folk art

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It is necessary to suspend the criteria with which academic art is usually considered to understand the work of American folk artists. The subtleties of elaborate composition, mastery of technique, and sophisticated organization are only occasionally the concerns of the folk artist, although they are often unconsciously achieved. In her introduction to the exhibition catalog The Flowering of American Folk Art (1974), Alice Winchester writes: "One may look for, and find, originality of concept, creativity of design, craftsmanly use of the medium, and flashes of inspiration, even genius. Folk art makes its appeal directly and intimately, even to people quite uninitiated into the mysteries of art."

Certainly the early settlers in the New World colonies had little concern for the qualities of fine art. A portrait for them was a pictorial document that indicated a significant position of power and wealth within the community. At the same time, it recorded the sitter for future generations. This notion of art, as social icon and economic indicator, was repeated in the Hudson River Valley where, in the early eighteenth century, the rich merchants and planters dominated every aspect of colonial life between New York City in the south to Albany in the north.

The first real appreciation of American folk art began during the 1920s when artists, returning from World War I, began to search for what was American about American art. Since that time, collectors and scholars have attempted to identify and classify the naive art that at different times has been called by such diverse terms as amateur, artisan, pioneer, popular, primitive, and provincial. The confusion about this vast body of work, which for the most part was executed by self-trained artists in a state of relative artistic innocence, is not surprising, for the art falls into several broad categories based upon medium and type.

Oil and tempera paintings on canvas and board, watercolors on paper and cardboard, drawings, sketches, and pastels are the mediums most often encountered. Portraits, silhouettes, landscapes, pinprick pictures, calligraphic drawings, wall murals, furniture decoration, coach decoration, shop signs' fireboards, overmantel paintings, and theorems on paper, velvet, and silk are but a few of the types of art that are included in the catchall term American folk painting. Folk sculpture, also multifaceted, includes such diverse objects as carved gravestones, both painted and carved signs, weathervanes and whirligigs, ships' figureheads and nautical ornaments, scrimshaw, waterfowl and fish decoys, religious carvings, pottery, carousel and circus carvings, and chalkware ornaments. All may reasonably be considered folk art.

Regardless of the medium, several characteristics consistently appear in folk art. In the best examples there is a combination of naturalness and simplicity, resulting in a directness that has come to be much admired by contemporary art historians, critics, and collectors.

Some scholars have spent much of their lives studying American folk art, and nearly all have arrived at their own definitions. Perhaps the most pertinent was developed by Mary Childs Black, first director of the Museum of Early American Folk Arts in New York: "The genesis, rise, and disappearance of folk art is closely connected with the events of the nineteenth century when the disappearance of the old ways left rural folk everywhere with an unused surplus of time and energy. People were free to invent and make simple things for their own pleasure in each household and in each village, until the rise of industrial production toward the end of the nineteenth century. Folk art occupies the brief interval between court taste and commercial taste." Definitions used by other scholars support Black's theories in general, and it is possible to derive from them a consensus of the qualities usually associated with great folk art. Such words as freshness, directness, simplicity, and imaginative frequently occur in writings on the subject.

For many years it was generally thought that the folk artist was essentially anonymous, itinerant, and untrained, but research has altered these views. A number of artists have been identified, such as the Massachusetts painter Rufus Hathaway, the Hudson Valley artist Gerardus Duyckinck, the youthful Benjamin West who flourished in Pennsylvania prior to an illustrious career in England, and Sheldon Peck who worked first in Vermont and later moved with the frontier to western New York.

During the 1790s Rufus Hathaway traveled on horseback as an itinerant painter. After marrying, he entered the medical profession and practiced for some twenty-seven years in Duxbury. Gerardus Duyckinck was a member of a family of painters who established themselves in the early eighteenth century in New York City. He and several relatives executed portraits and were well known for painted and decorated furniture. Like many young, self-taught artists, Benjamin West looked at English and European prints for the design sources for many of his landscapes. At thirteen years of age Edward Hicks entered apprenticeship with a coach maker. Soon after the turn of the nineteenth century he became a partner in a Milford, Pennsylvania, coach-making and painting business and in time painted street signs and shop and tavern signs. A jack-of-all-trades, he also executed decorative paintings on furniture, fireboards, and clock faces. Later his success was such that he required assistance, and when writing his memoirs, he noted, "I am now employing four hands, besides myself, in coach, sign and ornamental painting, and still more in repairing and finishing carriages, and I think I should find no difficulty in doubling my business." Not all of the folk artists, then, were itinerant, and more important, a good many had the advantage of at least basic artistic training.

