teaching art as if the world mattered || folk art as communal culture and art proper

National Art Education Association

Folk Art as Communal Culture and Art ProperAuthor(s): Elizabeth Manley DelacruzSource: Art Education, Vol. 52, No. 4, Teaching Art as if the World Mattered (Jul., 1999), pp.23-24+33-35Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193770 .

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II, Art 7 V\II A1 I -

Cmtl e i roeer BY ELIZABETH MANLEY DELACRUZ

ttitudes about folk art have undergone a remarkable transformation, from characteriza- tions as simplistic, primitive, and obscure a century ago, to descriptions as refined, com- plex, and important. Interest in folk art reflects a growing concern not only for the nature and value of folk art but also for the manner in which folk art is understood in classrooms.

In consideration of contemporary folk art as curriculum content, I describe historical antecedents to artworld recognition of folk art in the United States. Following, I offer deliberations on the study of contemporary American folk art.

WHAT IS FOLK ART? Doug Blandy and Kristin Congdon (1989) write that the terms "folk art" and "folk" came to the

United States from European class-stratified societies. As the term came into wider use, Holger Cahill, acting Director of the Museum of Modem Art in 1932, established a definition for folk art as an "expression of the common people, made by them and intended for their use and enjoyment" (Curry, 1989, p. 198). Cahill and his contemporaries viewed folk art as craft, and not as part of a fine art tradition. Cahill's definition remained entrenched until the 1960s, when museums began to exhibit American folk art as a category of "art proper" (Curry, 1987).

In the 1970s, difficulties over defining folk art were exacerbated by competing scholarly factions. David Curry (1987) explains: connoisseurs and collectors, borrowing from art historical tradition, cat- egorized their folk objects as paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts and then aestheticized them in

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terms of materials and design. In opposition were folklorists, who con- nected folk art to folk material culture and viewed it through the context of the culture that produced it. For collectors and historians, folk art was a new artistic category to name and describe. Folklorists and ethnologists interpreted the folk object as a docu- ment for understanding the lives, stories, and motivations of individuals living in particular times and places.

Chuck and Jan Rosenak (1984), avid folk art collectors and leading scholars on contemporary American folk artists, explain that in common use today, the termfolk art encom- passes a wide variety of paintings, sculptures, and environments created by individuals who did not study art formally. They sub-classify folk art into Environmental art, Isolate art, Memory Painting, Naive or NaifArt, OutsiderArt, Primitive Art and Visionary Art. Folklore scholar Henry Glassie (1989) describes folk art as human creativity in social context. In Glassie's view, folk art is communal and local, conservative and participa- tory, conceptual and multifunctional.

Exact definitions for folk art are controversial and overlapping. Needing a more concise working definition for this paper, folk art will be described as widely varied art forms created by self-trained artists who, often working with ordinary and recy- cled materials found in their own environs, and working mostly outside of the art establishment, create, pri- marily for themselves and for mem- bers of their immediate social groups, stylistic narratives and visions of the struggles and aspirations of daily or spiritual life.

THE ASCENT OF AMERICAN FOLK ART

Current appreciation of contemporary American folk art is attributable to two parallel streams of activity that unfolded over this century: the fascination of mainstream artists with indigenous and intuitive art, and the growing desirability of folk and outsider art among wealthy patrons and collectors.

7he artists. The history of Western art in the early part of this century is also, in part, the history of fascination among emerging modem artists with indigenous and folk art. Curating the 1990 Smithsonian exhibition Made With Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American ArtLynda Hartigan (1990) explains that in the earlyyears of the century, New York artists spearheaded the first folk art rush in this country. These artists championed modernism and, struggling to develop a nationalistic art, cited 18th- and early 19th-century American folk art as an indigenous precedent They were followed by collectors, dealers, and curators who thought primitive, folk, and modem art (based on appearances) to be related in a fundamental way (Curry, 1987).

