The term most commonly encompasses African art (of the Sub-Saharan Africa), art of the Americas (e.g. It is often ceremonial or religious in nature.

Tribal art (sometimes referred to as ethnographic art) denotes the material culture and visual arts of indigenous peoples. Joseph Wright of Derby - The Widow of an Indian Chief watching the Arms of her Deceased Husband, 1785 - via What is Tribal Art? American Indians and Scottish Highlanders, as well as various tribes in Africa all played the role of (what the French called) bon sauvage in the minds of the educated city-dwellers of Western Europe. This later evolved into an idealized picture of 'nature's gentleman', an aspect of 18th-century sentimentalism. It became a poetic byword for an idyllic vision of unspoiled wilderness. During that time, a notion of Arcadia arose, a concept of a utopia set deep in the past, in a vaguely classical Neverland where man lived in harmony with nature. The beginnings of it can be traced as far back as the Renaissance. Still, the idea of the noble savage is hardly a new one.

Despite that, the influence so-called tribal art has had on Western artists in the 20th and 21st century has been so large, has given birth to a plethora of new movements and ways of expression, that it cannot possibly be overlooked, nor viewed as inferior.

Another name it goes by - primitive art - evokes myths of colonial superiority, supremacy of Western culture, and looking at artworks from other cultures as intrinsically inferior, only to be observed as a curiosity, a product of an undeveloped society. The concept of Tribal art is one of the more controversial topics in the art circles.

Tribal paint jobs