In 1839 the Knickerbocker enthusiastically heralded a new age: "We have seen the views taken in Paris by the 'Daguerreotype' and have no hesitation in avowing that they are the most remarkable objects of curiosity and admiration, in the arts, that we have ever beheld. Their exquisite perfection almost transcends the bounds of sober belief.... There is not an object even the most minute, embraced in that wide scope, which was not original; and it is impossible that one should have been omitted. Think of that!"

Think of that indeed! Few American artists, even those who earned their living by painting portraits, realized that this new process would ultimately drive many of them from their profession. As the use of the camera spread, folk artists found it increasingly difficult to defend their less-than-realistic creations. Some simply abandoned the profession. Others, such as E. S. Field, acquired training in the new invention and used the camera to photograph their subjects. They then painted over the image. This saved the sitter the tedium of posing for several sessions.

In recent decades the folk arts have come to a new prominence. The Museum of American Folk Art in New York City has been at the forefront of folk-art scholarship, presenting national and international exhibitions, engaging in an ambitious publishing program, including a quarterly magazine, the Clarion, and conducting far-reaching educational programs.

The field in some ways has been redefined in recent years as well. The pioneer collectors steadfastly refused to acknowledge that naive artists working in our own time are capable of creating works of art of enduring quality. Now, however, interest in contemporary folk art is widespread, and as the efforts of the modern-day folk artists gain credibility with collectors, museums, and the academic world, new definitions for the field will have to be devised.

There are two types of contemporary folk expression that are of great interest to the modern-day collector. The first, and probably the most universal, is called "memory" painting. Generally older, self-taught artists record scenes from their early life and in the process document a way of life that was rural, less complex, and free from the changes wrought by improved communications and transportation in America during the twentieth century. Their idyllic renderings have immense popular appeal. Probably the best known of these twentieth-century artists are Grandma Moses, Mattie Lou O'Kelley, and Kathy Jakobsen.

A separate contemporary category of folk art is the raw, expressive, seemingly childlike efforts of artists like Howard Finster, Will Hawkins, and Thornton Dial, who are related to contemporary art at least as much as they are to folk art. They represent an individual vision that reflects the artist's concern with oneself, one's place in society, and one's highly personal point of view. These somewhat eccentric, self-taught painters and sculptors are referred to as "outsider" artists or "isolate" artists. Though their work is created outside of the traditions generally associated with folk artists, many of their pieces will endure and add significantly to the patchwork of naive creativity in America in the twentieth century.

Bibliography:

Robert Bishop, American Folk Sculpture (1974); Robert Bishop and Patricia Coblentz, Folk Painters of America (1979); Jean Lipman and Alice Winchester, The Flowering of American Folk Art: 1776-1876 (1974).

Author:

Robert Bishop

See also Painting and Sculpture.

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"Gran calavera eléctrica" by José Guadalupe Posada, Mexico, 1900-1913

Island of Salvation Botanica, Piety Street, Bywater neighborhood, New Orleans

Folk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic. ^[1]

As a phenomenon that can chronicle a move towards civilization yet rapidly diminish with modernity, industrialization, or outside influence, the nature of folk art is specific to its particular culture. The varied geographical and temporal prevalence and diversity of folk art make it difficult to describe as a whole, though some patterns have been demonstrated.

Contents 1 Antique folk art 2 Characteristics 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

Antique folk art

Logo of the Folk Art Museum Lok Virsa in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Antique the folk art is distinguished from traditional art in that while it is collected today based mostly on its artistic merit; it was never intended as a category to be art for art’s sake. Examples include: weathervanes, old store signs and carved figures, itinerant portraits, carousel horses, fire buckets, painted game boards, cast iron doorstops and many other similar lines of highly collectible "whimsical" antiques.

