MAGAZINE OF THE MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART * WINTER 2000/2001 * $6.00
25274 74382
JUDITH SCOTT
RICCO/MARESCA GALLERY
529 WEST 20TH ST 3RD FL NYC 10011 T 212/627-4819 F 212/627-5117 E rmgal@aol.com W www.riccomaresca.com in cooperation with Creative Growth Art Center, Oakland CA Judith Scott, Untitled (detail), 1988-89, mixed media, 54"h x 51"w x 7"d. Photograph by Leon A. Borensztein
STEVE MILLER • AMERICAN FOLK ART •
GILDA
By Maurice Brevannes,American, ca. 1929(signed and dated 29, upper right), oil on board, 17 x 23".
17 East 96th Street, New York, New York 10128(212)348-5219 Gallery hours are from 1:00 pm until 6:00 pm,Tuesday through Saturday. Other hours are available by appointment.
Matt Lamb 'Lamb's work belongs to a new genre of eccentric figuration stylistically beholden to naive art, art brut and neo-expressionism, but distinctive for its narrative form and its message-based content' Michael D Hall, Author, Artist, Independent Art Critic
Represented by
FASSBENDER GALLERY 835 W. WASHINGTON BLVD., CHICAGO, IL 60607
TEL 312-666-4302
FAX 312-666-5913
www.fassbendergallery.com
JAMES CASTLE 1900-1977
Untitled (attic interior with leaning door), n.d. 6/ 3 4"x 9 V."
J CRIST GALLERY AND ART SERVICES
The Belgravia Building 465 West Main Street Boise, Idaho 83702 Phone 208 336 2671 Fax 336 5615 Electronic Mail art@jcrist.com
Catalog of work released for 2001 available Winter,2001 ($17) J. Crist is the agent for the work of James Castle(A.C. Wade Castle Collection, L.P.) Outsider Art Fair, January 26— 28,2001, NYC
'
FOLK ART VOLUME 25, NUMBER 4 / WINTER 2000/2001
FEATURES
Cover: Two UNTITLED double-sided works/Henry Darger/Chicago/n.d./ watercolor, pencil, carbon tracing, and collage on pieced paper/top to bottom: 24 x 109", 22 x96",22 x96", and 24 x 109"/Museum ofAmerican Folk Art purchase pending
CULTURAL IMPRINTS ON THE LANDSCAPE:EXCERPTS FROM TRAVEIJNG THE RAINBOW: THE LIFE AND ART OF JOSEPH E. YOAKUM Derrel B. DePasse
36
WHERE'S THE COW? A NEW LOOK AT MOTIFS ON AMERICAN FRAKTUR Russell and Corinne Earnest
ARTISTS' ARTISTS: THE INSTRUCTIVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELF-TAUGHT AND ACADEMICALLY TRAINED ARTISTS Jenifer P. Borum
Folk Art is published four times a year by the Museum of American Folk Art, 555 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019-2925, Tel. 212/977-7170, Fax 212/977-8134. Prior to Fall 1992, Volume 17, Number 3, Folk Art was published as The Clarion. Annual subscription rate for members is included in membership dues. Copies are mailed to all members. Single copy $6.00. Published and copyright 2000 by the Museum of American Folk Art, 555 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019-2925. The cover and contents of Folk Art are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any manner without written consent. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the Museum of American Folk Art. Unsolicited manuscripts or photographs should be accompanied by return postage. Folk Art assumes no responsibility for the loss or damage of such materials. Change of address: Please send both old and new addresses and allow five weeks for change. Advertising: Folk Art endeavors to accept advertisements only from advertisers whose reputation is recognized in the trade, but despite the care with which the advertising department screens photographs and texts submitted by its advertisers, it cannot guarantee the unquestionable authenticity of objects or quality of services advertised in its pages or offered for sale by its advertisers, nor can it accept responsibility for misunderstandings that may arise from the purchase or sale of objects or services advertised in its pages. The Museum is dedicated to the exhibition and interpretation of folk art and it is a violation of its principles to be involved in or to appear to be involved in the sale of works of art. For this reason, the Museum will not knowingly accept advertisements for Folk Art that illustrate or describe objects that have been exhibited at the Museum within one year of placing an advertisement.
DEP
AR
T
MEN
44
54
TS
EDITOR'S COLUMN
6
DIRECTOR'S LETTER
14
NEW BUILDING UPDATE
18
JEAN LIPMAN FELLOWS
20
MINIATURES
22
AUCTION BENEFIT RECAP
27
ART BRUT COLLECTION EXHIBITION
31
DARGER STUDY CENTER
34
EXPLORERS SOUTHERN TOUR
64
UNCOMMON ARTISTS IX SYMPOSIUM
68
OUTSIDER ART FAIR BENEFIT PREVIEW
69
MUSEUM REPRODUCTIONS PROGRAM
79
BOOKS OF INTEREST
81
TRUSTEES/DONORS
82
MUSEUM NEWS
90
OBITUARIES
95
INDEX TO ADVERTISERS
96
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 5
EDITOR'S
COLUMN
ROSEMARY GABRIEL
S we race toward the true millennium-2001,I have to stop and take note that the next time we bring out the winter issue, it will be from our new building on West 53rd Street. And so the real countdown begins. Many initiatives have been underway to realize this dream, and we'd like to share some of them with you: For a look at our building progress, see pages 18 and 19. See page 27 for a report on a fantastic auction that, thanks to Virginia Cave,is keeping us on target. Page 20 highlights the Museum's Jean Lipman Fellows' generous contribution, which will help cover the cost of publishing a catalog of the permanent collection to accompany the inaugural season. Also, through a stunning combination of gift and purchase, the Museum,under the aegis of The Contemporary Center, has established The Henry Darger Study Center, which will open in the new building; see pages 34 and 35 for details. In the midst of the hubbub and excitement of the last few months, there have also been sad times for our Museum family. The shocking deaths of Trustee Julie Palley, her husband, Sandy, and friend Joy Kanter has left us a bit battered. Director Gerard WertIcin writes eloquently about them in his Director's Letter, starting on page 14. We are also saddened by the loss of collector and author Dena DePasse. Our lead story, "Cultural Imprints on the Landscape," starting on page 36,is excerpted from her book Traveling the Rainbow: The Life and Art ofJoseph E. Yoakum, which was completed just before her death. The feature is accompanied by an obituary by Lee Kogan, as well as information on this book and two exhibitions dedicated MT. MAGAZINE POINT IN STATE NEAR TOWN OF to DePasse. HAVANA ARKANSAS / Joseph Yoakum /Chicago The need for creating dedications and 1967 / ballpoint pen, pencil, colored pencil on paper certificates that mark both sad and happy 18 12" / Museum of American Folk Art, BlanchardHill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. events are at the core of human nature. Blanchard Jr., 1998.10.66 American fraktur—a very specific kind of certificate—have been marking special events for generations of German and Swiss Americans. See "Where's the Cow? A New Look at Motifs on American Fraktur," by Russell and Corinne Earnest, beginning on page 44. The same kind of passion that has led the Earnests to dedicate themselves to the study of fraktur—they have been at it for thirty years—has caused Jenifer P. Borum to commit herself to the study of contemporary art with a specialty in the area of the self-taught. Her provocative essay presents three instances of the "instructive relationship between self-taught and academically trained artists." For a very enjoyable read and food for thought, see "Artists' Artists," starting on page 54. Jenifer Borum is also one of the featured speakers at the Museum's upcoming Uncommon Artists IX,our annual symposium held in conjunction with the Outsider Art Fair. For information about the Fair and the Museum's programming, see pages 67,68, and 69. I hope to see you there. Until then, we wish you Happy Holidays and a healthy New Year.
A
c2A7 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
FOLK ART Rosemary Gabriel Editor and Publisher Jeffrey Kibler, The Magazine Group, Inc. Design Tanya Heinrich Associate Editor Sarah J. Munt Production Editor Benjamin J. Boyington Copy Editor John Hood Advertising Sales Mel Novatt Advertising Sales Patrick H. Callcins Advertising Graphics Craftsmen Litho Printers MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART Administration Gerard C. Wertkin Director Riccardo Salmona Deputy Director Stephen N. Roache ChiefFinancial Officer Susan Conlon Assistant to the Director Irene Kreny Accountant Daniel Rodriguez Mailroom Beverly McCarthy Mail Order/Reception Collections & Exhibitions Stacy C. Hollander Senior Curator and Director ofExhibitions Brooke Davis Anderson Director and Curator of The Contemporary Center J. Scott Ogden Virginia Cave Intern Ann-Marie Reilly Registrar Judith Gluck Steinberg Assistant Registrar/ Coordinator ofTraveling Exhibitions Sandra Wong Assistant Registrar Dale Gregory Gallery Manager Sara Kay Assistant Gallery Manager Gina Bianco Consulting Conservator Elizabeth V. Warren Consulting Curator Howard Lanser Consulting Exhibition Designer Kenneth R. Bing Security Deparhnents Cheryl Aldridge Director ofDevelopment Beth Bergin Membership Director Marie S. DiManno Director ofMuseum Shops Janey Fire Director ofPhotographic Services Susan Flamm Public Relations Director Alice J. Hoffman Director ofLicensing Diana Schlesinger Director ofEducation Katie Hush Special Events Coordinator Jane A. McIntosh Capital Campaign Coordinator Suzannah Schatt Membership Associate Danelsi De La Cruz Membership Assistant Wendy Barreto Membership Clerk Edith C. Wise Consulting Librarian Eugene P. Sheehy Volunteer Librarian Rita Keckeissen Volunteer Librarian Katya Ullmann Library Assistant Programs Lee Kogan Director, Folk Art Institute/Curator ofSpecial Projects for The Contemporary Center Barbara W.Cate Educational Consultant Dr. Marilynn Karp Director, New York University Master's and Ph.D. Program in Folk Art Studies Dr. Judith Reiter Weissman Coordinator, New York University Program Museum Shop Staff Managers: Dorothy Gargiulo, Caroline Hohenrath, Rita Pollitt, Suzanne Sypulski, Marion Whitley; Security: Bienvenido Medina; Volunteers: Marie Anderson, Olive Bates, Angela Clair, Sally Frank, Millie Gladstone, Nancy Mayer,Judy Rich, Frances Rojack, Phyllis Selnick, Lola Silvergleid, Maxine Spiegel Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shop Two Lincoln Square(Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets) New York, NY 10023-6214 212/496-2966 Administrative OfRces Museum of American Folk Art 555 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019-2925 212/977-7170,Fax 212/977-8134, http://www.folkartmuseum.org
Index horse weathervane, c. 1855
ad design/production studio58@tradenetnet
J. Howard & Co., W. Bridgewater, Mass. Length 18 inches.
ANTIQUES, INC_
Patrick Bell / Edwin Hild P.O. Box 718, New Hope, PA 18938 By Appointment 215-862-5055 E-mail: oldehope@aol.com
TRACY GOODNOW ART & ANTIQUES
4-44444-
tftttt 576 SHEFFIELD PLAIN (ROUTE 7) PO Box 1340 SHEFFIELD MA 01257 / TEL 413.229.6045 African-American Quilt, Southern States, ca. 1910, stitched cotton fabrics with muslin backing, 74.5"h x 76.5"w
Horse, made from matchsticks by Georgia prisoner, c. 1925,49" h. x 56" 1. x 9 1/2" d.