In the 1950s artistJean Dubuffet influenced the attitudes of European artists toward folk and outsider art, through his astonishing exhibitions and writings (Maizels, 1996). Dubuffet's regard for the art of psychotics, visionar- ies, and artistically gifted social misfits led him to his influential doctrine ofArt Brut. In the 1950s and 1960s American artists, working in relative isolation from the mainstream New York art center, also became interested in folk and indigenous art (Hartigan, 1990; Nassie, 1987). This interest occurred as Abstract Expressionism dominated the New York, and American, art scene. Chicago Imagist critic Dennis Adrian (1994)

notes that when Dubuffet lectured in Chicago, Dubuffet's ideas catalyzed artists and others in the audience. Chicago Imagists Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, and Roger Brown studied the ethnic collections in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, collected the works of outsider artists Joseph Yoakum, Martin Ramirez, and Lee Goadie, and showed their own work alongside that of these outsider artists. The Imagists drew from a wide variety of imagery found in pop culture, adver- tisements, comics and toys, folk art, and the art of distant tribal cultures (Nassie, 1987).

Hartigan observes that by thel970s, nationwide, independently minded artists found alternatives to New York modernism, as they discovered and collected American folk art. Examining the New York art scene in the 1980s, art critics Peter Frank and Michael McKenzie observed the impact of folk, outsider, and indigenous art on a group of brash young pop and graffiti artists. In opposition to the impersonal mini- malist, conceptualist, and formalist trends of the New York scene, these artists began to explore the works of outsider artists, finding them "refresh- ingly free of the stale doctrines" of the establishment (Nassie, 1987, p. 26). Folk, tribal, and outsider influences are found in the iconographic paintings and multimedia assemblages of many contemporary American artists (Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Rhonda Zwilliger, Jean Michael Basquiat, Edward Keinholtz, and Betye and Alison Saar, to name a few). The works of these and other current artists reflect continuing interest in folk traditions, aboriginal archetypes, visionary iconography, and intuitive inspiration.

Continued on p. 33

ART EDUCATION / JULY 1999



(Continued from page 24)

The collectors. Although folk art created in the United States has been collected by wealthy patrons for the past two centuries, the scholarly study and exhibition of American folk art was not well established until recent years. According to John Maizels (1996), a leading international scholar on folk, outsider, and visionary art, folk art in the United States originated in simple colonial crafts, everyday objects, and portrait and genre painting. Seventeenth-century naive paintings, duck decoys, weather vanes, whirligigs, canes, mastheads, signs, lace work, and quilts were part of the fabric of colonial life. Barbara Crate (1984), Director of the Folk Art Institute at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City, tells that in early colonial America there were no distinctions between the traditions of fine and folk art. By the 18th century the lines were drawn: ambitious artists studied abroad and returned to paint the leading families of the newly formed American society; provincial artists and artisans with little or no academic training travelled from town to town and painted less elegant folk portraits of rural society, created shop signs and ship figureheads, or stitched samplers and quilts.

Interest in non-Western indigenous arts (primitive art, in their terminology) in the early 1900s was coupled with interest in moder European art. In 1913, Alfred Stieglitz introduced the trend of looking at indigenous arts in an aesthetic setting, mingling African masks and sculptures with modem European paintings. According to Hartigan (1990) New York museums and galleries followed suit, and "collecting the moder and the tribal"

soon became fashionable. By most accounts, folk artists began to receive serious recognition in the 1930s, after the Newark Museum and the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) exhibited the works of American folk artists. The MOMA show, curated by Holger Cahill, was particularly important because the works were exhibited as art, and not artifacts, and were so

exhibited with a perceived affinity to the development of modernism in American art (Weissman, 1988).

By the 1940s, a number of important publications helped to establish contemporary American folk art: Robert Goldwater's landmark Primitive in Modern Painting (1938); Sidney Janus's They Taught Themselves: American Painters of the 20th Century (1942); and Jean Lipman'sAmerican Primitive Painting. Art periodicalsArt in America and Antiques also began to publish information about folk art (Blandy & Congdon, 1989). According to Barbara Crate (1984), attention to American folk art came from the avant- garde establishment and not the general public, and it did little to change the lives of most folk artists.

