Today, we’re delving into this specific subgenre.
The Inspirations of Five Well-Known Folk Artists
Folk art has a long history and there is no one definition of the phenomenon. Traditionally, folk art is produced from an indigenous culture and is characterized by a naive style, in which customary rules of proportion and perspective are not employed. Other defining features of folk art is that it is often handmade, is both decorative and utilitarian, and is of, by, and for the people.
What sets folk art apart from fine art is that it is not influenced by movements and in many cases it excludes works executed by professional artists. Art terms that often overlap with folk art are naïve art, tribal art, primitivism, and outsider art. Sometimes these are used interchangeably but a key difference is that folk art expresses cultural identity by conveying shared cultural aesthetics, values, and social issues. The beauty of this phenomenon is that it reflects the traditional art forms of diverse community groups.
As a result of the varied geographical and temporal prevalence and diversity of folk art, it makes it difficult to describe as a whole, though some patterns can be seen in the work shared below. Here we look at some of the most well-known folk artists to get a sense of how they created their work and what inspired them.
Ammi Phillips (1788–1865)
Ammi Phillips was an American traveling portrait painter who worked across Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York for over 50 years. Phillips was self-taught and at 21 he put up adverts to paint people’s portraits. He made it clear to his potential subjects that if they didn’t like the picture, they didn’t have to pay for it. Phillips would also paint his subjects in the prevailing fashion of the day and the artist often changed his style depending on which decade he was painting in.
Phillips adopted a wandering lifestyle as demand for his skills was initially low. This romantic approach contrasts with the bourgeois domesticity of his portraits, which were always set inside. It’s what makes his classification as a folk artist interesting. The artists’ figures are simplified and flattened, but their faces are so sensitively drawn that they seem like real individuals and not just the generalized types that the subjects of folk portraiture can sometimes appear to be.
“Leonard William Ten Broeck (1797-1852)” (1832), автор – Ammi Phillips (1782-1865)Albany Institute of History & Art
Grandma Moses (1860–1961)
Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known by her nickname Grandma Moses, began painting at the age of 78 and is often celebrated for successfully beginning a career in the arts later in life. The American folk artist’s work can be described as simple realism with an air of nostalgia and thoughtful approach to color. Grandma Moses portrayed farm life and rural countrysides, which won her a wide following.
Moses painted “what used to be” and she often omitted features of modern life, such as tractors and telephone poles. Her style is less individual and more primitive, despite her rejection of basic perspective (a common characteristic of folk art). Initially she created simple compositions or copied existing images but as her career advanced she create complicated, panoramic scenes of rural life. Moses created over 1,500 canvases in the three decades she painted, and she initially charged $3 to $5 for a painting, depending upon its size. As her fame increased, her works were sold for $8,000 to $10,000.
“Painting:The Old Hoosick Bridge” (1947)The Strong National Museum of Play
“Painting:In the Park Painting:In the Park” (1947)The Strong National Museum of Play
Jamini Roy (1887–1972)
Jamini Roy was an Indian artist who began his career as a commissioned portrait painter. In the early 1920s he abruptly gave that up in an effort to discover his own style of painting. Roy was taught at the Government College of Art, Kolkata, with Abanindranath Tagore (an instigator who led the development of modern Indian art) as vice principal. Formally taught under the prevailing academic tradition of Classical nudes and oil paintings, Roy had realized afterwards that he needed to draw inspiration from his own culture, as opposed to Western traditions.
He looked to the living folk and tribal art for inspiration and was most influenced by the Kalighat Pat (Kalighat painting), which was a style of art with bold sweeping brush-strokes. Roy soon developed a new style based on Bengali folk traditions and with his work he aimed to capture the essence of simplicity embodied in the life of the indigenous people; to make art accessible to a wider section of people; and to give Indian art its own identity. His contribution to the emergence of modern art in India is still celebrated today.
“Krishna Jasoda” (Undated), автор – Jamini RoyMuseum of Art & Photography
“Painting of Dancing Gopi” (1950s), автор – Jamini RoyRoyal Ontario Museum
William Johnson (1901–1970)
William Johnson was an African-American painter. Born in Florence, South Carolina, he became a student at the National Academy of Design in New York City. He later lived and worked in France, where he was exposed to modernism. After Johnson married Danish textile artist Holcha Krake, the couple lived for some time in Scandinavia. It was there that he was influenced by the strong folk art tradition. The couple moved to the United States in 1938 and Johnson eventually found work as a teacher at the Harlem Community Art Center, through the Federal Art Project.
Though Johnson was never able to achieve financial stability through his art, he continued painting throughout his life and his style evolved from realism, to expressionism, to a powerful folk style, for which he is best known. He immersed himself in African-American culture and traditions, producing paintings that were characterized by their folk art simplicity. Johnson was determined to “paint his own people” and he celebrated African-American culture and imagery in urban settings in pieces such as Cafe, and in rural settings like Sowing. However, the artist didn’t shy away from the harsher realities of African-American life, responding to race riots that were happening at the time and the lives of his ancestors.
The Invention of Folk Art
In the early years of the twentieth century, a group of young and pivotal American modernists began to equate the straightforwardness, abstracted forms, and delight in color of early folk art with the new modernist art they had studied in Europe and were pioneering in America. Folk Art and American Modernism traces the journey of these weathervanes, portraits, decoys, hooked rugs, theorem paintings, and other forms of folk art from the fishing shacks of the Summer School of Graphic Arts established in Ogunquit, Maine, in 1911 to the walls of major art museums beginning in the 1930s, and culminating in the establishment of museums such as the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Colonial Williamsburg and the American Folk Art Museum in New York City.