Winter Antiquities Show December 28-29, 2000 Preview December 27 Sweeney Center, Santa Fe, NM
Outsider Art Fair [self-taught, visionary, outsider, intuitive, art brut, folk] January 25-28, 2001 Preview January 25 The Puck Building, New York NY
Bonnie Grossman, Director 2661 Cedar Street, Berkeley, CA 94708 • Tel 510/845-4949 • Fax 510/845-6219 • Email amesgal@home.com
GALERIE ST. ETIENNE
24 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019, U.S.A.
(212) 245-6734
Fax:(212) 765-8493
E-mail: stetienne@mindspring.com
Representing Henry Darger John Kane Grandma Moses Michel Nedjar The Artists of Gugging
Also Showing Morris Hirshfield Lawrence Lebduska Israel Litwak Nikifor Horace Pippin and others
Please visit our booth at the Outsider Art Fair Puck Building, New York January 26-28 Henry Barger. Frustrate Enemy Second Time (detail). Watercolor on paper. 24" x 109'.
Ginger Young Gallery Southern Self-Taught Art By appointment 919.932.6003 Works by more than four dozen artists, including: Rudolph Bostic • Kacey Carneal
Raymond Coins • Howard Finster
Willie links • Leonard Jones M.C. Jones • Mary Klein • Joe Light Woodie Long Rowe
Jake McCord • R.A. Miller • Sarah Rakes
Buddy Snipes • Jimmy Lee Sudduth
John Henry Toney • Myrtice West
Nellie Mae
Mose Tolliver
Purvis Young • tramp art
For a free CD catalogue of 600 works, please contact: Ginger Young Gallery, 5802 Brisbane Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 Phone/Fax 919.932.6003 • E-mail: gingerart@aol.com Please visit www.GingerYoung.com to view over 300 works.
"Portrait—Blue Dress" by Sybil Gibson Acrylic on banner paper, 17" x 20", 1993.
10 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
Photo: Jean Vong
KEITH GOODHART
Untitled, 2000, enamel, tin, wood,54" x 23" x 3"
CAVIN-MORRIS GALLERY 560 Broadway, Suite 405B New York, NY 10012 tel: (212) 226-3768 fax:(212) 226-0155 e-mail: mysteries@aol.com www.artnet.com/cayinmorris.html
HILL GALLERY
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Fraktur Masterworks: A Look Back We are always interested in buying frakturs and other Folk Art of this quality. Selling daily.
DAVID WHEATCROFT 220 East Main Street, Westborough, Massachusetts 01581 (508) 366-1723
DIRECTOR'S
LETTER
GERARD C. WERT1GN
hrough this quarterly letter to the readers of Folk Art, I have had the privilege of acting as a chronicler of significant events at the Museum of American Folk Art since 1991. More often than not, my remarks relate to the people of the Museum and to the gains and losses that characterize our life together as a Museum family. Although I previously have recorded sad as well as joyous news,the recent death of some dear friends is especially difficult for me to recount. On September 3, Trustee Julie Palley and her husband, Samuel ("Sandy"),of Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, died tragically when the private airplane Sandy was piloting broke up in midair. The Palleys were on their way home from a visit to Cape Cod with their close friend Joy Kanter of Rydal, Pennsylvania, a patron member of the Museum, who also lost her life in the accident. A Trustee since 1995, Julie Palley gave herself unstintingly to the Museum. As a member of the Executive Committee, she headed an initiative to increase the numbers and diversity of the Board of Trustees. She was also a member of the Collections and Education Committees and took an active role in the Museum's annual Benefit Preview of the Fall Antiques Show. Sandy was a wise counselor and an enthusiastic participant in the Museum's programs. Their passing deprives the Museum of two of its brightest spirits. Even months after this occurrence, the shocking sense of loss continues to be felt by all of us. On a personal note, I will miss Julie's staunch, encouraging support of the Museum's staff. She was a true friend and never let me down, however often I called upon her. A grateful Museum family will remember Julie and Sandy with affection and respect. On behalf of the Trustees and staff, I extend my heartfelt condolences to the Palleys' daughters, Margot, Kyra, and Alix, and to Joy Kanter's husband, Richard, and his family. At the suggestion of Trustee Kristina Johnson and other friends, the Museum has established the Julie and Sandy Palley Fund for Staff Advancement. This will enable members of the Museum's staff to attend important professional gatherings, meetings, seminars, and classes. In addition to a leadership pledge from Kristina, generous contributions have been received from David Davies and Jack Weeden,Joan and Victor Johnson, Sean and Shelley Kardon, Laura and Richard Parsons, J. Randall Plummer, Riccardo Salmona, and Robert Schwarz. Friends and associates of the Palleys wishing to participate in the Fund may forward contributions marked for the Julie and Sandy Palley Fund to the Museum of American Folk Art, do Cheryl Aldridge, 555 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019.
T
14 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
As I noted above, one of Julie's abiding concerns was the growth and development of the Board of Trustees. It was the Palleys, for example, who introduced Trustee Thaddeus(Ted) Woods of Fireman's Fund Insurance Company in Bethlehem,Pennsylvania, to the Museum. The Board has benefited greatly from the impressive skills and varied experiences of its members,especially as augmented over the last two or three years. Today the Board more fully represents the Museum's national constituency than ever before. At the meeting of the Board on September 13, at which a resolution in memory of the Palleys was adopted, two new Trustees, David Krashes and Nathaniel J. Sutton, were elected. David ICrashes, a resident of central Massachusetts, is well-known to readers of Folk Art through his published essays on American folk painting. A metallurgist by profession and the holder of a Ph.D. from Rensseleer Polytechnic Institute, David was the founder and president of MMR Group, Inc., one of the leading independent testing laboratories in the country. Active in professional and community affairs, he has served as President of the American Society for Metals and the Boys' and Girls' Club
of Worcester. He has also taught at the college level. David and his wife, Barbara, have been collectors of American folk art and furniture for many years. Even before joining the Board, David actively participated in the Museum as a Jean Lipman Fellow, a generous donor to the permanent collection, and a trusted advisor. Last year, David and Barbara kindly hosted a gathering in their home for the benefit of the Museum. Nathaniel J. Sutton, a principal in the New York office of Heidrick & Struggles, is Chairman of the Harlem Historical Society and a member of the boards of Manhattan Community College and the National Association of Workforce Boards, among other organizations. For many years, he was vice president and director of corporate communications for Citigroup, where he was credited with developing and managing the company's highly successful communications initiatives. Nat also has served as chairman and CEO of the Private Industry Council of New York City, a voluntary group that brings together the private sector and government to improve the quality of New York's workforce and create employment opportunities for its citizens. It is my pleasure to welcome these new Trustees to the Board and to express my gratitude to them for their encouraging belief in the mission of the Museum and their willingness to help us achieve our institutional goals. On the staff side, there has also been an important addition. I am pleased that Diana Schlesinger, formerly a member of the education department at The Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York, has accepted the position of director of education. The field of American folk art lends itself to remarkable opportunities in education, both in and out of the classroom. As a result, a rich variety of programs has been organized by the Museum through the years, directed both to adults and children. With her impressive credentials and experience in Museum education, Diana promises not only to maintain the quality of the Museum's ongoing programs but also to develop new and exciting directions. The Eva and Morris Feld Gallery took on an exciting direction last fall with the innovative exhibition design for "Millennial Dreams: Vision and Prophecy in American Folk Art." I am proud to report that the Industrial Designers Society of America awarded its prestigious IDEA (Industrial Design Excellence Award)to the Museum for the show's handsome installation, thanks to the team effort of Ralph Appelbaum Associates and the Museum staff. The catalog that was published to accompany "Millennial Dreams" received an award from the Museum Publications Design Competition of the American Association of Museums. My hat goes off to Tanya Heinrich, associate editor of Folk Art and the catalog's editor and designer,for this recognition of her sensitivity to the themes of the exhibition and the excellence of her design. As satisfying as it is to be acknowledged for ajob well done, our aim is always to look forward. Progress on the Museum's new building continues unabated, and this provides a source of great pride and encouragement for all of us. The effect has been nothing short of exhilarating. If you are not yet a member of the Museum,this would be an especially opportune time to join. You will not want to miss the excitement of a banner year—the Museum's fortieth!*
JACKIE RADWIN American painted furniture, quilts and folk art
BLACK HAWK MOLDED COPPER WEATHERVANE Outstanding form and surface. Late 19th century.
RARE AND WONDERFUL NEW ENGLAND APPLIQUED TABLE RUG Circa 1850
5405 Broadway Texas 78209 Antonio, San (210) 824-7711
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 15
JUNE LAMBERT, tic
Still life in oil on hardwood veneer on poplar panel, signed GAB '89. 14" x 14" c. 1849-50
P.O. Box 23 • Alexandria, Virginia 22313 • (703) 329-8612
ALLAN KATZ Americana
Wonderful Paint Decorated Gameboard Ca, 1880. 22" x 171/2" Allan & Penny Katz • By Appointment 25 Old Still Road • Woodbridge, CT 06525 • (203) 393-9356
16 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
c. 2000 Principal Auctioneer: Christopher Bu
CHRISTIE'S
A cast zinc and copper prancing horse weathervane J. Howard and Company, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, late 19th century 47 in. high, 30 in. wide, 20 in. deep
American Folk Art from the Collection of Kendra and Allan Daniel Auction
Inquiries
January 19-20
212 636 2230
Viewing
Catalogues
January 13-18
800 395 6300
20 Rockefeller Center New York, New York 10020
www.christies.com
ANNOUNCEMENT
11111111111111.11111 111111 O111111111111111111111 MINIS 11 -MS
U'
haw
Consulting Engineer Neil Sicilian°
nFriday, September 15, the Museum's new building "topped off' when the ceiling for the top floor was completed. The traditional flag was erected on the roof, and a very grateful Museum gave a "topping off" lunch for the Pavarini construction workers and crew—complete with a cake decorated with an image of Flag Gate (the very first object to enter the Museum's collection). Work continues on schedule, and the construction is expected to be "Cs complete by late =‘, spring of 2001. The opening is planned for the fall of next year. c.)
Deputy Director Riccardo Sa!Tuna Architect Tod Williams Chairman of the Board Ralph D. Esmerian
pAvo"
ANNOUNCEMENT
Lipman Fellows Sponsor Permanent Collection Catalog
2000 Jean Lipman Fellows (members listed on page 86) ,
he fourth annual meeting of The Jean Lipman Fellows, held on Wednesday, Oct. 11, was a tremendous success. This year's Jean Lipman Fellows contributed more than $50,000 towards the publishing of the Museum's new catalog of the permanent collection. The 312-page book,featuring highlights from the Museum's collection and including the last three purchases by The Lipman Fellows, will be available in time for the opening of the new Museum on West 53rd Street next fall. The evening, hosted and underwritten by Sotheby's,featured slide presentations by Trustees Joan Johnson and Selig Sacks of important promised and outright gifts to the collection. After an introduction and thanks from Director Gerard C. Wertldn, the
T
Fellows were invited by Sotheby's senior vice president and folk art specialist, Nancy Druckman,to a special sneak preview of highlights from Sotheby's January Americana sale. Many animated conversations about the opening of the inaugural exhibition in the Museum's new space took place over hors d'oeuvres and cocktails. A number of other events,including special events at galleries and visits to private collections, will be held exclusively for The Lipman Fellows over the next year. The Museum wishes to thank The Jean Lipman Fellows of 2000 for their generous support and Sotheby's—and Nancy Druckman in particular—for hosting this festive and important event.
