I.

Introduction

Folk Art, term used for a distinctive type of art that is created within local or regional traditions, usually (but not always) in the context of rural agricultural communities. It includes the making and decoration of a wide range of objects used in these communities, such as clothing, furniture, children’s toys, shop signs, household utensils and pottery, agricultural vehicles, and props used in religious festivals and entertainments. It also embraces styles of architecture, sculpture, and painting.

The very idea of folk art implies the attitude of a social elite to art produced in and for the workaday world of the general populace. Thus the term can effectively be used only with reference to a society with a clearly stratified aesthetic culture, where the art of the ruling classes is conceived as fundamentally different from that of the “folk”. This has historically been the case on Europe since the Renaissance, when the ruling classes of all nations adopted an international artistic language derived from Classical Greece and Rome. The term “folk art” is not applied, therefore, to the arts of medieval Europe or to those of most cultures outside the Western tradition.

Works of fine art are made to be appreciated for their own sake, and are often commissioned or bought by wealthy patrons who set a personal value on a particular artist’s work. Such works are judged by academic and intellectual standards. Folk art, on the other hand, aims to beautify objects in daily use in a household or community. Nor can it be industrially mass-produced, since qualities of craftsmanship and pleasure in the handling of materials are also important aspects of folk art. Today traditional craft skills are often used to produce spurious folk art for the tourist market. In the developing world especially, traditional craft items are made for international export; they are sold as folk art but do not belong to the true context of this art.

It should also be said that art historians today increasingly avoid using a label such as “folk art”, for the reason that it implies the view of a superior cultural level (urbane, metropolitan, international) towards an inferior one (provincial, rustic, unsophisticated)—a view that is clearly unlikely to be objective. Other slightly more precise terms—for example “popular”, “primitive”, “naive”, “peasant”, or “vernacular” art—overlap with folk art and are often preferred. Nevertheless, “folk art” remains a very useful descriptive term, particularly when dealing with traditions that have their roots in the regional cultures of pre-industrial Europe.

II.

General Characteristics

Unlike the signed or documented works of a named artist, folk art is usually produced anonymously by artisans who follow deeply rooted traditional forms and styles associated with their particular region. Paradoxically, however, while folk art eschews innovation, it is marked by a freshness and vitality to which academically trained artists have often turned for inspiration.

The makers of folk art may be professional practitioners who have been trained in a local or family-run workshop, or they may be members of a household or small community. Thus skills in embroidery, weaving, and other textile art are traditionally learnt by women in many societies, and members of religious communities throughout the world produce devotional paintings.

Folk artists are not always anonymous. Among the most accomplished examples of folk art are Sicilian two-wheeled carts covered in brightly painted decoration, including vivid narrative scenes on the rectangular side panels. In some cases, the names of the artists are recorded: for example, the Ficano brothers from Palermo, who were active in the 19th century. Similarly, entries in 18th- and 19th-century British trade directories list provincial painters whose skills might be variously turned to house decoration, shop or inn signs, and even portraits. These painters often worked at one or more other trades.

The materials used in folk art tend to be those that are plentifully available and can be worked using relatively simple processes; for example wood, clay, and textiles, as well as horn, straw, leather, and glass. Wooden objects that often received fine carved decoration include items of furniture, utensils such as spoons and clothes-beaters, and yokes for oxen. Ceramics range from plain serviceable earthenware vessels through a vast variety of decorated wares to delightful ornamental figurines, and textile arts cover weaving, embroidery, tapestry, lacemaking, and the creation of the distinctive regional styles of dress that are the best-known aspect of folk art. For centuries the agricultural economy in many regions relied on the services of the blacksmith’s forge, and traditions of decorative metalwork are also widespread. In Europe and North America decorative iron weathervanes were especially popular.

Folk designs make bold, visually satisfying use of line and colour. Motifs are traditional (some can be traced from ancient and even prehistoric art), or may be adapted from the decorative vocabulary of fine art, to which they add a new simplicity and expressive strength. These qualities are enhanced by symmetrical compositions based on dramatic geometric and curvilinear forms. Figure painting uses sharply defined contours, and communicates its narrative or symbolic content very directly. Carved or modelled forms give the impression of vigorous working, though without subtle variations in the quality of line and handling.

Folk architecture often balances strong, simplified forms with responsive detailing. Thus the steep pitched roof used in farmhouses throughout northern Europe create almost triangular front and back elevations that may be articulated with decorative brickwork or woodbrick. The basic log-cabin of Russian village houses is similarly complemented by elaborately carved window frames.

III.

Styles and Traditions

In the United States folk art plays a major role in defining what is perceived as a quintessential American domestic style. After Independence (see Declaration of Independence), the newly constituted United States sought a national style that would embody an amalgam of the many diverse folk traditions that the early settlers had brought with them. Today certain traditions of North American folk art have acquired the status of national icons (and command high prices at auction), notably the austerely graceful furniture produced in the Shaker community or the quilts made by the Amish women of Pennsylvania, with their beautifully balanced colour schemes and geometric designs.

Many of these traditions have a European lineage that can be traced to settlers from the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, and elsewhere. These people, a very heterogeneous “folk” were originally simply trying to re-create surroundings in the New World by using the art styles and craft skills that they had brought with them. In America, distinct regional folk-art traditions that in Europe had persisted for centuries were soon influenced both by each other and by the new environment. On the East Coast, wood was plentiful and was used for parts of buildings that in Europe would have been constructed of stone or brick. Surviving American houses of the 17th century clearly show the development from the imitation of European styles to a distinctive new idiom.

In Latin America, particularly Mexico, the fusion of Catholicism with indigenous customs and festivals has produced a particularly exuberant folk art. This is seen nowhere more clearly than in the festival of the Day of the Dead, which is celebrated with striking and elaborate skeletal figures some life-size, some made as toys in pottery or papier-mâché and dressed in brightly coloured fabrics. Other figures, such as that of Judas, are made for feast days more closely associated with Christianity. The retablo (an ex-voto painting of a religious figure) is another outstanding form of folk art in Mexico and the south-western United States.

In England the term “folk” carries overtones of a pre-industrial agricultural idyll, simple life, imagined to have existed before the Industrial Revolution, to which the middle classes of the 19th and 20th centuries looked back with yearning. Yet some of the most vital English folk art, for example the decorative painting and ropework found on canal narrowboats or the carved and pointed horses on steam-powered fairground carousels, belong to an industrialized, essentially urban world. There are rich traditions associated with particular trades and occupations, such as the straw roof ornaments created by thatchers, decorated and beautifully fitted out gypsy caravans, and the many objects produced by mariners that range from carved whalebone (scrimshaw) to ships in bottles. Some industrially produced pottery, such as the glazed earthenware Staffordshire figures, has the colouring and naive vigour of folk art.

Eastern European folk art has a very varied repertoire of designs, many of which can be traced to Classical of Islamic motifs. A bold graphic element is especially strong in the folk art of Russia, which has been open to influences both from the West and, via the ancient Silk Route, from East Asia. Folk art in Russia has long played a role in different political agendas: during the 19th century the folk idiom was seen as a virile symbol of imperial Russian nationhood, and at the time of the Russian Revolution, artists and designers adapted elements of folk art to express the new political order.

Many museums worldwide have good collections of folk art, and nation museums dedicated to folk art include the Museums of Folk Art, Moscow; Museo de Arte Popular, Mexico City; Museum of American Folk Art, New York; Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich; Museum für Volksunde, Vienna; and Museo Nazionale delle Arti e delle Tradizioni Popolari, Rome.