The exhibition highlights folk art owned, collected, and exhibited by such early art-world luminaries as curator Holger Cahill, dealer Edith Halpert, and the first director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Juliana Force, as well as artists Elie Nadelman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Charles Sheeler, among others, whose own work is shown alongside the folk art that inspired them. In regarding folk art as art and as evidence of a “usable past,” these trailblazers led their generation in preserving a continuous American artistic tradition of which they considered themselves a living part.
—Elizabeth Stillinger and Ruth Wolfe, co-curators
The Ogunquit Modernists
Elie and Viola Nadelman
Marguerite and William Zorach
Juliana Force and the Whitney Studio Club
Charles Sheeler
Isabel Carleton Wilde
Holger Cahill
Edith Halpert
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Index of American Design
Jean and Howard Lipman
Organized by the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York
Images, from left:
Charles Sheeler (1883–1965), Interior, South Salem, New York, 1926, oil and fabricated chalk on linen, 33 1/8 × 22 1/8″, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, gift of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 31.344. Digital Image © Whitney Museum, N.Y.
Elie Nadelman (1882–1946), Woman at the Piano, New York City, c. 1917, stained and painted wood, 35 1/8 x 23 1/4 x 9″ (including base), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Philip L. Goodwin Collection, 105.1958. Copyright © Estate of Elie Nadelman. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, New York.
Bernard Karfiol (1886–1952), Making Music, Ogunquit, Maine, 1938, oil on canvas, 32 x 40″, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, promised gift of Bunty and Tom Armstrong, 2000.TA.1 (L). Ex coll. Robert Laurent, Edith Halpert.
Mary Ann Willson (active 1815–1825), Maremaid, Greene County, New York, c. 1815, 17 1/4 x19 3/4 x1 1/8″ (framed), watercolor on paper, Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York, gift of Stephen C. Clark, N0085.1961. Ex coll. Jean and Howard Lipman. Photo by Richard Walker.
Attributed to The Beardsley Limner (possibly Sarah Bushnell Perkins, 1771–1831), Oliver Wight, probably Massachusetts, 1786–1793, oil on canvas, 31 1/4 x 25 1/2″, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, museum purchase. Ex coll. Isabel Carleton Wilde.
Artist unidentified, Winter Sunday in Norway, Maine, Probably Maine, c. 1860, oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 31 1/2 x 1 3/4″ (framed), Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York, gift of Stephen C. Clark, N0231.1961. Ex coll. Jean and Howard Lipman. Photo by Richard Walker.
Gould and Hazlett Company, Archangel Gabriel Weathervane, Charlestown, Boston, 1840, gold leaf on iron and copper, 28 1/2 x 71 1/2 x 6″, Kendra and Allan Daniel Collection. Photo by George Kamper, www.gkamper.com.
Attributed to Abraham Heebner (1802–1877), Exotic Bird and Townscape, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, c. 1830–1835, watercolor and ink on paper, 13 1⁄4 x 11 1⁄4 x 1″ (framed), collection of Jane and Gerald Katcher. Ex coll. Edith Halpert.
Artist unidentified, Federal Sideboard Table, New England, 1810–1830, paint on wood with brass knob, 34 7/ 8 x 26 x 20″, American Folk Art Museum, museum purchase through the Eva and Morris Feld Folk Art Acquisition Fund, 1981.12.6. Ex coll. Jean and Howard Lipman. Photo by John Parnell.
Joseph Pickett (1848–1918), Manchester Valley, New Hope, Pennsylvania, 1914–1918, oil with sand on canvas, 45 1/2 x 60 5/8″, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1939, 541.1939. Ex coll. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, New York.
Artist unidentified, Horse Toy, probably Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, c. 1860–1890, paint on poplar, 11 3/4 x 12 3/8 x 3 1/2″, American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2013.1.29. Ex coll. Edith Halpert. Photo © 2000 John Bigelow Taylor.
What Is the Difference Between American Folk Art and Outsider Art?
While folk art and outsider art are similar in that the artists lack formal training, they’re also different.
Unfortunately, the public doesn’t typically discover Outsider art until after the artist dies. In addition, their work tells the story of a person who has had little to no contact with the conventional art world.
In fact, its origins come from 19th-century European psychiatric hospitals. Once used to help study the brain, the created pieces began to be seen differently in the 20th century.
Why Is American Folk Art So Important?
American folk art tells the story of various people who used the blank slate of this country to create something new. It allows us to learn about different cultures and our nation’s history, unlike anything else. Whether as a beaded hat made in Swedish style or a quilt meant to keep the family warm in the winter, folk art shares the artists’ stories and lives with us.
Frequently, families pass the furniture, quilts, or figurines from one generation to the next. The older generations share their skills and knowledge with the younger generations to keep the skills alive. And each artist will then lend their own story to the work.
Who Are Some Famous American Folk Artists?
American folk artists became well-known because of their mediums, inspiration, and incredible talent. Each has impacted the folk art genre in ways no one else had at that point.
Charlie Willeto
Charlie Willeto was born in 1906 on the Navajo (Diné) Reservation, Nageezi, New Mexico. He was a sheepherder who did not take up woodcarving until just a few years before his death in 1964.
Charlie was a medicine man and was familiar with illness dolls. Healers would typically work with illness dolls and then leave them at sacred sites along with prayer sticks. His figures were almost identical to these dolls, but Willeto used his carvings to barter for groceries on the reservation.
He was the first in the Navajo nation known to carve figures and animals. He broke with traditional taboos in creating his whittled men, women, and animals.
You can find pieces of Willeto’s work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in Washington D.C. In addition, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin contains 45 of his carvings they restored and conserved.