4
Joan Johnson
Ray Simon, Rachel & Donald Strauber, and Linda Simon
Selo;saci,s
2
Joan Johnson and William W. Stahl Jr., Vice Chairman, Sotheby's
20 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
Keith Morgan
JEFFREY TILLOU ANTIQUES 33 West Street Box 1609, Litchfield, Connecticut 06759 Tel: (860) 567-9693 Fax:(860) 567-2781
Oil on canvas. The Ship "Tasmania." Signed on verso, "By Mooney, 1875." Coastal New England. Untouched original condition. 601/2 x 373/4" with frame.
Congratulations to the Museum ofAmerican FoCkArt and to the membersfor theirgenerous support onall their recent accomplishments.
MINIATURES
MANHATTAN ART & ANTIQUES CENTER The Nation's Largest and Finest Antiques Center. Over 100 galleries offering Period Furniture, Jewelry, Paintings, Silver, Americana, Orientalia, Africana and other Objets d'Art. 1050 SECOND AVENUE(AT 55TH ST.) NEW YORK, N.Y. 10022 PRESENTS
51 ITYYTTY1111111TIT ITTITYYTITTITITY4 14- 444At44- 44- 441- -• .f
I MARINER'S COMPASS pieced quilt, c. 1860, to point you towards exciting collecting in the 21st century.
LAURA FISHER ANTIQUE AMERICANA
QUILTS&
New York City's largest, most exciting selection of Antique Quilts, Hooked Rugs, Coverlets, Paisley Shawls, Beacon Blankets, Vintage Accessories and American Folk Art. Laura Fisher: Tel: 212-838-2596 Monday-Saturday 11AM-6PM Gallery #84 The Manhattan Art&Antiquea Center:
Tel: 212-355-4400 • Fax: 212-355-4403 www.the-maac.com • Email: infoOthe-maac.com Open Daily 10:30-6, Sun. 12-6 Convenient Parking • Open to the Public
22 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
COMPILED BY SARAH J. MUNT
Textiles Roundup Massachusetts The Museum of Our National Heritage (781/8616559), Lexington, presents "Stitched Symbols: Quilts from the Museum of Our National Heritage," a selection of 18 quilts stitched with symbols ranging from fraternal emblems to purely decorative motifs, through Jan. 14, 2001. Quilts allowed individual women to proclaim their affiliations, affections, or personal values. These textiles were often sewn by women in groups, but anyone—regardless of age and gender—could contribute an item or motif. Nebraska "African American Quilts from the Robert & Helen Cargo Collection," a collection of strip quilts, alphabet quilts, crazy quilts, and flag quilts created by 20th-century African American women in Alabama is on view at the International Quilt Study Center, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln (402/472-6549),from Jan. 12 to April 1,2001. New Mexico The Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe (505/476-5105), presents "To Honor and Comfort: Native Quilting Traditions," organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, through Dec. 31. Curators Marsha MacDowell and C. Kurt Dewhurst have selected 45 quilts made by Native Americans in North America and Hawaii. The quilting tradition was appropriated by Native Americans from European settlers and has since become an important aspect of Native life, with quilts figuring prominently in rites such as
baby-naming ceremonies or commemorations of individual achievements. New York "Celebrate Life" is on view at The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, New York, through Dec. 31. Organized by Marilyn Bottjer and Kei Kobayashi, rug hookers from the U.S. and Japan, respectively, this is the first contemporary rughooking exhibition in the metropolitan area. After its installation at The Metropolitan, the exhibit will travel to Tokyo in February and return to the United States in the summer of 2001. Virginia The Valentine Museum, Richmond (804/649-0711), presents "Better Choose Me: Collecting and Creating with Tobacco Fabric Novelties, 1780-1920" through April 29, 2001. Cigar ribbons, cigarette silks, and tobacco flannels were often issued with commercial tobacco products to garner support for smoking from women. Women were encouraged by tobacco manufacturers to collect and use these textiles to create
PARLOR THROW Artist unknown Purchased in Colorado 46 - 65" Cotton flannel novelties, cotton sateen sashing, cotton flannel backing, hand-tied Collection of the Kauffman Museum
Robert Cargo
FOLK ART GALLERY Contemporary Folk Art • Haitian Spirit Flags Southern, Folk, and African-American Quilts
Jimmie Lee Sudduth (1910 - ) Top: White Church. House paint and earth pigments on plywood panel. 24 x 25 inches. 1986. Left: Green Cabin. House paint and earth pigments on plywood panel. 23.5 x 27. 1986. Right: Green Cabin. House paint and earth pigments on plywood panel. 23 x 26.5. 1987. Bottom: White Building. House paint, caulking compound, and earth pigments on plywood panel. 24.5 x 30. 1987. Dimensions are for framed sizes. 2314 Sixth Street, Downtown, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401 Home Phone 205 758-8884 • Gallery Phone 205 758-3111 Email: cargofolkart@aol.com • Website: www.cargofolkart.com Open Weekends only and by appointment • Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 2 to 5 p.m.
MINIATURES
Sybil Gibson 1908-1995
table covers, quilts, and even clothes. This exhibition explores this fashion trend that lasted into the early 20th century. "Curtains, Cases and Covers: Textiles for the American Home, 1700-1845," an exhibition of upholstery textiles from the 18th and 19th centuries, is on view at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum of American Folk Art, Colonial Williamsburg
(757/220-7724), through Sept. 2, 2002. Upholstery, which then referred to any textile used in the interior of a house, was used not only to decorate—in 18thcentury America, textiles imported from England were used to make curtains, bed hangings, and chair coverings—but to signify the homeowner's wealth and status.
Shakers and Modern Art The Seattle Art Museum (206/654-3158) presents "Creating Perfection: Shaker Objects and Their Affinities" through April 29, 2001. The exhibition illustrates where the Shakers obtained their artistic inspiration and considers the similarities between the spare Shaker aesthetic and Minimalism in the 20th century. Organized by the Seattle Art Museum in collaboration with The Shaker Museum and Library, more than 200 Shaker objects are on display, including
Four Fares 27" x 42"
American Pie Contemporary Folk Artfront the Southeast Elaine Johansen 113 Dock Street • Wilmington, NC 28401 (910)251-2131•www.americanpieart.com Georgia Blizzard Richard Burnside Jessie & Ron Cooper Calvin Cooper Patrick Davis "The Glassman" Rev. Herman Hayes S.L. Jones
24 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
Woodie Long Dwight Mackintosh R.A. Miller Connie Roberts Bernice Sims Q.J. Stephenson Jim Sudduth Mose Tolliver
textiles, furniture works on paper, and historical photographs. Forty artworks by modern artists like Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Ellsworth Kelly are also included. Guest curator is John T. Kirk. SET OF SIX CHAIRS Artist unknown New Hampshire 1830-1850 Maple, stained red, and rush seat; three retain a printed label reading "laundry" 40/ 1 2 • 20/ 1 4 x 13/ 1 2" The Shaker Museum and Library, Old Chatham, N.Y.
AARON BIRNBAUM works by:
AIKEN BIRNBAUM BRICE BUTLER COINS DAWSON DOYLE FINSTER GODIE HAMILTON HAWKINS S.L. JONES LERMAN REED MURRAY PIERCE TRAVERS WARFEL 1 :.r..t113,11(.1.,
K.S. Art
AARON BIRNBAUM (1895-1998) Cafe Scene 1996, acrylic on wood,18 X 24 inches
73 LEONARD STREET NY NY 10013 212 219 9918
Kerry Schuss
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C 1E MI ENT
Gilley's Gallery takes pleasure in announcing the publication of:
PAINTING BY HEART The Life and Art of Clementine Hunter, Louisiana Folk Artist by Shelby R. Gilley
You may order directly from us via phone, mail or email. Also please visit our booth at the
Outsider Art Fair January 25-28, 2001 Puck Building • SOHO • New York City
BY HEART PAINTING The Life and Art of Clementine Hunter, Louisiana Folk Artist by Shelby R. Gilley
$513 •
Hardcover • 180 Pages • 120 Color Plates • 25 Black & White Vintage Photographs
GALLMY
CILLEKS A
N
D
F
R
A
MING
8750 Florida Boulevard, Baton Rouge, LA 70815 225.922.9225 • www.eatel net/—outsider
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 25
NINAERicA k *FOLK* .\ IIT
cirANTIQUES
MaTEEEMEED,
Hand carved and polychromed pipe bowl with applied glass eyes in the form of Uncle Sam, American, 19th century. 5.25 inches high.
Charlton Bradsher • 64 Bill more Avenue • Asheville North Carolina 28801 • Tel. & Fax (828
Our Washington Gallery Presents...
Masters in Folk Art Lee Godie * Sam Doyle * Inez Walker * Brother Ben Perkins * James Harold Jennings * Bessie Harvey * Wesley Stewart * Howard Fi-nster * Royal Robertson * Clementine Hunter & Others January through February 2001 "Sailing Ship", Media: Toothpicks, One of85Pieces in Our Extensive Collection by "The Toothpick King", Wesley Stewart
Visit Our Gallery on Hilton Head Island, S.C. or Our On-Line Gallery With Thousands of Paintings:
AMERICA*01I,YES!
www.americaohyes.com 17Pope Ave. Executive Park #4* Hilton Head Island, SC * (843) 785-2649
26
['TER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
2020 Street, NW Washington, DC 20009 202-483-9644
ANNOUNCEMENT
MINI A TURES
Traditional Folk Art Visits Ohio "A Bountiful Plenty from the Shelburne Museum: Folk Art Traditions in America" continues its national tour at the Columbus Museum of Art (614/221-6801)through Feb. 7, 2001. This exhibit considers traditional folk art from the 18th to the 19th century within its original context and explores its relationship to contemporary American art.
Among the nearly 90 artworks are trade signs, cigar store figures, weathervanes, carousel figures, decoys, paintings, and sculpture. Featured artists include Edward Hicks, Erastus Salisbury Field, William Matthew Prior, and Grandma Moses.
