by Ismail Baba

Naive Art is starting to gain its popularity in Malaysia with Ismail Baba as one of its highly sought after proponents. This is a form of art where the artist is not bound by formalities such as following the rules of shapes and form, thus it often results in artistic impressions of what the author feels about the object rather than depicting the object as it is.

Naive works are often extremely detailed, and there is a tendency toward the use of brilliant, saturated colours rather than more subtle mixtures and tones. There is also a characteristic absence of perspective. If one takes closer observations on naive art paintings, they would see explosions of bold colour on top of what is a distinct two-dimensional representation. These rules in brief are: to decrease the size of objects proportionally at the distance; lessen the vibrancy of colours with the distance and to decrease the precision of details with distance.

Simplicity rather than subtlety are now the recognised markers of naive art. It has, become such a popular and recognizable style and its growing importance as an art form of its own has been occurring since the 20th century. Most naive artists are self taught and work in a more imitative or self-conscious mode than other artists.