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.