Yes., Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus She Is You
Northeast Auctions' Ronald Bourgeautt
TIGER Daniel Muller, Gustav A. Dentzel Carousel Company Philadelphia Before 1903 Carved, polychromed wood with glass, leather, and iron attachments 50 • 80 Electra Havemeyer Webb Collection
A Treasures of the Soul
REACHING UP TO THE HEAVENS Artist unknown Atlanta Mid-20th century Wood 72 488 American Primitive Gallery
'though traditionally thought of as the height of the summer doldrums, this past August was anything but for the Museum of American Folk Art's Capital Campaign. On Saturday, Aug. 5,in Manchester, N.H., Virginia G. Cave, an enthusiastic supporter of the Capital Campaign and Chair of the effort to raise funds from the folk art "trade community" to endow the new Museum's library, auctioned off her collection of Americana and folk art. She donated 10 percent of the proceeds from the sale of these treasured items, lovingly gathered together over the last twenty years, to the Museum's Trade Community Campaign. The sale was a huge success, and it also kicked off the Manchester Show Week. With Virginia's contribution and a five-figure gift from auctioneer Northeast Auc-
Nearly 250 artworks created by political refugees, the homeless, and others who face adversity are on display in "Treasures of the Soul: Who is Rich?" at the American Visionary Art Museum,Baltimore (410/2441900), through Sept. 2, 2001. Through the process of making art, these artists find strength and optimism. Among the 50 self-taught artists included in the exhibition are Judith Scott and Emery Blagdon.
tions/Ronald Bourgeault, the Museum realized more than $220,000 in one day. The sale, which attracted a standing-room-only crowd from around the country and comprised more than 400 lots, began with a bang—a rare painted and decorated Parcheesi game board with drawer sold for $32,000. Other highlights included a painted and decorated architectural overmantel panel from Pennsylvania that sold for $230,000, a J.W. Fiske Goddess of Liberty weathervane that bfought $130,000, and the cover bat,-an exuberant and unusual Stars and Stripes—pattern hooked rug that sold for $40,000. Virginia and her Steering Committee of Dealers will hit full stride with the Trade Community Campaign this fall and winter. Thank you, Virginia! —Riccardo Salmona, Deputy Director
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 27
Joseph Yoakum
Mt. Elisabeth in Serpentine Mtn Range Near Town St. Quentine New Brunswick Colored Pencil, Ballpoint Pen on Paper 12 x 19 inches (unframed), 18 x 25 (w/frame) Chicago, Illinois, c. 1970
CARL HAMMER GALLERY 740 N Wells Street, Chicago, Illinois./ Ph: 312-266-8512 Fx: 312-266-8510 email: hammergall@aol.com Website: hammergallery.com
Henry Darger Congratulating the Museum of American Folk Art in its creation of The Henry Darger Study Center Opening in November 2001
11161;..
The Arcadeia, Watercolor and carbon transfer on paper, 32 x 132 inches, c. 1940-50(Double-sided)
Are you winged Blengins afraid ofStorms?...(Second Side)
CARL HAMMER GALLERY 740 N Wells Street, Chicago, Illinois./ Ph: 312-266-8512 Fx: 312-266-8510 Website: hammergallery.com email: hammergall@aol.com
In*
Rising Fawn Folk Art Featuring Works by:
avs• •I
•Jerry Brown • Marie Rogers • Max Romain • Charles Simmons • Purvis Young
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Jimmy Hedges Rising Fawn Folk Art P.O. Box 286 Lookout Mtn,TN 37350 706-398-1738 She Devil, 1999, Henry Ray Clark
The MENNELLO
Assisted by Sahara's son Michael, Twins Haydee and Sahara Scull create 3-D mixed media memories of Old Havana.
January 13 - Marc1-" The Mennello Museum of American Folk Art Orlando Florida 407-246-4278 www.mennellomuseum.com email-cityoforlandoart@mindspring.com Owned & operated by the City of Orlando
30 WINTER 2000/2()I FOLK ART
MUSEUM
of American Folk Art
AIECD
collection o° art brut
Opens January 20, 2001
CHRISTOPH COLUMBUS / Adolf Wolfli (1864-1930) / Switzerland / 1930 / pencil and color pencil on paper / 12 7, 8 Y." / ABCD Collection
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Arrlrican Folk A.4
Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets • New York City'212/595-9533
LINDSAY GALLERY
Contact: DUFF LINDSAY 1991 GUILFORD RD. COLUMBUS, OH 43221
614-486-1973
T.E. HAY "SINKING" 12" x 32" painted wood relief
lindsaygallery.homestead.com
Also: ELIJAH PIERCE WILLIAM HAWKINS POPEYE REED MARY T. SMITH LEVENT ISIK LEANNE PAELTZ
o :rt.., • ifa+ s ROSEHIPS GALLERY Barbara Brogdon -—
51 Sang Road Cleveland, GA 30528 (706) 865-6345 FAX (706) 219-3112 email: rosehips@hemc.net
visi+ our on-Une stathery
32 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
www.rosehipsar+.com
Marcia Weber / Art Objects Woodie Long: "Jumping on Grandma's Bed" acrylic on tin 26" x 34"
8 th Annual New York Show
Outsider / Contemporary Folk Art January 25 - February 4, 2001 Woodward Gallery 476 Broome Street, Fifth Floor • 11 am - 6 pm every day (near corner of Greene & Broome) 212 966 3619 during show Artists' Reception Saturday, January 27, 7 - 10 pm
www.marciaweberartobjects.com To contact after February 4 Marcia Weber / Art Objects, Inc.• 1050 Woodley Road • Montgomery, Alabama 36106 weberart@mindspring.com • 334 262 5349 • Fax: 334 567 0060
ANNOUNCEMENT
Henry Da
n October, the Museum of American Folk Art announced a major acquisition of the work of the 20th-century master Henry Darger. Working closely with Kiyoko Lerner of Chicago, whose late husband, Nathan Lerner, was the first to recognize the significance of Darger's work in the 1970s,
34 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
and through a combination of gift and purchase,the Museum has recently acquired a substantial collection of Darger paintings, books, and archival materials. Included in this extraordinary acquisition are 22 watercolors and the complete manuscripts of Darger's three books, as well as hundreds of sketches, tracings,
and maps,and a great deal of source material. Darger's 15,000-page book, The Story ofthe Vivian Girls, in what is known as the Realms of the Unreal, ofthe GlandecoAngelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, and accompanying watercolors—many doublesided and nine feet long-
rger
describe the epic fantasy that dominated Darger's solitary life for nearly 60 years. Darger's five-book Weather Journal covers 10 years of daily meteorological events, and his eight-volume autobiography provides us with a backdrop for understanding the depths of Darger's torturous, yet beautiful fantasy life.
cL Center
These magnificent new additions, along with the four important Darger paintings already in the Museum's permanent collection, establishes the Museum of American Folk Art as the single largest public repository of the works of Henry Darger in America. The Museum has established The Henry Darger
UNTITLED One side of a double-sided work Henry Darger Chicago n.d. Watercolor, pencil, and carbon tracing on pieced paper 19 . 70" Museum of American Folk Art purchase
Study Center—under the aegis of The Contemporary Center and its director, Brooke Davis Anderson—to exhibit, preserve, collect, and study the work of this artist, and to continue exploring the details of his life. In order to present the work to a larger audience, The Henry Darger Study Center will present regular exhibitions
and educational programs and access to support materials will be available to scholars and students. The Darger collection will be exhibited for the first time as part of the inaugural season in the Museum's new building on West 53rd Street.
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 35
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Excerpts from Traveling the Rainbow: The Life and Art of Joseph E. Yoakum
by Derrel B. DePasse, published by the Museum of American Folk Art and University Press of Mississippi Joseph Elmer Yoakum (1890-1972) was one of the most original interpreters of landscape in the twentieth century. Although entirely self-taught, Yoakum developed a unique style that has been compared to that of some of the greatest artists who worked outside the mainstream art movements of their day. If Yoakum perhaps exaggerated certain details about his past to captivate his admirers in the mainstream art community, the life he actually lived was truly extraordinary.
36 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
VIEW OF BLUE MOUNDS KANSAS c. 1964 Ballpoint pen, graphite pencil, and watercolor on paper 9 12" Private collection Photo courtesy of Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago and New York Plate 30 from Traveling the Rainbow: The Life and Art of Joseph E. Yoakum
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His formative years spanned the golden epochs of the American railroad and the American circus, and he was an eyewitness to both. He came of age at the dawn of the twentieth century, at a time when tourism was in its infancy and few Americans ventured far beyond the towns they were born in. With almost no formal education and only meager financial resources, Yoakum successfully traveled through North America and other parts of the world. This feat was particularly remarkable for a person of color in an era when prejudice created barriers, and even hazards, to movement. As he told his fellow artist, Christina Ramberg, "Girl, there's nothing I haven't suffered to see things first hand." In his old age, without any formal art training, Yoakum created exquisite landscapes that were "memories he had of traveling in his younger days."2 The quality of his prodigious output—about two thousand drawings—is uniformly high. Jane Allen and Derek Guthrie, the founders and publishers of the New Art Frominer, wrote: "The best Yoalcums convey a passion and linear urgency which has not been seen in landscape painting since van Gogh."' Joseph Yoakum's life began in southwestern Missouri at the end of the nineteenth century. His birth date is listed as February 20, 1890, on his Social Security record, in his army records, and on his son Peter's birth certificate. His father, John Yokum (an earlier spelling of the family name) was born in the Cherokee nation in 1850. Frances "Fannie" Wadlow, Joseph Yoakum's mother, was of French-American, Cherokee, and African American descent.4 She was born a slave in 1857 on a farm in Greene County Missouri.5 Yoakum's search for his Native American roots was a lifelong preoccupation. As a young man in 1916, after his father's death, he wrote to his Aunt Susan, "I want you to answer this letter at once and tell me how much Indian blood papa John Yolcum had in him."6 Yoakum's lifelong interest in Native American culture strongly influenced his art. His earliest exposure to this culture was during childhood, but it continued in adulthood through his train travels over North America. His most extensive journeys coincided with the height of railroad tourism, from the 1880s through the 1920s, when the transcontinental railroad fmally brought tourists directly to the doorsteps of the Native American cultures of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest.7 Even as an old man, after his traveling days were over, Yoakum continued to come into contact with Native American art and culture. His membership in the American Indian Center on Chicago's Near North Side provided access to large, annual powwows featuring tribal dances, as well as to arts and crafts fairs including demonstrations by tribal craftsmen. The most profound Native influence on Yoakum's American MT. TRINITY OF CLEAR art was the respect and reverence for WATER RANGE NEAR BOISE IDAHO the earth that was manifested in the 1968 artist's preoccupation with landBallpoint pen, pencil, colored pencil on paper scape. The Native American world12x 18" view—a power underlying tribal art Museum of American generally—extends moral considerFolk Art, Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of ations to the natural world. In Zuni M. Anne Hill and art, the decorative element of crooks Edward V. Blanchard Jr. joined together symbolizes clouds 1998.10.66
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 39
or prayers for rain.8 Yoakum frequently uses the Zuni cloud symbol to indicate waves. Similarly, the anthropomorphic figures that peer out from trees, rocks, and mountains in Yoakum's landscapes reflect the artist's familiarity with the Native American mythological concept that the natural world is the abode of spirits. Ancient tribal burial mounds vary in form, from cone- and serpent-shaped mounds to flat-topped pyramids. The historic conical Blue Mound near the Kansas-Missouri border is the subject of Yoakum's View of Blue Mounds Kansas. Executed in graphite pencil with touches of green and orange watercolor and black crayon on manila paper, the work has something of the quality of a nineteenth-century Plains Indian pictograph. In Pacific Northwest tribal art, the mythological thunderbird was frequently carved on the top of the wooden ceremonial staff carried by the chiefs orator. A frontal view of this bird is suggested in several Yoakum drawings. Yoakum shared the Navajo's twin passion for geography and traveling.9 In Navajo mythology, the "heroes and supernaturals restlessly undertake long journeys during which many place names are mentioned, even spots merely passed by, and stopping at a spring for a drink of water is an occasion for giving a place a name."° For example, fifty-three place names are mentioned in the Navajo Windway—a ceremonial song for curing the sick and celebrating mythical winds. Some, like Sheep Mountain in Colorado,
are linked to actual locations, while others, like Turquoise Mountain near the home of the mythological Twin Gods of War, are not. Yoakum appears to represent some of these Navajo landmarks, such as the large turquoise mountain that dominates his landscape Teppeniah Ridge in Yakama Valley near Wapata Washington. While Yoakum never discussed it, his African American cultural experience also helped to shape the body of his work. In the nineteenth-century black minstrel shows, the trickster role was performed by the "end men"—comics who always managed to get the better of the interlocutor, who was the only straight man in the show. To African American audiences, the end men's antics symbolized their own desires to poke fun of or get the better of those in white society who mistreated them or regarded them as inferior. It is not surprising that Yoakum's drawings about minstrelsy memorialize the end men. One of the artist's most beautiful portraits, This is of Chick Beaman 1st End man with Williams & walkers Minstrell Show in Years 1916 to 1930,is of a handsome mulatto man shown in profile with intense hazel eyes, black mustache, and pale pink lips. Yoakum also presents a pantheon of African American heroes—both fictional and real—in his portraits, and pays tribute to others in his landscapes. Among these are steel driver John Henry, boxers Jack Johnson and Joe Gans, cowboy Bill Pickett, and tennis champion Althea Gibson.
