American Folklife Center, Library Ofcon It's Not Art Any More
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july-September 1983 American F olklife Center in the Library ofCongress, Washington, D. C. Volume VI, Number 3 Stanley Hicks: Heritage Fellowship Recipient The Basil Fomeen Collection A Portrait of Lake N. Porter Publications "Many of the works are playful, ex lecting, presenting, and viewing it, pressing a kind of recreation of the but an artistic fervor to create it as FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS artist's experience. Some of the well. Both examples also raise an works were generated by memory interesting question: Is it folk art? a quarterly publication ofthe or a sense of play, and others are Or, to vary the formulation, are all American Folklife Center didactic-intended to moralize or these grassroots artists folk artists? instruct. Most have a visuality, di And in what ways is their art "folk," atthe rectness, and power." To comple or not "folk"? Behind these inno Library o[Congress ment this showing of living artists cent queries lies a puzzling jumble an exhibition was also arranged at of ideas, attitudes, and historical AlanJabbour, Director the Georgia Museum of Art from and cultural trends which have the collection of noted folk-art col folklorists, art historians, and Ray Dockstader, Deputy Director lector Herbert Waide Hemphill, a museum curators, folk-art collec Elena Bradunas native son of Georgia. Documen tors, art dealers, and others at Carl Fleischhauer tary films, lectures, and a live con loggerheads. Rushing in where Mary Hufford FolklifeSpecialists cert of folk music rounded off the others fear to tread, the Folklife public celebration of this splendid Center will be holding a two-day PeterT. Bartis, Folklife Researcher undertaking. I wish I had been meeting on the subject in De Eleanor Sreb, Executive Assistant there. cember. We hope that a gathering Brett Topping, Writer-Editor North of Rome, over in north of experts and devotees from all of Doris Craig, Administrative Secretary west Georgia, Reverend Howard these orbits, which unfortunately Lisa Oshins, Staff Assistant Finster has turned his backyard often fail to overlap or intersect, Tel: 202 287-6590 into a resplendent environment will have a salutary influence on celebrating God, life, and art. our collective understanding of Archive o[Folk Culture Beyond the inlaid paths and this larger sphere of creativity in found-object structures ofthis Gar America today. Joseph C. Hickerson, Head Gerald E. Parsons,Jr., Reference Librarian den of Paradise stands his World Is it a single creative sphere? we Patricia M. Markland, Indexer-Secretary Folk Art Church, an old church may begin by asking. Is there an Sebastian LoCurto, StaffAssistant building he purchased to further underlying unity in the creative Tel: 202287-5510 his mission of art. When I visited, cultural force that generates the church was functioning as gal carved canes, Afro-American strip Washington, D.C. 20540 lery, workshop, museum, and quilts, paintings evoking recollec standing testimony to Reverend tions of a childhood way-of-life, Finster's artistic energy and imagi and the folk-art environments of a Managing Editor: Brett Topping nation. A retired bicycle repair Reverend Finster? Or is it even a man, handyman, sign painter, cultural force, in the collective clockcase builder, banjo and har human sense that we customarily monica player, and preacher, he imply by the word "cultural" to dis DIRECTOR'S COLUMN began painting visions and allegor tinguish collective from uniquely ical themes several years ago and individual creative arts? Or is every now has thrown all his energies in to human creative act "cultural" no In Athens, the Athens Avant his creative work. In addition to the matter how singular it may seem to Garde Society recently sponsored a Garden and thousands of paint the immediate bystanders? There three-part exhibition featuring ings, he has produced two record is something about this subject folk art in their part of northeast ings (a 45-rpm record ofsongs and perhaps its essential non-verbal Georgia. Their New Arts Review an LP of a service with his last character-that makes it easy to get (April 1983) tells us that, sup church congregation) and a hand lost in a forest of words. (The folk ported by a grant from the Georgia lettered and hand-illustrated book art conference, unlike the direc Council for the Arts and narrating a vision of space travel. tor's column, will at least include Humanities and the National En His communicative and visual slides.) dowment for the Arts, they power and genius make us proud Taking the other tack, perhaps scoured the countryside in a six at the Folklife Center to own and we are dealing with fundamentally county area in search offolk artists. display two of Reverend Finster's disparate human expressions, The resulting exhibition includes paintings, commissioned when the yoked together only by a quirk in drawings, paintings, quilts, jugs, Center was inaugurated in 