Objects of aesthetic expression usually appreciated for their traditional aspects. Most artworks identified as folk come from traditional cultures and are learned in a nonacademic face-to-face interchange. While folk art often seems to be synonymous with ethnic art (Hmong storycloths, Amish quilts, or Mexican American death carts), it also comes from traditional communities held together by ties related to occupation, region, religion, generation, politics, economics, or family. While there is a continuing debate over precisely how to define folk art, generally speaking, most scholars agree that the boundaries for art categories such as folk, fine, tourist, ethnic, or popular are fluid. Since the beginning of the 20th century, folk-art study in the United States has been influenced by antique collecting, European class structures, museum practices, modernist per-spectives of fine art, and varying approaches to the study of all art within different academic disciplines. In the United States, folk art’s “beginnings” (which ignored the work of Native Americans, classifying it as “primitive”) were first identified with new immigrants who continued their European traditions. These new citizens often settled in communities with others from their country of origin. While there was sharing among varying cultural groups, thereby somewhat changing the weaving, the basket, the carving, or the pottery, many traditional practices of ritualistic use or content remained. Originally, the creator of folk art was usually seen as a rural, nonliterate, poor, and isolated individual. This approach probably grew out of the European way of identifying folk artists as peasants. Holger Cahill, who was influential in folk art’s early study, believed that the great period of American folk art covered the second quarter of the 17th century up to the third quarter of the 19th century. It was not until the early part of the 20th century that American folk art gained recognition outside of the community of origin. The first “discovery” came from members of the group we call fine artists. Artists such as Peggy Bacon, Alexander Brook, Charles Demuth, Yasya Kuniyoshi, Robert Laurent, Elie Nadelman, and William Zorach appreciated both the immediacy and the directness of the work as well as the kinds of materials that were used, often wood and iron. Besides these artists, early collectors included the Rockefellers, the Kaplans, and the Lipmans. Little attention was paid to documentation of the artists or their contexts, thereby encouraging the idea of folk art as anonymous. Edith Halpert and Cahill are credited with initiating widespread public acceptance of folk art and the collecting of it as “proper” artistic expression. By “proper,” they meant that they viewed folk art as objects with aesthetic value based on formalist approaches, rather than objects coming from traditional communities that functioned in ritualistic or utilitarian ways. In the 1920s, artists and collectors would flock to rural Maine in the summer to gather paintings, carvings, weather vanes, gravestones, and ship and architectural carvings.
Americans were interested in having a separate identity from Europe, and they believed that folk art would help us understand our own cultural heritage. In addition, as the United States became more industrial, many citizens wanted to keep the past alive. They theorized that if the folk arts continued to thrive, important elements of the past would continue. The notion prevailed that the best folk art was that which was old. For many years, Art in America and Antiques were the only periodicals that would publish articles on folk art. Because collector Jean Lipman was the editor of Art in America from 1940 to 1971, articles about folk art were encouraged. Alice Winchester, another early-20th-century collector, was the editor of Antiques for many years. This magazine was largely responsible for stimulating and maintaining an interest in folk art (viewed as closely aligned with antiques) during that time. In 1950, an issue of Antiques was published that solicited defi-nitions for the term “folk art” from people who had either written about it, collected it, or exhibited it. Most of the writers were “art-” oriented people (as opposed to folklore-, history-, or anthropology-oriented people), and they described folk art from the object point of view (as opposed to a context perspective). However, even among these writers, there did not seem to be much of a common focus. The first widely acclaimed collection of American folk art was begun in the 1920s by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller with the help of Edith Halpert, who was then the director of the Downtown Gallery in New York. This collection is housed at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, Virginia. Electra Havemeyer’s collection began as early as 1910 when she married J.Watson Webb. In 1947, the Webbs founded the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. During this period, Eleanor and Mabel van Alstyne also developed a strong collection, which they gave to the Smithsonian Institution in 1964. Jean Lipman’s collection was bought by Stephen C.Clark in 1950 for the New York Historical Association in Cooperstown, and Henry F.du Pont made his home into the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum in Winterthur, Delaware. His house is full of many folk-art masterpieces. Henry Ford’s extensive collection is in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, which also includes some folk art. More recently, Herbert Hemphill gave his extensive collection to the Smithsonian, and Michael and Julie Hall made a gift of their folk art to the Milwaukee Art Center in Wisconsin. The first public folk-art exhibition, organized by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, was in 1924 at the Whitney Studio Club in New York City. Since then, the momentum and interest in exhibiting folk art have been building. In 1932 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City exhibited a show called American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America, 1750–1900. Included were oil paintings on glass, cookie molds, wood and metal sculptures, plaster ornaments, ships’ figureheads, toys, carved wooden cigar-store Indians, weather vanes, decoys, metal stove plates and figures, and ornamental eagles and roosters. The majority of works in this show and other early ones were from New England. The idea of folk art as art by the common, everyday person persevered. Because of the enthusiasm for these kinds of