RAIN BOW BRIDGE IN BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK NEAR HENRIVILLE UTAH 1968 Ballpoint pen, chalk, and colored pencil on paper 13/ 1 4 - 19" Roger Brown Study Collection/School of the Art Institute of Chicago Plate 27 from Traveling the Rainbow: The Life and Art of Joseph E. Yoakum
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40 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
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Traveling the Rainbow: The Life and Art ofJoseph E. Yoakum published by the Museum of American Folk Art and University Press of Mississippi, will be available in January 2001. The 224-page book features 50 full-color and 145 blackand-white illustrations, Traveling and may be the Rainbow purchased The Ilk and Art of loseph E. Yoakum from the Museum Shop in hardcover for $50 and in paperback ) for $28 (Museum members receive a 10 percent discount). To order, please write to the Museum of American Folk Art, 555 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019 or call Beverly McCarthy at 212/977-7170. PmemilwrmmICIONdho
errel B. DePasse, leader in the Silicon Valley technology community, patron of the arts, art collector, and author, died on July 8 of cancer. In 1999 DePasse left her position as vice president of worldwide government relations at Varian Associates in Palo Alto, Calif., to head up Blauvelt Group, her own consulting firm. She was a member of the 20th Century Art Council and the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum and trustee of the San Jose Cleveland Ballet. She also served on the board of trustees of the San Jose Museum of Art. Born in Bronxville, N.Y., on January 17, 1948, Derrel B. DePasse received a B.A.from the University of Texas at Austin in 1971 and an M.P.A.from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, in 1973. She also attended the Art Students League in New York and studied art and art history at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass. As one of the contributing writers for Self-Taught Artists of the Twentieth Century: An American Anthology (published by Chronicle Books in association with the Museum of American Folk Art, 1998), DePasse wrote
the entry on Joseph E. Yoakum. DePasse's extensive biographical and contextual research on Yoakum led her to write the first full-length book on this artist. Published by the Museum of American Folk Art and University Press of Mississippi, Traveling the Rainbow: The Life and Art of Joseph E. Yoakum will be released in January 2001. Despite the initial excitement around the discovery of Joseph Yoakum's art, relatively little was known about this part Native American, part African American artist. What emerges in Traveling the Rainbow befits an adventure novel and corrects major biographical errors published about him—especially about his travels. DePasse's research reveals that a good deal of Yoakum's stories about himself, which were thought to be invented, were actually true. Because of her diligence and dedication, Derrel DePasse has made an important contribution to the study of contemporary self-taught artists. She is survived by Jack R. Harris of Saratoga, Calif., and her mother, Josephine DePasse, and brother, John DePasse, both of Dallas. She is buried in Dallas. —Lee Kogan
An exhibition,"Drawing the Inner Terrain: Self-Taught Artists," dedicated to Derrel DePasse and featuring the work of Eddie Arning, S.L. Jones, J.B. Murry, Martin Ramirez, A.G. Rizzoli, Bill Traylor, and Joseph E. Yoakum,opened at the Palo Alto Art Center,Palo Alto, Calif. on September 21. It will be on view through January 7, 2001. Brooke Davis Anderson, director and curator of The Contemporary Center of the Museum of American Folk Art, will give a slide presentation,"Navigating Through the Field of'Outsider Art,— at the closing reception on Sunday, January 7,from 3:30 to 5:00 P.M. Also dedicated to Derrel DePasse is "Joseph E. Yoakum 1890-1972," an exhibition of works by Joseph E. Yoakum in private collections presented by the Fleisher/Oilman Gallery in Philadelphia from January 6 through February 3, 2001. For information and gallery hours, call the Fleisher/Oilman Gallery at 215/545-7562.
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 41
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In an interview with newspaper reporter Norman Mark, Yoakum confided that the "Bible is my biggest storybook." Indeed, the artist's landscapes of the Middle East mostly bear titles with ancient biblical names like Canaan, Palestine, Arabia, and Phoenicia. Some drawings even depict biblical sites, like the Wilderness of Sin and Mt. Horeb, whose locations have never been definitively established by archaeologists or biblical scholars. Significantly, Yoalctun's oeuvre, like African American spirituals, deals principally with two biblical heroes—Moses and Jesus. Yoakum pays tribute to Moses in a series of landscapes depicting key events in the prophet's life. In another series of landscapes, he traces the key events in the life of Jesus. These include his birth in Bethlehem, ministries in Nazareth and Jerusalem, his baptism in the Sea of Galilee, the Sermon on the Mount, the forty-day fast in the wilderness, the Crucifixion, and the Transfiguration. Music also played an integral part in daily life for young African Americans of Yoakum's generation. In the 1920s, the blues transformed African American secular music and ulti-
42 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
mately became a source of inspiration for Yoakum and many other black visual artists. In his portraits, Yoakum honors the so-called high priestesses of the blues—Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Ethel Waters, Sippie Wallace, and Lucille Hegamin. Jazz great Ella Fitzgerald is also featured in Yoakum's pantheon of hero-entertainers. American visionary painting is rooted in Romanticism, a leading intellectual movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Romanticism embraced an "artistic philosophy of escape, fantasy, reverie, and revolt."2 The Romantics believed that human beings' unhappiness with ordinary, everyday life could only be overcome through the "mysterious transforming powers of the artist's individual imagination."3 Because of their special gift, it was thought that artists need to live apart or remain isolated from mainstream society. Whether academically trained or self-taught, American visionary painters belong to this Romantic tradition. They, like Yoakum, have worked mostly in isolation and have not tried to emulate the work of other artists.
MT CAVALARY NEAR JERUSALAM AND BETHELAM PALESTINE SE ASIA 1968 Ballpoint pen and colored pencil on paper 12 x 19" Collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, bequest of Whitney Halstead, 1979.203 Plate 43 from Traveling the Rainbow: The Life and Art of Joseph E. Yoakum
Yoakum was an adventurer and a loner. He invented a rich vocabulary of form that was highly original, the product of a lifetime of acute observation. With his unique visual language and extraordinary powers as a colorist, Yoakum created an imaginary world that was inspired by memories of his traveling days. Infused with the humorous, the bizarre, and the exaggerated, his memory drawings reveal what Matisse called the "inherent truth" of the visible world. In this way, Yoakum's art transforms the world of the senses into pure poetry.* NOTES 1 Christina Ramberg, diary entry, 29 May 1969, in Whitney B. Halstead Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 2 Camilla Eichelberger, interview with author, May 4, 1994. 3 Jane Allen and Derek Guthrie,"Joseph Yoakum: Portrait of a Luckless Artist," Chicago Tribune Magazine, December 10, 1972, 32.
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4 Lora Rice Brewer,interview with author, May 10, 1994. 5 1870 Federal Census, Greene County, Missouri. 6 Joseph Yoakum,letter to his aunt Susan Yokum Rice, March 25, 1916, Brewer Family Archives. 7 Rick Dillingham with Melinda Elliott, Acoma and Laguna Pottery (Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press, 1992), 156. 8 Ruth L. Bunzel, The Pueblo Potter: Study of Creative Imagination in Primitive Art(New York: Dover Publications, 1928),96. 9 Hamilton A. Tyler,Pueblo Gods and Myths(Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 141. 10 Leland Wyman, The Windways ofthe Navajo (Colorado Springs, Colo.: Taylor Museum of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 1962), 78. 11 Norman Mark,"My drawings area spiritual unfoldment," Chicago Daily News-Panorama, November 11, 1967, 2. 12 Joanne Cubbs,"The Romantic Artist Outsider," in The Artist Outsider: Creativity and the Boundaries of Culture (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 77. 13 Ibid.
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THIS IS OF CHICK BEAMAN 1ST END MAN WITH WILLIAMS & WALKERS MINSTRELL SHOW IN YEARS 1916 TO 1930 1968 Ballpoint pen, graphite, and colored pencil on paper 3 4" 15/ 1 2 x 11/ Collection of Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson
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A New Look at Motifs on American Fraktur
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merican fraktur were generally made for rural families. Their texts— usually written in German—often tell stories of early American families of German or Swiss heritage. But the decoration found on fraktur does not necessarily illustrate the text. American fraktur are colorfully illuminated eighteenth- and nineteenth-century manuscripts.1 They are written in ink and decorated with watercolor in a wide variety of motifs that draw on experiences and memories of the Old World, coupled with realities and situations of the New. Much has been written about fraktur motifs, and many have advanced theories about a preponderance of religious themes. It is true that American fraktur decoration has religious overtones, but the motifs reflect a rich variety of sources, including American and European folklore, astrology, current events, geometric designs, pagan, biblical and patriotic symbols, and especially nature.
Detail of BIRTH AND BAPTISM CERTIFICATE FOR LUDWIG WIRTH
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 41
What is most surprising is the absence of motifs you would expect to find on fraktur. Most American fraktur are personal family documents from southeastern Pennsylvania. The most common type is the Geburts und Taufschein (birth and baptism certificate), but family registers, Bible records, bookplates, rewards of merit, beautiful writing samples, love letters, religious texts, house blessings, marriage, birth, and death records, and other personal documents are also known. Since the vast majority of these families were fanning families, one might think that farming motifs would be prevalent. But where is the cow on American fraktur? Interestingly enough, lions, alligators, deer, unicorns, and griffins are more common than cows. Exotic birds of unknown species appear far more often than roosters. Soldiers with long rifles are depicted with greater frequency than are farmers with pitchforks. Farmhouses and barns
But the answer may also lie in understanding the market for American fraktur.2 Not all fraktur was commissioned, but much of it was. And following the American Revolution, demand for the increasingly popular Taufschein (plural, Taufscheine) was tremendous. Understanding the commercial aspects of fraktur can bring greater understanding of fraktur decoration. If the family was the target market, surely the mother of the family played an important role in selecting fraktur for her family. Perhaps that is why we see more hearts, birds, flowers, and angels than other motifs. To the mother, the heart represented affection. Birds and flowers stood for the harmony of family life and the changes of the seasons so crucial to maintaining the family farm. And during a period of high infant mortality, the nineteenth-century mother took comfort in guardian angels that flanked the main text announcing the birth of her baby.