In the 1960s there emerged a sizeable identifiable group of folk artists in the United States who began their careers late in life and had some degree of success in marketing their work (Crate, 1984). Rosenak (1984) argues that this recognition was limited and there was an unspoken consensus that 20th-century folk art no longer existed because of television and

universal education in America. Accounts of when curatorial and

scholarly interest in American folk art finally reached a critical mass differ only slightly. The opening of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York in 1961, and the publication in 1974 of Waide Hemphill and Julia Weissman's book, Twentieth-century American Folk Art and Artists, contributed to the recognition of folk art in America.. Two shows that signalled a turning point included the 1970 exhibition Twentieth Century American Folk Art and Artists launched by the Museum of American Folk Art, and Black Folk Art in America 1930- 1980 (Livingston, 1982), opened in 1982 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Peter Marzio, Director of the Corcoran in 1982, observes how important it was to the art world to think in terms of "a

JULY 1999 / ART EDUCATION

Replete with content, inventive in form

and process, and full of self-

contradictions, folk art affords rich

opportunities for inquiry.



'school of artists' each working in isolation from one another, guided only by instinct and raw talent" (p. 7). In 1986, the National Museum of American Art further legitimized folk art with its exhibition Made with Passion: The Hemphill FolkArt Collection. The National Museum of American Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution, not only displayed folk art alongside a museum founded as a traditional painting and sculpture gallery, but made substantial investments in research and public programming devoted to American folk art (Broun, 1990).

Current interest in folk and outsider art is evident in the emergence of commercial galleries dedicated to the work of outsiders (Nassie, 1987). Chuck and Jan Rosenak (1994) note that when they started researching and

collecting American folk art in the early 1970s there were only two commercial

galleries in the field. By the mid-1990s, "there were as many as ten thousand collectors of twentieth century folk art, and there was an army of pickers supporting more than a hundred

galleries" (p. 3).

REFLECTIONS ON FOLK ART AND ART EDUCATION

The establishment of folk art and the

growing number of high quality publications provide both rationale and resources needed to incorporate the

study of folk art and artists into school art programs. Replete with content, inventive in form and process, and full of self-contradictions, folk art affords rich opportunities for inquiry. Art educators who have studied folk art maintain that folk art denies satisfactory appreciation solely through formal analysis of media and process.

They suggest that folk art may be more appropriately studied through a variety of contextual approaches, including narrative, biographic, and folkloric (Blandy & Congdon, 1987, 1989; Congdon, 1987,1991; Hamblen, 1991; Neperud & Krug, 1995). I offer the following to complement varied approaches to the study of folk art in both university and public school settings.

Contradictory descriptions of folk art invite classroom inquiries about the nature ofart. Folk artists challenge our perceptions of what art should look like (Nassie, 1987). Elizabeth Broun (1990) explains that for many, accepting folk art as an aesthetic form equal to other cultural forms is disorienting, raising perplexing questions about technique, form, function, quality, and intention. Folk art provides an opportunity to talk about not only the nature of art, but also about the nature of "talk about art."

Roger Manley (1991) and Kristin

Congdon (1986) observe that folk artists use their own terminology and dialects to reflect their own values and concerns. In our talk about both art and folk art in the class room, we should examine various ways folk artists think and talk about their own work.

We are part of the art world. The

history of the art world's growing recognition of folk art provides a context for discussions about how interest in selected art and artists occurs in concert with particular attitudes and beliefs about art. As we

pass on to our students our own

particular (and well-schooled) aesthetic orientations, at best we discuss our biases, and locate our preferences and

judgments about art for our students. The impact ofsuccess and recognition

on folk art and artists begs closer scrutiny. Roger Manley (1991) observes the negative effects of art world success on the lives of folk artists: "More and more, the production of art in these settings is akin to those Third World cheap labor factories that assemble high tech products for and with materials from the First World" (p. 28). As we consider the impact of artworld recognition on the lives of folk artists, we should also tackle moral questions raised by this association between folk artists and the art-and-culture industry.

There are many effective ways to include folk art in an art program besides having students "make their own folk art." Teachers may bring folk artists to classes, or they may take students on field trips to folk artists' studios. Folk artists are found in inner cities, in small towns, on Indian reservations, in backwater villages, on rural highways, and in senior citizen centers (Crate, 1984; Hartigan, 1990). Folk artists live in and around all of our communities.