objects by antique collectors, many handmade objects that had been called “antique” were now being called “folk.” The Depression years brought about the Works Progress Administration (WPA). This federal program funded not only the collection of ballads and other oral folklore, but also an assemblage of art objects from rural areas. It also helped create hundreds of day and evening art classes at schools and community groups across the country. Art was seen as important and necessary, and for people everywhere, including folk artists, the sense that art was a worthwhile activity was promoted. The Index of American Design is one of the most comprehensive documentations of 18th- and 19th-century arts and crafts. It was one of many projects initiated in the spirit of Franklin D.Roosevelt with the expressed intent of giving the nation a sense of wholeness and the “common” people a sense of pride and worthiness during troubled times. This book was edited in 1950 by Erwin O.Christensen, and it recorded 22,000 art representations, many of them considered folk art. In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers began to look to the South and West as the idea of what could be considered folk art expanded. In 1970, Herbert Hemphill organized the exhibition Twentieth-Century Folk Art and Artists at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City. This show was notable because it appeared to be the first time 20th- century American folk art (beyond the realm of painting) had been so broadly explored by a major institution. Folk art began to lose some of its close identity with antiques. This exhibit included wood carving, santos of the New Mexican religious tradition, neon road signs, toys, decoys, fabric and needlework pieces, assemblage pieces, and photographs showing examples of fantasy gardens and environments, storefront art, graveyard art, and scarecrows. It made folk art appear abundant and important in 20th-century America. Additionally, folk art appeared to be alive and well all over the country. In 1974 another major show, curated by Alice Winchester, took place at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. It was called The Flowering of American Folk Art, 1776–1876, and it is credited by some as the first exhibition to survey “the entire range of folk art,” which is and was, of course, an impossible task. It is interesting to note that the popular magazine Art News critiqued the catalog book, written by Jean Lipman, as disturbingly having more focus on biography than stylistic analysis. The art object, clearly, was being more connected to the artist, and the idea of folk art as anonymous art was fading. In the 1970s, as state and regional arts councils flourished, geographical regions began to research and curate shows. These shows were usually coordinated by folklorists, trained to see folk art as a traditional process rather than as an isolated object to be viewed against a white wall and appreciated for its formalistic design elements. The cultural community in which an artist lived and worked was determined to be important to the understanding and appreciation of the artistic process and, in turn, the way the product was understood and appreciated. The Early Art in the Genesee Valley exhibit in 1974 concentrated on one region in New York state. It was set up to reveal “the social function of arts during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the Genesee Valley by the display of artifacts locally manufactured or locally owned.” This show emphasized that the objects exhibited were to return to people and houses instead of museums. In other words, the objects functioned within the daily lives of individuals and communities, and, therefore, their return was viewed as important. The 1978 Michigan Folk Art Show, organized by C.Kurt Dewhurst and Marsha MacDowell at Michigan State University, identified folk artists in four different ways that incorporated both conservative definitions focusing on tradition and community belonging, and individual expression and the influence of technology. This approach was an attempt to incorporate a broad enough definition to include both the traditional and the vernacular artist. However, in general, subsequent folk-art shows coordinated by folklorists holding positions as state folk-arts coordinators, attempted to define folk art as more traditionally bound. Additionally, they made attempts to portray the meanings and functions of the objects in people’s lives. Good examples of these types of exhibitions were those held in 1980 in Oregon (coordinated by Suzie Jones) and in Utah (by Hal Cannon). Within the last few decades, folk-art publications and exhibitions have come from two major directions. Generally speaking, museums utilize the art-historical approach, which has traditionally looked at the folk-art object from an aesthetic perspective. When folklorists are involved with the research and display, the exhibit direction becomes more contextual. Also, some curators and art historians lean toward a folkloric approach to folk art. Probably the three most active museums in exhibiting and publishing works on folk art have been the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City, the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia. Most of the fifty states have folk-art coordinators, who have not only surveyed their regions for folk art and exhibited the works, but also often coordinate folk festivals in an effort to educate the public on the relationship among the artist, the object, and the artist’s community. Publications resulting from these programs emphasize the cultural community, the ways the object is used and appreciated, and the values and beliefs that are communicated. Folk-arts coordinators have also been active in developing folk arts in education programs, in which folk artists are employed to teach about local traditions. These programs, like many folk-art projects, are often funded by the Folk Arts Division of the National Endowment for the Arts. Apprenticeship awards, folklore fieldwork, and other folkloric activities are also often supported by this federal agency. As the 20th century comes to an end, avenues for communication have increased, and competition over the study of folk art has blossomed, but there remains a lack of consensus on the definition of folk art. Over the last one hundred years, many words and phrases have been used to define folk art, many of which are demeaning, classist, racist, colonialist, and just plain narrow-minded. Among the terms used are: simplistic, provincial, childlike, a dying art form, copied, antique, nonacademic, unsophisticated, naive, primitive, untrained, unprofessional, handiwork, utilitarian, art by isolates, outsider, grass-roots, and peasant art. In 1977 the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum held a conference on American folk art with Scott Swank as chair. It was an attempt to have scholars from different areas (university professors, museum directors, collectors, and specialists in folklore and material culture) analyze traditional views on folk art and look for new ones. At the same time, there was a folk-art show on display at the Brandywine River Museum. The show was developed in conjunction with the Winterthur Museum and expressed some of the new directions its curators wished to pursue with folk art. The new (and old) perspectives, which were discussed at the conference and at the exhibit, stirred controversy among attendees. The result was perhaps more confusion, less consensus, and increased alienation among groups interested in the study of folk art. The 1980 anthology Perspectives on American Folk Art, edited by lan M.G.Quimby and Swank, was a result of these events. Since the early 1970s, folklorists have become increasingly interested in folk art. Early folklore scholars who led the way include Louis Jones from Cooperstown, New York; Michael Owen Jones (1989), who did an early extensive study on a chairmaker in the Kentucky mountains; Henry Glassie, who studies vernacular architecture; and John Michael Vlach, who continues to do studies in African American folk art and material culture. While anthropologists have studied folk art in far-off places, they have, generally speaking, neglected folkart study in the United States. Because of anthropology’s absence in American folk-art study, folklore’s late entry, and museum collectors’ earlier hold on the approach to folk art, there remain conflict in defining folk art, political turf guarding of funding sources, and general disagreement over what objects to study as folk and how to study them. In many respects, it is the folkloric approach to the study of art that permits an emphasis to be placed on the holistic creative process. Whereas a fine-art perspective usually entails a product-boundaried approach in its categorization, a folklorist will study many aspects of the creative process, often focusing on that which is traditional. One of the most often identified areas of tradition a folklorist will emphasize in defining a work as “folk” is how the tradition is learned. The tradition, then, is identified in the process of passing on certain community values and beliefs from one generation to another during the learning process. Examples would be Leon “Peck” Clark, a Mississippi basket maker who learned to weave from a community member; George Lopez of Cordova, New Mexico, a sixth-generation santos carver whose children also carve; or the African American families from Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, who weave baskets in similar ways to their African ancestors. Folklorists say that folk art cannot be learned in academic settings; it is the informality of the process and the community-based values passed on that makes the work “folk.” This process of defining folk art becomes problematic when one begins looking at more formal apprenticeship programs such as those in which the traditional boatbuilder in Mississippi is taught. While the boats and the artists are said to be traditional, the learning mode has been formalized. Or, in the case of orthodontists trained at the University of Washington to learn soldering skills by making art, when many of these students graduate they continue to make soldered sculptures, often informally sharing them with their former fellow students and other local orthodontists. Some folklorists like to emphasize the tradition that exists in the creative process. For example, one Canadian Northwest Coast Indian carver learns his craft from his father by working on his own totem pole, imitating each move he sees his father make. As a result, the two poles are basically identical. Michael Owen Jones recognizes that more often the ideas, techniques, and skills that are passed on from one individual to another incorporate some change. However, there is a tendency toward conformity in these procedures. In fact, most folklore scholars agree that new tools and updated technology might also be used in the re-creation of a folk piece. For example, if an Oregon logger who learned traditional carving techniques from other loggers decided to switch to a chain saw, the artwork and creative process would still be considered “folk.” On the other hand, one must recognize that artists who are academically trained also employ certain traditional techniques and skills they learn in the classroom. These skills may have to do with the way to wedge clay or how to pull a pot from the potter’s wheel, but traditional creative processes are certainly passed on. The most product-oriented way of looking at folk art is to find tradition in the content of the object. In other words, a carved piece of scrimshaw made by a Newfoundland fisherman should have on it a traditional motif in order for the work to be considered “folk.” Folk-art totem poles are made with traditional images of whales, ravens, or bears, and quilts are created from traditional patterns passed down from mother to daughter. However, in fine art, there is also tradition in the content of art objects. For example, in European paintings, the still-life bowl of fruit is ubiquitous, as is the reclining female nude. Many artists make a series of similar works that explore one topic or idea. For example, Alberto Giacommetti spent many years making the same thin, standing figures over and over again. Some scholars look to the style of an art object for traditional aspects. Certainly there is no one style that can be used to identify all folk art. However, there are stylistic traditions within folk-art expressions. Hmong storycloths are often embroidered on a blue background with bright colors reflecting similar scenes of villages and animals. Loggers carve similar kinds of chains and fans, and Pueblo potters utilize traditional clays, surface design elements, and firing practices to produce pottery recognizable to their region. In like fashion, fine artists, too, are grouped with those who share similar ideas about style. The Impressionists have stylistic similarities as do the Cubists, the Expressionists, and the Futurists.
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