BIRTH AND BAPTISM CERTIFICATE FOR LUDWIG WIRTH (BORN 1784) Decorated and infilled by Karl Munch (1769-1833) Pennsylvania 1802 Pen and ink and watercolor on paper 123/4 153/4" Private collection
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In this fraktur, Munch recorded the 1784 birth of Ludwig Wirth in Tulpehocken Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. At a later date, fraktur artist Conrad Trevits (1751-1830) wrote that Ludwig married Sussana Schmitt. It is extremely rare for buildings depicted on fraktur to relate to the family for whom the fraktur was made. On the few occasions when buildings are shown on fraktur, they either were copied from prints or were the product of the artist's imagination. In this case, however, the fraktur has remained in the original family, and tradition says the house depicted by Munch was the actual Wirth homestead. Research is undenvay to determine if the house still stands.
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are seldom depicted. Nor are trade symbols, the plow, or the spinning wheel. Motifs borrowed from textiles are uncommon as well. Moreover, fraktur artists rarely attempted to draw the farm family. They certainly were capable of such, for they often drew Adam and Eve, angels, and mermaids. If an artist could draw Adam and Eve, he could certainly draw a mother and father. And if he could draw an alligator, he could draw a cow. So why didn't he? In part, this may have been because everyday farm life was viewed as too mundane a subject. Families who commissioned fraktur might have preferred subjects more exotic than what they saw outside their windows. They may have wanted to escape the routine of their everyday household chores.
46 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
Most early fraktur artists—those working from the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth—were schoolmasters who made fraktur for hire.3 Around 1780, printed Taufscheine—where the text was already printed on the certificates—came into use. About this time itinerant scriveners who "infilled" the printed forms—completing the family data by adding the appropriate names and dates—arrived on the scene.4 By the second half of the nineteenth century, the printed forms dominated the fraktur market and scriveners had replaced schoolmasters as the primary source for Taufscheine made for families. Whether printed Taufscheine consisting of freehand decoration surrounding preprinted text or completely hand-drawn certificates, most early American fraktur were
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BIRTH AND BAPTISM CERTIFICATE FOR MAGDALENA HIRSCH (BORN 1805) Decorated and infilled by the Rapti° Township Artist (active c. 1812) Starch and Lange three-heart certificate printed in 1812 in Hanover, Pennsylvania Pen and ink and watercolor on wove paper 13 • 15' , I" Private collection Photograph courtesy of Martin Amt, Mt. Rainier, Maryland With this fraktur, the anonymous artist recorded the 1805 birth of Magdalena, daughter of Joseph and Magdalena (Metal Hirsch, in Rapho Township, Lancaster County. The rendition of a warship is rare. It is noteworthy that this fraktur was printed during the War of 1812, not long after the U.S.S. Hornet gained fame by capturing the British warships Dolphin and Peacock Few American fraktur show motifs that reflect current events. After the war, the Hornet was sent to Florida to control piracy. In 1829, the Hornet went down in a storm, taking all hands with it. (Information regarding the U.S.S. Hornet is courtesy of The Multimedia History Company).
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 47
BIRTH AND BAPTISM CERTIFICATE FOR GEORG WEBER (BORN 1794) Decorated and infilled by Daniel Otto (active c. 1792-1822) Haines Township, Centre County, Pennsylvania c. 1794 Pen and ink and watercolor on wove paper Approximately 12/ 1 2" 1 2x 16/ Private collection Photograph courtesy of Pooh & Pook, Inc., Downingtown, Pennsylvania
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BIRTH AND BAPTISM CERTIFICATE FOR FRIEDERICH STEIER (BORN 17841 Decorated and infilled by Georg Friedrich Speyer (active c. 1774-1802) Printed certificate by Barton and Johnson c. 1788 Reading, Pennsylvania Pen and ink and watercolor on laid paper / 14's 163 4" Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Donald M. Herr Photograph courtesy of Schiffer Publishing and The Heritage Center Museum of Lancaster County Speyer was a major fraktur artist who almost always used printed certificates. On this example he drew flowers, long-necked birds, a colorful butterfly, and four Eves—some of whom undoubtedly are supposed to represent Adam. If Speyer could draw Eve, he could have drawn the Pennsylvania German housewife.
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INCOMPLETE BIRTH AND BAPTISM CERTIFICATE FOR MAGDALENA FUCHS(BORN 1801) The Sussel-Unicorn Artist (active c. 1798-1815) Pennsylvania c. 1801 Pen and ink and watercolor on laid paper 141 / 4 17/ 1 4" Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Donald M. Herr Photograph courtesy of Schiffer Publishing and The Heritage Center Museum of Lancaster County This anonymous artist recorded that Magdalena was born to Johannes and Anna Maria (Lichtel Fuchs. Other sources reveal that Magdalena was born on August 18, 1801, in Upper Mahanoy Township, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. References to the unicorn, sometimes described as a spiral-horned horse with the tail of a lion that could be captured only by a virgin, are found in mythology and classical literature. This artist could obviously have drawn the horse found on almost every Pennsylvania German farm. But there are probably more unicorns on fraktur than horses, and when horses are drawn they are more often depicted in military service than pulling a wagon or plow.
decorated with birds and flowers. Few, if any, fraktur artists had formal training in art. It could be that drawing the human form, animals other than birds, structures, or complex farm scenes was too difficult or simply too timeconsuming. Major artists occasionally attempted these subjects, but most of their works were colorfully illustrated with hearts, birds, flowers, and geometric designs. Complex scenes showing everyday farm life are very rare on early American freehand fraktur, as are current events. Rather than attempt these difficult subjects, the schoolmaster often conceived his fraktur based on expedience.rather than creativity. Evidence suggests that he generally made certificates ahead of time and left blanks for the relevant birth and baptism data. His greatest period of production may have occurred in summer months, when children were not in school. By making fraktur in advance, he was able to offer each family a choice. He may have found birds and flowers not only easy to draw, but easy to sell.
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 49
It would certainly seem that the farmhouse and barn were not difficult subjects. The problem with drawing these structures, however, was that they would have been too specific. Artists who made fraktur ahead of time could spread several examples in front of a family for the family to make a selection. Drawing a specific family home would not have been practical. Naturally, there are exceptions—a fraktur showing a farm complete with a typical Pennsylvania German forebay barn is known, as well as a Taufschein that shows what is believed to be the original family home—but these are rare. Just as picturing specific family homes was impractical, drawing gender-specific subjects created a marketing problem for the fraktur artist. If he drew soldiers or hunters on certificates for boys and birds and flowers on those designated for girls, he was bound to find himself with too many of one kind in his inventory. Because paper
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Martin Brechall (c. 1737-1831) could quickly decorate Taufscheine with tulips and geometric motifs rather than more complex subjects such as eagles and angels (which he did use on rare occasions). Naturally, purchasing printed forms was easier than writing a page of text. Much can be learned about fraktur production in America from studying printed Taufscheine. Professor Dr. Klaus Stopp of Mainz, Germany, has pieced together the complex development of American printed birth and baptism certificates made for German Americans. In his six-volume study, The Printed Birth and Baptismal Certificates of the German Americans, he states that some of the first printed Taufscheine were made at Ephrata Cloister in northern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, around 1780—a date that coincides with the sudden increase in freehand Taufscheine production. Early printed examples lack printed decoration. Instead, these editions
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was expensive, the schoolmaster of modest means could not afford to make certificates that would not sell. Fraktur artist Arnold Hoevelman, who was active from around 1771 to 1796, may have attempted gender-specific forms, for there are hunters or soldiers on several of his certificates made for boys, and barnyard fowl on those for girls. But his scheme apparently fell apart on several occasions, for in some cases he used barnyard animals for boys and hunters for girls.5 The tremendous demand for Taufscheine led schoolmasters to do all they could to expedite production. It was easier to dash off manuscripts featuring abstract designs and floral decorations than to draw farm scenes, trade-related activities, and people. Moreover, repetition of design increased production. Thus, prolific artists like
50 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
BIRTH AND BAPTISM CERTIFICATE FOR ELISABETH LIEBRICH (BORN 17901 Decorated by Friedrich Krebs (c.1749-18151 Infilled by an unknown scrivener Three-heart certificate printed for Krebs by Jacob Schneider of Reading, Pennsylvania 1801 Pen and ink, watercolor, and applied decoration on laid paper 131 / 4 153/4" Private collection Photograph courtesy of Schiffer Publishing and The Heritage Center Museum of Lancaster County For this fraktur, Krebs applied European-made brocade paper and copper sheathing cutouts to speed up the decoration process. This decoration includes a goose and a turkey, though birds of unknown species are more common on fraktur.
have wide margins surrounding the preprinted text, and major fraktur artists such as Arnold Hoevelman and Henrich Otto decorated these wide borders with seahorses, soldiers, birds, and flowers. Subsequent editions have "bird panels" and "textile borders" printed on them. These printed decorations were then hand-colored by the schoolmasters, who also infilled family data. About 1790, printers in Reading, Pennsylvania, began producing a three-heart form on which the text appears in the shape of hearts. Initially, no printed decoration surrounded the hearts; schoolmasters such as Friedrich Krebs (c. 1749-1815) and Georg Friedrich Speyer (active c. 1774-1802) decorated these forms by hand with parrots, sun and moon faces, tulips, mermaids, lions, angels, and other motifs. Such forms must have
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BIRTH AND BAPTISM FOR ANNAMARIA TSCHUDY (BORN 1818) Possibly decorated by Christian Merte111739-1802) Montgomery County, Ohio c. 1818 Pen and ink and watercolor on wove paper 121 / 2 151 / 2" Private collection Photograph courtesy of Martin Amt, Mt. Rainier, Maryland For this work, the artist chose an unusual combination of porticoed buildings, crowned lions, and swordsmen on horseback. This fraktur was infilled at least sixteen years after Mertel's death, but the art and handwriting are similar to his, as is the wording of the text. Obviously, the artist could have drawn domestic or agrarian scenes, but perhaps his client liked castles, lions, and thundering hooves better. Soldiers are said to appear on fraktur made for boys, but this example documents the birth of a girl.
