by highly sophisticated peoples. Pre-Columbian art, North American Indian art, African art south of the Sahara, and Oceanic art are the main areas embraced by the term. By extension it has been applied to other fields of art that appear unsophisticated relative to some particular standard. Thus the term was once widely used of pre-
Renaissance
European painting, particularly of the Italian and Netherlandish schools, but this usage (as in the expression ‘the Flemish primitives’) is now much less common and no longer has derogatory implications. The term ‘primitive’ is also used more or less as a synonym for
naïve
.
In the context of 20th-cent. art the term ‘primitivism’ refers to the use by Western modernist artists of forms or imagery derived from the art of so-called primitive peoples (in the first sense mentioned above), especially those who had been colonized by Western countries. For centuries such art was valued mainly for its ethnographic interest or (in the case of articles made from precious materials) for its monetary worth. However, in the 1890s
Gauguin
had tried to escape ‘the disease of civilization’ among the natives of Tahiti, and in the next generation many avant-garde artists followed his example in cultivating primitive art as a source of inspiration, finding in it a vitality and sincerity that they thought had been polished out of Western art. Usually they followed Gauguin in spirit rather than body, although
Nolde
and
Pechstein
, for example, visited Oceania. Many artists collected African works, notably
Picasso
, and their influence is clear in his
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
. Other artists studied primitive art in museums—Henry
Moore
, for example, was impressed by the powerful block-like forms of Mayan sculpture he saw in the British Museum.

 
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print
.

A picture or design made (usually on paper) from an inked impression of an engraved metal plate, wooden block, etc. Prints are made by a great variety of processes, which fall into three main groups.
(a) Relief Methods
. In these, the parts of the wood block or metal plate that are to print black are left in relief and the remainder is cut away. The principal methods are
woodcut
,
wood
engraving, and
linocut
. To these may be added certain techniques such as
metal cut
,
manière criblée
, and
relief
etching, in which metal plates are engraved and printed like woodcuts.
(b) Intaglio Methods
. In intaglio printing the principle is the reverse of that which operates in the relief methods, for the surface of the plate does not print, the ink being held only in the engraved furrows. The techniques are:
line engraving
, in which the design is engraved on the metal plate with a
burin
;
drypoint
, where the lines are drawn by scratching the plate with a strong steel needle;
etching
,
soft-ground etching
, and
aquatint
, where the designs are bitten into the plate by means of acid. In addition there are the defunct, or nearly defunct, reproductive processes of
mezzotint
,
stipple
, and
crayon
manner. The various intaglio processes are frequently used in combination with one another on the same plate.
Rembrandt
, for example, often combined etching and drypoint.
(c) Surface or Planographic Methods
. These are
lithography
and its variants. Lithographs are neither incised nor raised in relief, but are printed from a perfectly flat slab of limestone or from prepared metal plates. The process utilizes the antipathy of grease and water to separate those areas which receive and those areas which reject the printing ink.
The
stencil
is related to printmaking, and two other processes which cannot be classified with the rest may be added, namely the
monotype
, and the
glass print
. The term print is also more loosely applied to reproductions of works of art made by photomechanical methods.

 
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Prix de Rome
.

A scholarship, founded concurrently with the French
Academy
in Rome (1666), that enabled prize-winning students at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris to spend a period (usually 4 years) in Rome at the state's expense. Prizes for architecture began to be awarded regularly in 1723, and prizes for engravers and musicians were added in the 19th cent. The prizes were meant to perpetuate the academic tradition and during the 18th and 19th cents. winning the award was the traditional stepping stone to the highest honours for painters and sculptors. Many distinguished artists (as well as many nonentities) were Prix de Rome winners, notably
David
,
Fragonard
, and
Ingres
among painters and
Clodion
,
Girardon
, and
Houdon
among sculptors. The prizes are still awarded and the system has been adopted by other countries.

 
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