Teachers and students may also utilize a growing abundance of

scholarly texts, prints, museum publications, slides, and videos about folk art and artists.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Curating the Smithsonian exhibition Made with Passion, Lynda Hartigan (1990) writes that the time was right for a new understanding of folk art, with the decline of modernism, rise of cultural anthropology, post-Pop art aesthetic, and the broadening of the art market. Elizabeth Broun (1990) Director of the National Museum of American Art, observes that folk objects reach out to a broad public, "because they so forcefully engage life's fundamental aspects-family, politics, sexuality, work, nature, religion" (pp. x-ix).

ART EDUCATION / JULY 1999



Contemporary folk artists deal with current social issues, as well as with universal questions about life and death; they create unique visions of communal culture. Folk artists meld process and form, life experience and story, often with a whimsical sense of irony. These artists cross racial, gender, religious, ethnic, political, and class boundaries, and they defy what it means to grow old. The study of contemporary folk art and the stories of folk artists provide opportunities to reflect on both timely and timeless themes and concerns; or we may simply enjoy looking at the endless inventiveness, magic, or humor of their creations. With any approach, our understandings are deepened through consideration of folk artists' own statements and lives.

Folk artists raise important questions about not only art, but also about how we understand and value art. I find it particularly interesting that folk art enjoys its current notoriety at the same time that the electronic information revolution gives us an ever more enigmatic art form: virtual art. Not to be cast as opposites, folk and virtual art push boundaries of art proper, where, history teaches us, some of the most exciting things can happen.

Elizabeth Manley Delacruz is associate professor of art education and women's studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

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survey. Davenport, IA: Davenport Museum of Art.

Blandy, D., & Congdon, K (Eds.). (1987).Art in a democracy. New York: Teachers College Press.

Blandy, D., & Congdon, K (1989). An interdisciplinary response to a folk art exhibition in a university fine arts setting. Journal of Multicultural and Cross-Cultural Research in Art Education 7 (1), 69-81.

Broun, E. (1990). Foreword. In L. R Hartigan (Ed.), Made with Passion (pp. ix-xi). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Cardinal, R. (1993). A European anthology. In Driven to create: TheAnthony Petullo collection of Self-Taught & OutsiderArt (pp. 11-18). Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum.

Congdon, K (1984). A folkloric approach to the study of folk art: Benefits for cultural awareness. Journal of Multicultural and Cross-Cultural Research in Art Education, 2(1), 5-13.

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Congdon, K (1986). The meaning and use of folk speech in art criticism. Studies in Art Education, 27 (3), 140-148.

Congdon, K (1987). Toward a theoretical approach to teaching folk art: A definition. Studies in Art Education 28 (2), 96-104.

Congdon, K (1991). Art worlds, environmental images, and art education: A folk art focus. Journal of Multicultural and Cross-Cultural Research in Art Education, 9 (1), 65-72.

Crate, B. (1984). Folk art comes of age. In C. Rosenak &J. Rosenak (Eds.), Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Folk Art and Artists (pp. 13-16). New York: Abbeyville Press.

Curry, D. (1987). Rose colored glasses: Looking for good design in American folk art. In An American Sampler: Folk Artfrom the Shelburne Museum (pp. 24-41). Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.

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Livingston, J. (1982). What it is. InJ. Livingston &J. Beardsley (Eds.), Black folk art in America 1930-1960. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.

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Manley, R (1991). Separating the folk from their art. New Art Examiner 9, 25-28.

Marzio, P. (1982). Foreword. InJ. Livingston, &J. Beardsley (Eds.), Black folk art in America 1930-1960. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.

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Neperud, R, & Krug, D. (1995), People who make things: Aesthetics from the ground up. In R Neperud, (Ed.). Context, content, and community: Beyond postmodernism (pp. 141-168). New York: Teachers College Press.

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Weissman, J. (1988). Introduction. In R Ricco, & F. Maresca (Eds.), American primitive: Discoveries in folk sculpture (pp. 3-10). New York: Alfred A Knoff.

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