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 51
been a tremendous aid to artists like Krebs, who was the genre's most prolific artist. He ordered almost 7,000 printed forms from Reading printers before his death in 1815. These printed Taufscheine greatly added to his already considerable production of freehand fraktur.6 Krebs and other fraktur artists devised ingenious ways to speed production. They stamped freehand fraktur or three-heart printed forms with woodcuts of mermaids, colonial men and women, flowers, birds, and other designs. Or they pasted on animal figures cut from copper sheathing or decorated paper used to line trunks.7 The three-heart forms remained popular until about 1806, when an even more popular printed fraktur was introduced. This Taufschein, characterized by an angel flanking either side of the main text, dominated the fraktur market into the twentieth century. The second half of the nineteenth century brought a major change to fraktur art. Whereas early printed forms were decorated by hand, now the printer increasingly took over the design and even the color schemes on Taufscheine, especially following the Civil War. All the scrivener had to do was to fill in the blanks, usually in exquisite handwriting that was prized by families and for which the craftsman received as much as fifteen cents a word. In a way, it was the exceptional handwriting of itinerant scriveners that brought American fraktur full circle, back to the exquisite beauty of hand lettering. Fraktur is the American equivalent of Europe's medieval illuminated manuscripts; in both cases, much of the art is in the beautifully penned text. Wherever Pennsylvania Germans migrated, the fraktur tradition went with them. Thus, we have fraktur in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, western Maryland, the Carolinas, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and even farther west. Almost all Pennsylvania Germans, regardless of religious affiliation, documented family events with decorated manuscripts. Thus, Lutheran and Reformed, Mennonites, Schwenkfelders, Moravians, and Amish all have fraktur traditions. The majority of Pennsylvania Germans were Lutheran and Reformed Church; for these people, baptism is a sacrament, so Taufscheine were particularly important. Since Mennonites and Amish do not practice infant baptism, they did not make Taufscheine, but they did make fraktur in the form of personal documents that related to family events, including family registers, birth records, and bookplates. The Amish began practicing fraktur art relatively late, and are still making fraktur today. Commercial artists carry on the fraktur tradition as well. Naturally, religion played a major role in the lives of Pennsylvania Germans and in the making of fraktur. But religion influenced the type of fraktur selected by a family more than it influenced the motifs featured. For example, the pelican plucking its breast is generally considered a Mennonite symbol that stands for self-sacrifice, but the motif is occasionally found on Taufscheine made for Lutheran and Reformed families.8 Many students of fraktur agree that the decorations on early American fraktur manuscripts are drawn mainly from nature. Most of these same scholars acknowledge that religious overtones can be found in fraktur decoration—the tulip may represent the Trinity; peacocks
52 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
probably represent resurrection; the Celtic Knot, having neither beginning nor end, represents eternity; and the Crown of Righteousness, the Lamb of God, and the everpresent angel are found on many different kinds of fraktur. With rare exception, however, it was not until the second rr half of the nineteenth century, when printers i. :11.1,11r. increasingly took over De,r,..[kk tvkr rr /;ci Stir ..7.•)**1kkIlkif ;* the design, that com• ,fr"40'''''Z'Pr'ff, plex religious scenes— baptism, the Crucifixion, Moses and the Ten ComINCOMPLETE DEATH RECORD mandments, the Last Attributed to Justus Fuchs (Justus Henry Fox, 1736-1805) Supper—began to appear Germantown, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania 1771 on fraktur.9 Pen and ink and watercolor on laid paper Overall, religious 8" symbolism may have Special Collections—Beeghly Library, Juniata College, Huntingdon, Pennsylvanka played a relatively minor Photograph courtesy Dr. Donald Durnbaugh part in the motifs chosen Few fraktur artists made death records or memorials. When they did, they for early American frak- generally drew caskets or the weeping willow. The use of the skull and crossbones is less common. This example bears the word tur, and the same can be [Germantown, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania] and the"Germatown" date January 3, said of Taufscheine texts. 1771. The text states that for godless persons death is bitter as gall, but for those dying in Jesus it is sweet. Evidence suggests that the texts on American Taufscheine shifted away from religious sentiments and toward family data as early as 1780, when printers at Ephrata Cloister began printing Taufscheine. With this shift, the printers standardized the text, devoting the most space—the most prominent, central portion of the page— to recording family data. This main text included references to Scripture, but its primary purpose was to document birth and baptism. American fraktur are distinctly American. It can be difficult to distinguish European decorated manuscripts from American fraktur based on decoration alone, but analysis of the text makes such determination relatively easy. European decorated manuscripts were generally religious texts or important official documents such as privileges or treatises; the text on American fraktur mostly recorded family concerns and were decorated to be enjoyed by the family. Up until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, German was still the language of choice on fraktur made in the United States. English was the official language used in America, but for families of German and Swiss heritage—especially those who remained in southeastern Pennsylvania, where most fraktur were made—a German dialect was the language of hearth and home. And since fraktur were made as personal rather than official documents, it was expected that they would remain at home, and thus the German language held sway. The language, however, was not the only Old World element prevalent on fraktur. Vestiges of medieval
European customs and beliefs are embedded in the text. For example, early American Taufscheine often record the time of day a child was born, sometimes the alignment of the planets, and the sign of the zodiac in which the child was born. These pieces of information represent a holdover from medieval Europe, when it was believed that physicians could devise cures based on a full history of their patients, beginning at birth and including this astrological information. Yet astrological signs and specific signs of the zodiac are rarely pictured on fraktur. Lions are the most commonly used motif that might signify a sign of the BIRD IN THE HAND IS WORTH TWO IN THE BUSH PROVERB zodiac, but the use of lions on frakDrawn by Johannes Huff tur does not always correlate to the West Virginia 1800 sign of the zodiac mentioned on Pen and ink and watercolor on laid paper the fraktur. 73 / 4 63/4" The mermaid motif was Private collection Photograph courtesy of Schiffer Publishing and The Heritage also common on early fraktur. Center Museum of Lancaster County Some scholars suggest that this was a reference to midwifery, In addition to the man and woman in period dress and the birds at the upper right, Huff drew a comet or shooting star. The which would certainly have been German inscription refers to a big comet that stood over America appropriate for birth and baptism in 1796. Huff worked in what is now West Virginia. Comets were important omens among Pennsylvania Germans, so this event certificates. In any case, this motif occasionally appears on fraktur. all but disappeared after about 1815. Another instance in which there is a correlation between the decoration and the text is when the text mentions death. Death records were not popular among Pennsylvania Germans, but when they do appear, they are decorated with weeping willows, tombstones, caskets, or occasionally the skull and crossbones. Most of these decorations appear in Pennsylvania German Bible records written in fraktur lettering. Sometimes, a motif as simple as a cross is drawn in the margins of Bible records, signifying that the person was deceased when the artist or scrivener created the record. But other than the guardian angels flanking the main text on nineteenth-century printed Taufscheine, a consistent and strong correlation between text and illustrations is generally lacking. Instead, fraktur artists drew what they liked to draw and what their clientele wanted to buy. Usually, fraktur were decorated to delight the eye or to display penmanship skills. The fraktur artist probably never imagined that his decoration would someday invite intense scrutiny, ponderous interpretation, and speculation into hidden agendas. Pennsylvania German fraktur artists did not set out to record their everyday environment, including the cow and the chicken. Fraktur were made for special events. They deserved special decoration, special penmanship, and especially large paper. They were made of broadside-size materials, decorated with gaudy colors, and meant to be enjoyed visually. And to everyone's delight, both then and now, fraktur artists chose motifs from
flights of fancy rather than from daily chores, from imagination rather than from fields of wheat, and from the rich complexities of folklore, religion, superstition, and love of nature that makes up the Pennsylvania German culture. The presence of prancing horses, serpents, springing deer, swordsmen, and red-scaled dragons demonstrate that the hardworking and frugal Pennsylvania German farm family had imagination and an appreciation for art and color. Instead of a plow horse, why not a unicorn? Instead of a farmhouse, why not a castle? And instead of the common cow, why not a ferocious lion? The amazing variety of motifs on fraktur do not generally illustrate the text. Instead, they illustrate an entire repertoire of the Pennsylvania Germans' imagination, history, and heritage.* Corinne and Russel Earnest have studiedfrakturfor thirty years and have recorded the genealogical datafrom more than 20,000 fraktur and Bible records. Together, they have written seventeen books onfraktur and genealogy, lectured widely, and contributed to numerousjournals and other publications.
NOTES 1 The wordfraktur refers to an archaic German typeface or style of writing developed in the fifteenth century. This decorative writing style was popular in German-speaking areas of Europe until World War II, when it was replaced with the more "modem" Roman alphabet. Americans have adopted the wordfraktur to refer to Pennsylvania German decorated manuscripts, most of which are personal family documents. For a comprehensive study of American fraktur and its European origins, see Dr. Donald A. Shelley, The Fraktur-Writings or Illuminated Manuscripts ofthe Pennsylvania Germans(Allentown, Pa.: The Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, 1961). 2 See Corinne and Russell Earnest, Fraktur: Folk Art & Family (Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Publishing for The Heritage Center Museum of Lancaster County, 1999). 3 Biographical information for artists and scriveners is taken primarily from Russell and Corinne Earnest,Papersfor Birth Dayes: Guide to the Fraktur Artists and Scriveners, 2nd ed.(East Berlin, Pa.: Russell D. Earnest Associates, 1997). 4 See Klaus Stopp, The Printed Birth and Baptismal Certificates ofthe German Americans, six vols.(Mainz, Germany: selfpublished, 1997-2001). 5 In Vol.IV (plates #589 and #597)of The Printed Birth and Baptismal Certificates ofthe German Americans, Klaus Stopp points out that printer Aaron E. Snyder(1819-1880)of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, attempted gender-specific forms in the printed text. But it seems these forms were not very successful, for scriveners often had to modify the text, replacing the word "son" with "daughter," or vice versa. Frederick S. Weiser called attention to Hoevelman's possible scheme for decorating gender-specific manuscripts in "The Concept of Baptism Among Colonial Pennsylvania German Lutheran and Reformed Church People," The Lutheran Historical Conference, Viking Printing Company, 1972, p. 11. 6 See Stopp,especially Volume IV,78-168. 7 Ibid. Plates #624,#637,#644, and #652. 8 Stopp, Vol. I, #1, pp. 86-87. 9 Some artists, such as Durs Rudy (active c. 1805-1842)of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, did attempt complex religious scenes such as the Crucifixion, the story of the Prodigal Son, and baptismals. See Gerard C. Werticin,"The Watercolors of Durs Rudy: New Discoveries in Fraktur," Folk Art, vol. 18, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 33-39.
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 53
) As we enter the new millennium,the diverse,loose-knit constellation of organizations,institutions, and commercial enterprises that can arguably be considered the "field" of self-taught/folk/ outsider/visionary art is positioned to enter the mainstream cultural purview with unprecedented urgency and presence. The long, slow march that led this spectrum of unsanctioned aesthetics onto the cultural mainstage spans the twentieth century,from the early collections and writings of the psychiatrists Walter Morganthaler and Hans Prinzhorn to Jean Dubuffet's creation of the Collection de l'Art Brut at midcentury and, more recently, the founding of the Museum of American Folk Art in 1961, the 1992 opening of the American Visionary Art Museum,and the ongoing efforts of other institutions and cultural forums whose mandate is to represent this field to the public. In the last twenty years, a succession of exhibitions has dramatically intensified the field's visibility and garnered an increasing amount of curious, if rarely serious, art-critical attention. The steady increase in exposure and visibility enjoyed by this particular art-margin has not been matched by an increase in understanding or value as measured in the academy, the mainstream museum world, or the marketplace. This field's own history of self-marginalization, especially through the act of self-namingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the choice of value-laden, often pejorative labels like "outsider" and exhibition titles such as "Baking in the Sun"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;have created for the self-taught artist the persona of cultural Other. To be sure, recent events signal a promising measure of damage control, notably the mandate of the Museum of American Folk Art's newly founded Contemporary Center to integrate the work of self-taught artists into the mainstream artworld with a rigorous sense of curatorial responsibility, as evidenced by the Center's recent support of the Cheekwood Museum's William Edmondson exhibition, which effectively removed the stigma of "outsider" from the legacy of this stone carver by presenting his work in its rightful cultural context.