Characteristics

Characteristically folk art is not influenced by movements in academic or fine art circles, and, in many cases, folk art excludes works executed by professional artists and sold as "high art" or "fine art" to the society's art patrons.^[1] On the other hand, many 18th and 19th century American folk art painters made their living by their work, including itinerant portrait painters, some of whom produced large bodies of work.^[2]

Other terms that overlap with folk art are naïve art, Pop art, outsider art, traditional art, tribal art, "self-taught" art and even "working class" art. As one might expect, all these terms have different connotations; but they are all at times used interchangeably with the term folk art, for which a satisfactory definition has proven hard to come by.

Folk art expresses cultural identity by conveying shared community values and aesthetics. It encompasses a range of utilitarian and decorative media, including cloth, wood, paper, clay, metal and more. If traditional materials are inaccessible, new materials are often substituted, resulting in contemporary expressions of traditional folk art forms. Folk art reflects traditional art forms of diverse community groups — ethnic, tribal, religious, occupational, geographical, age- or gender-based — who identify with each other and society at large. Folk artists traditionally learn skills and techniques through apprenticeships in informal community settings, though they may also be formally educated.

See also

Folklore portal

• Alebrije
• African folk art
• American Folk Art Museum
• Chinese folk art
• Ex-voto
• Latin American Retablos
• Madhubani painting
• Mingei (Japanese folk art movement)
• Naïve art
• Nakshi Kantha
• Old media
• Outsider art
• Pakistani vehicle art
• Tribal art
• Warli painting
• Whirligig
• Yakshagana
• Kuthiyottam

References

1. ^ ^{a b} West, Shearer (general editor), The Bullfinch Guide to Art History, page 440, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, United Kingdom, 1996. ISBN 0-8212-2137-X
2. ^ Bishop, Robert and Weissman, Judith Reiter. The Knopf Collectors' Guides to American Antiques: Folk Art. Knopf. 1983

External links

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Museums, festivals and organizations in the U.S.

• Santa Fe International Folk Art Market
• Kuthiyottam at Chettikulangara, Mavelikkara
• Museum of International Folk Art
• The Folk Art Society of America
• American Folk Art Museum
• Fenimore Art Museum
• High Museum of Art Atlanta
• University of Kentucky Art Museum
• Kentucky Folk Art Center

Museums and collections in the U.K.

• Compton Verney has the largest collection of British folk art in the country, acquired for the gallery in 1993 to prevent it being split up and sold abroad
• The American Museum in Britain

Folk Art

• Baalart Organization supporting Mexican artisans and promoting unique handmade work.
• Museum of International Folk Art Santa Fe, New Mexico museum with a large collection of folk art from around the world.
• The Who-Ha Da-DA Outsider Artists Fellowship
• The Rochester Folk Art Guild The website for a residential craft community located in upstate New York, specializing in folk art.
• Midwest Decoy Collectors Association The de facto international collectors group.
• Southern Heart Gallery The website for folk art of today and yesterday.

France Midi Canal

• Ecluse de l’Aiguille One man's work on the Canal du Midi

Indian folk art

• Folk Art of India
• Indian Folk Art - Cultural Heritage

• Indian Tribal and Folk Arts
• Collection of Indian Folk Designs
• Kala Madhyam Store - Folk and Tribal Art and Craft

Research resources

• Folkvine: Florida's Art and Artists Online An interactive exploration of folk arts in Florida.
• Folk Figures: A Survey of Norwegian and Norwegian-American Artifacts
• Contemporary Folk Artists from the Southern United States An adjudicated listing of artists (basketmakers, potters, quilters, storytellers, blues and bluegrass artists) compiled by Southern Arts Federation
• Carolina Folk
• Black Sheep Gallery Biographies and images of folk art from Canada, U.S.A. and U.K.
• Artcyclopedia information.
• Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations
• Folk Art Canada Images, biographies and forums devoted to Canadian folk art.
• Folk Arts Hungary Articles, handmade embroideries dedicated to the Hungarian folk art.
• CBC Digital Archives – Handmade in Canada: The Art of Craft
• Podcast by expert Bev Norwood
• The Finest Folk Art collection

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