In the arts of the Western World, Primitivism is a mode of aesthetic idealization that means to recreate the experience of the primitive time, place, and person, either by emulation or by re-creation. In Western philosophy, Primitivism proposes that the people of a primitive society possess a morality and an ethics that are superior to the urban value system of civilized people; thus, in art and in philosophy, primitivism is nostalgia for a non-existent golden age.

In European art, the aesthetics of primitivism included techniques, motifs, and styles copied from the arts of Asian, African, and Australasian peoples perceived as primitive in relation to the urban civilization of western Europe. In that light, the painter Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian imagery to his oil paintings was a characteristic borrowing of technique, motif, and style that was important for the development of Modern art (1860s–1970s) in the late 19th century. As a genre of Western art, Primitivism reproduced and perpetuated racist stereotypes, such as “The Noble Savage”, with which colonialists justified white colonial rule over the non-white Other in Asia, Africa, and Australasia.

Moreover, the term primitivism also identifies the techniques, motifs, and styles of painting that predominated representational painting before the emergence of the Avant-garde; and also identifies the styles of Naïve art and of folk art produced by amateur artists, such as Henri Rousseau, who painted for personal pleasure.