1976. the recent history of the English carved wooden figures, furniture, Both the Athens and the Rome language that has assigned to all of walking canes, mobiles, whirligigs, example illustrates a widespread them the adjective "folk." Pursuing environmental works, and cement and intense interest in folk art this line of thinking, one might sculptures. Of the results of her around the United States today argue that the terminological con fieldwork Dianne Penny says, not only an interest in finding, col fusion arises from those same 2 FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS while constantly fabricating novel artifacts. One could transmit the artifact, the style, the art, the skill, or even the values from which all else derived, but in all these cases there was a cultural continuity that December Folk-Art Meeting warranted use of the word "tradi tion." As we have re-evaluated the On December 5-6, 1983 the American Folklife Center, with assistance nature of cultural transmission, it from the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City, will sponsor has become inviting to reassess the "Washington Meeting on Folk Art" at the Library of Congress. In some of our earlier judgments vited specialists will gather to address a broad range of topics of interest about what folk art is. to researchers and collectors associated with the study and presentation All of which-and more of folk art. The December program will include review ofcontemporary should make for a lively and excit scholarship on the topic, discussion of the work of individual folk artists, ing folk-art conference this De examination of the effects of the marketplace, and evaluation of folk art cember. And ifall these issues seem within the larger cultural context. For further information contact Peter vexing, ponder this: Nobody says T. Bartis, Folklife Researcher, American Folklife Center, Library ofCon it's not art any more. gress, Washington, D.C. 20540. non-intersecting orbits alluded to daddy, as it were, offolk processes, earlier, each of which indepen and there is at least a reasonable dently reached into the language's presumption that our shared use of rucksack of certifiably amiable and the word "folk" reflects our deep patently democratic words to de collective perception of similarities BOARD OF TRUSTEES scribe the various phenomena in these disparate artistic expres under consideration, with "folk sions. It seems unlikely that the Ronald C. Foreman, Jr., Florida, Chair art" being the phrase chosen in all Athens Avant-Garde Society man these sundry cases. If indeed we brought together quilts, face-jugs, David E. Draper, California, Vice Chair are using the same word for differ painted memoryscapes, and local man ent things, it follows that the task gospel singers simply because they Raye Virginia Allen, Washington, D.C. before us is simply to confront the noticed the wide world randomly and Texas overlap in terminology and begin attaching the word "folk" to all of Janet Anderson, Oregon and California hammering out a mutually agreed them. Nor was Reverend Finster's Edward Bridge Danson, Arizona upon set ofterms that carefully dis World Folk Art Church given its Jeanne Guillemin, Massachusetts tinguish things distinct. No doubt name at the insistence of either William L. Kinney,Jr., South Carolina everyone will want to keep that fine folklorists or folk art collectors. All St.John Terrell, New Jersey word "folk" for themselves and of us as users of the word "folk" mete out another term to the other need to school ourselves on its cul orbits, which could cause some tural import, its efficacy, out and bickering; but it would all be solu beyond ourselves and ourcircles. Ex Officio Members ble with a little goodwill. My second reason arises from my I think, however, that matters own professional history as a Daniel J. Boorstin, The Librarian of Con will prove a bit more complex than folklorist. Many ofus grew up (pro gress that, and a great deal more inter fessionally, that is) serene in the S. Dillon Ripley, Secretary of the Smithso esting. My first reason is that word idea that folklore involved the pass nian Institution choices in a language are rarely as ing down of cultural artifacts Francis S. M. Hodsoll, Jr., Chairman, Na quirky and random as they seem. (stories, songs, tunes, and dances, tional Endowment for the Arts The study of language leads us as well as material artifacts) from William Bennett, Chairman, National En again and again to conclude that person to person within homo dowment fonhe Humanities any use of a word or phrase has geneous communities. Then came AlanJabbour, Director, American Folklife fundamental connections to any the 1960s, during which the Afro Center other uses of the same word or American revolution taught us that phrase. Language is the gran a culture can pass along an art JULY-SEPTEMBER 1983 3 I first thought it was maybe STANLEY HICKS 500, and then kept a-looking at it [the fellowship letter) and National Heritage Fellowship Recipient then I think to myself, ..