Good at Looking
  • Good at Looking blog
  • About Good at Looking
  • Contact Good at Looking

There's nowt so queer as folk: British Folk Art at Tate Britain

20/6/2014

0 Comments

 
“I say Brothers, We are three Clever Fellows to Preach Against Tippling. Tippling, Do you say, I call this Down Right, Hard, Drinking. You may say what you Please Gentlemen, but I think Wine makes Our Hearts Merry.”

'Three Sober Preachers', oil paint on canvas, c.1860

Picture
Bone cockerel, c.1797-1814
One of the questions that comes to mind when visiting the new British Folk Art exhibit at Tate Britain is whether the pieces on display are ‘art’ or ‘craft’. Does it matter what we call them? There has long been, and continues to be, a lively debate on the distinction between the two, reflecting a degree of snobbery on both sides of the divide. This exhibit doesn’t give a definitive answer, and nor should it.

The Tate, of course, is an art museum, and this exhibit is an exuberant celebration of the art we come across in our everyday lives – shop signs, for example – and the art we make in the everyday task of living, such as making quilts from scraps, collages from found objects, and driftwood sculpture. 
Picture
Tin tray covered with 'boody'
Picture
God-in-a-Bottle, 19th century, glass, wood and water
Not all of these have function as their primary purpose – one of the possible definitions of ‘craft’ as distinct from ‘art’. But nor do they necessarily have something to 'say' in the sense of deeper meaning. Many display great innovation and originality - such as the boody pieces from the north of England, using broken china (called 'boody') to create mosaic tins and boxes in the late 19th century - but weren’t created to convey an idea or emotion. With others, the purpose is unknown, such as the God–in-a-Bottle pieces associated with the construction workers and miners who were part of the Irish Catholic diaspora.
And it’s not just the terms ‘art’ and ‘craft’ that are contentious. “For many people”, writes Jeff McMillan in his introductory essay to the exhibit’s catalogue, “folk is a four-letter word. But because we all have a different and vague idea of what it refers to, it works like an umbrella to cover many other terms such as ‘vernacular’, ‘popular’, ‘rural’, ‘traditional’ and is a second cousin to labels like ’self-taught’, ‘naive’ and ‘outsider’." There is also a connection with ‘art brut’ – raw or uncooked art that is uncontaminated by culture – a term coined in the 1940s by French artist Jean Dubuffett. 
Raw it may be, but at least one folk artist made much of his royal connections. George Smith was a tailor in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in the early 19th century. He described himself as “Artist in Cloth and Velvet Figures to His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex”. His fabric and paper collages, such as this one in a series from 1830-40 called 'The Goosewoman', became a tourist attraction.

Picture
George Smart, 'Goosewoman', c.1830, paper and fabric collage
Picture
Alfred Wallis, 'Schooner under the Moon', c1935-36, oil paint and graphite on cardboard and plywood
The work of Alfred Wallis shows how ‘folk’ makers were sometimes feted by established artists. Wallis was ‘discovered’ by Modernist artist Ben Nicholson in an unexpected encounter in Cornwall, where Wallis had been using old pieces of cardboard as the canvases for his paintings.

Perhaps what matters is our response to the work - the meaning or intention we infer as viewers, the emotions that the piece triggers in us personally.

In her closing essay in the exhibit’s catalog, curator Ruth Kenny writes that one definition that has become a useful tool in understanding folk art is that of American sociologist Gary Alan Fine, who suggested the idea of ‘identity art’: Kenny writes: “Moving away from a focus on the finished product and the response it invokes, identity art privileges the characteristics of the creators and the circumstances and process of making.”

Many of the pieces in the exhibit are rooted in the notion of community identity – whether the community of a courting couple who together produced the Bellamy quilt during their year-long engagement, or the members of the community who contributed to the production of shop signs.

Wherever you stand on the art/craft debate (or indeed whether or not you see any distinction), you're sure to enjoy the works in this show and the questions they provoke.

British Folk Art is on at Tate Britain until 31 August 2014.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    About me

    I'm Margaret Doyle, a mediator and researcher in administrative justice. I'm also a Welcoming Ambassador at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the world's leading museum of art and design.

    Categories

    All
    Alessi
    Althea McNish
    Anna Maria Garthwaite
    Architecture
    Barbara Jones
    Barbican
    Bermondsey
    Blue
    Breakfast
    British Library
    Cemeteries
    Charles Sargeant Jagger
    Christopher Dresser
    Colour
    Cornelia Parker
    Craft
    Democracy
    Edmund De Waal
    Embroidery
    Enid Marx
    Etal Adnan
    Folk Art
    Hannah Ryggen
    How To Look
    Kaffe Fassett
    Kurt Schwitters
    Mae Architects
    Magna Carta
    Marie Gudme Leth
    #metoo
    Mona Caron
    Pat Taylor
    Phyllis Barron And Dorothy Larcher
    Plants
    Politics
    Popular Art
    Power
    Public Art
    Rachel Whiteread
    Rule Of Thirds
    San Francisco
    Shared Spaces
    Tapestry
    Tate Britain
    Textile Design
    Textiles
    Tracey Emin
    UK Parliament
    Utility Covers
    V&A Museum
    Walking
    White Cube
    Yee I-Lann

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    March 2024
    May 2019
    January 2019
    August 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    September 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.