54 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
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The Instructive Relationship Between Self-Taught and Academically Trained Artists Academically trained, art-historically indoctrinated artists have always set the tone for the cultural mainstream's awareness of their self-taught counterparts. Modern artists' sense of alienation from Western culture consistently led them to its margins to seek alternative forms of expression for inspiration. Paul Gauguin's late-nineteenthcentury sojourns to the South Seas set the tone for the modern artist's glorification of cultural Others and their artwork, giving the green light to subsequent generations of the modernist avant-garde to seek inspiration in the work not only of non-Western peoples but also of those perceived as "primitives" within the borders of European society: folk artists, naffs, Sunday painters, mediums, isolates, and schizophrenics. Picasso collected and paid homage to Henri Rousseau, Paul Klee emulated children's drawings, and Dubuffet collected and imitated the work of asylum inmates. Viewed through this subjective lens of modernist "primitivism," these very different populations of artists have been and continue to be equated, conflated, fetishized, misunderstood, and devalued. Yet the dialogue between academically trained and untrained artists, problematic as it has been, also holds clues toward establishing a common ground between mainstream and margin, and toward breaking down the arbitrary borders that designate the difference between artists working within the context
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 55
of the canon of Western art history and those working from a non-canonical perspective. Several exhibitions have charted the influence of marginal art forms on mainstream art in the twentieth century. The most significant of these was The Museum of Modern Art's "Primitivism in Twentieth-Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern" in 1984, which relegated its focus to the formal impact of non-Western art on modernism. Other shows have addressed the influence of self-taught artists on modern and contemporary art. Two major, concurrent exhibitions stand out, not only by virtue of their size, scope, and high visibility, but because they perfectly complemented each other. "Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art"(Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1992) offered a paradigm for the institutional marginalization of self-taught artists, while "Dreamsingers, Storytellers: An African-American Presence"(New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, and the Fukui Fine Arts Museum, Japan, 1992) presented a curatorial challenge to that process. "Parallel Visions" traced the influence of self-taught artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;referred to by cocurators Carol Eliel and Maurice Tuchman as both "outsiders" and "compulsive visionaries"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;on twentieth-century mainstream artists. In an intended attempt to move away from the formal model of influence characterized by MoMA's "Primitivism" exhibition, Eliel and Tuchman posited an alternative solution: "In Parallel Visions we attempt to explicate a different model of influence, demonstrating what the artist Gregory Amenoff has called the 'moral influence' of outsider artists on twentieth-century art. The outsiders' sense of focus,' their 'intensity,' and their 'lack of guile' are what appeal to mainstream artists, rather than 'any given style or subject." Although valuable and certainly valid in theory, the notion of moral influence was lost in the sequences of comparisons between the insiders and their sources, which drew out primarily formal correspondencesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;often in the form of unapologetic visual borrowings that bordered on plagiarism. The exhibition was organized according to the chronological progression of modern styles and the subsequent postmodern resuscitation of those styles, and the comparative importance of the insiders was never questioned. The insiders' romantic view of the self-taught Other was never problematized, but instead celebrated, which strengthened the distinction between a high-cultural "inside" and an acultural "outside" for dramatic effect. By contrast, "Dreamsingers, Storytellers" proceeded with quite the opposite aim, presenting the work of academically trained African American artists together with that of their self-taught contemporaries. While the significant differences between the two groups were certainly not ignored, the intent of curators Alison Weld and Sadao Sarikawa was to investigate and reveal important commonalities of cultural experience, worldview, and creative process. The artists' work was organized according to categories that revealed their shared creative strategies: "poetics of economy," "poetics of accumulation," "lyrical narrative" (including both autobiography and metaphysics), "the suggested image," "the constructed image," and "issues of identity."2 In this context, the work of an
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African American artist such as Emilio Cruz, whose training and career fall within the mainstream artworld, was considered together with that of Thornton Dial, for the curators felt that the two artists shared an impulse for the equally viable expression of a personal metaphysics, however different their aesthetic or level of engagement with art history. Unlike "Parallel Visions," which validated mainstream artists at the expense of their marginalized sources, "Dreamsingers, Storytellers" recognized the equivalent validity of both groups: "They are united by a common quest to reveal human integrity in all its different manifestations, ranging from the political to the personal. I believe that all are attempting to reveal a shared human integrity through their individual artistic dialogues."3 In this context, self-taught artists were released from the role of the Other and, non-art marks of difference such as class, and education notwithstanding, acknowledged as
artists in their own right. The dramatic contrast in value systems between these two exhibitions is further evidenced by two very different presentations of the same self-taught artist, Joseph Yoakum, whose work was in one case deemed of cultural value to us only insofar as he served to inspire the white, academically trained Chicago Imagists Roger Brown and Jim Nutt, but in the other case was valued on its own merits as a valuable contribution within a shared cultural landscape. When studied carefully, contact between self-taught and trained, historically knowledgeable artists reflects one of two very different prototypes. These echo two relational dynamics identified by psychologist Heinz Kohut: first, the drive to seek an ideal version of oneself in another, and second, the drive to seek a mirroring nurturer. Both are developmental dynamics repeated in one's adult relationships.
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS Jon Serl Lake Elsinore, California 1982 Oil on board 6% x 60% 1" Museum of American Folk Art, gift of the artist, 1983.20.3
EARLY ONE MORNING Sam Messer Los Angeles 1995 Oil on panel 56 48" Photo courtesy David Beitzel Gallery, New York WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 57
Detail of SPLIT LEVEL Kerry Schuss New York 1998 Hydrocal and house paint 6 13 3/ 1 4" per unit Studio installation
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The search for the perfect creative persona, explored in the majority of the pairings in "Parallel Visions," is characterized by an idealizing of the selftaught artist by his or her art-historically engaged "discoverer," usually resulting in the borrowing of style, subject matter, or image. Paul Klee repeatedly appropriated Karl
Brendel's unique approach to figuration, Jim Nutt imitated Martin Ramirez's stagelike compositions, and Julian Schnabel affixed broken plates to his canvases in the mode of Simon Rodia's Watts Towers. In most cases, the trained appropriator had no contact with his source other than published images, perhaps accompanied by some bio-
WINTER SCENE Aaron Birnbaum Brooklyn c. 1992 Acrylic and varnish on canvas 32,32" Collection of Kerry Schuss
graphical materialâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Max Emst's exposure to August Neter's work, for example, was made possible through Hans Prinzhom's 1922 book Artistry of the Mentally Ill. Yet the same dynamics of idealization are often at work in cases where the artists experienced personal contactâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;consider Amulf Rainer's violently altered photographic self-portraits in which he attempts to emulate the pathology of his chosen hero, Johann Hauser, whom he visited frequently at the Gugging asylum in Vienna. Idealization borders on deification in the case of the contemporary painter Sam Messer's series of paintings in homage to the late self-taught artist Jon Serl on his deathbed, which is resolved by Serl's mystical "apotheosis" and finally with the dramatic "rebirth" of Messer. In each example, the mainstream artist assuages his own personal and cultural alienation by literally claiming the qualities he admires in his hero, then returning to the site of his own alienation (the artworld) as the triumphant Prometheus with the purloined flame. The creative source remains safely hidden and unacknowledged, while the insider reinvents himself in the image of his outsider ideal for the benefit of the larger art culture, which is always hungry for such acts of creative cannibalism. The second and more subtle dynamic that has arisen, albeit less often, in these relationships, is typified by the insider searching for mirroring or validation through contact with a self-taught artist. While some measure of the drive to idealize may be present in this dynamic, it is played out not through formal, iconographic, or even conceptual appropriation but through a
WINTER 200012001 FOLK ART 59
more profound strengthening of the insider's own personal vision. Such relationships evidence Amenoffs notion of "moral influence." This type of symbiotic exchange arises most often when both artists have known each other over an extended period of time, when there exists long-term relationships based on the "Dreamsingers, Storytellers" principle of shared creative integrity. Two examples of this type of mutual creative mentoring—in which influence flows in both directions—bear this out. The friendships between the artist Renee Stout and the late visionary root sculptor Bessie Harvey, and between Kerry Schuss and the late self-taught painter Aaron Birnbaum, reveal productive, mutually beneficial exchanges. In each, one
assemblages—reflect Cornell's evocative manipulation of found objects, as well as Saar's poetic retrieval of African American culture, embodying a playful crossroads of mainstream and vernacular culture. In 1989 Stout's work was included in "Black Art, Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art," a seminal exhibition that featured both trained and self-taught artists whose work reflected a common source in Afro-Atlantic cultural traditions. At the opening in Richmond, Virginia, Stout met Bessie Harvey, whose work was also featured in the show, and the two became friends. In the years following, and up until Harvey's death in 1994, Stout regularly visited the sculptor at her home in Alcoa, Tennessee. SOUL SAVING CENTER #3 Renee Stout Washington, D.C. 1998 Mixed media 100 48 20" deep Belger Family Collection
finds the existence of shared experience and expressive strategies in oeuvres that differ markedly; in each, one finds a blueprint for leveling arbitrary cultural hierarchies and for the recognition of an equivalence of value between trained and self-taught artists. Born in Junction City, Kansas, and raised in Pittsburgh, Renee Stout received a bachelor of fine arts degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 1980 and has since been honored with a number of prestigious residencies, grants, and awards. In addition to participating in numerous group and solo exhibitions, she was the first African American artist to show at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of African Art. Stout was initially a painter, and her early influences, including Edward Hopper and Richard Estes, reflected her mainstream art education. Later, she shifted her focus from painting to sculpture, taking inspiration from both Joseph Cornell and Bettye Saar. Her works—richly symbolic, mixed-media
SO
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Harvey's influence on Stout, wonderfully challenging to identify in its complexity, reflects moral influence. Stout had already forged her signature funk sensibility before meeting Harvey. She claims that she was not directly influenced by Harvey, but more generally impressed by her spirituality:"And through it all it's about the work and the process which is treated as a spiritual ritual. That was the influence Bessie Harvey had on me. Art will be created even if the world is not looking, because it's not about the art world, it's about doing it because you have to."4 Stout found a reflection and a confirmation of her own work in Harvey's mixed-media root sculptures (and in the work of other self-taught artists she came in contact with after 1989, including David Philpot, Mr. Imagination, and Lonnie Holley) and came to recognize shared artmaking strategies that grew out of a common cultural experience:"Out of necessity I worked with found objects, junk and scraps for years because I couldn't
THOUSAND TONGUES Bessie Harvey Alcoa Tennessee n.d. Wood, paint, shells, beads, and nails 59 34 30" Museum of American Folk Art, BlanchardHill collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard Jr., 1998.10.25
SONG OF THE CICADA (THE FENCE' Renee Stout Washington, D.C. 1997 Mixed media 48 • 120 • 12" deep Collection of Gaylord Nealy
WINTER 2000/20111 FOLK ART Si
afford art supplies. I appreciate the make-do aesthetic because I was raised in it."5 For Harvey, the "make-do aesthetic" included mixing roots and branches together with costume jewelry and other discarded trinkets to create a pantheon of Bible-inspired personages, African kings, and mystical spirits. For Stout, this strategy involved a retrieval of materials and artifacts from her Washington, D.C. environs, and their reincorporation into sculptures and installations that offer up a raw but knowing socio-political critique of race and class relations in the United States, as well as multilayered celebrations of everyday African American urban life. In addition to their shared utilization of mixed media, both artists' work is marked by a sense of grounding, of place, and of homeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; while Harvey's twisted roots literally mark the earth near her home, Stout's assemblages and installations pay homage to African American vernacular architecture, as in the storefront church in Soul Saving Center #3(1998), and to other urban territories, such as the neighborhood fence (with its implied yard) celebrated in Song of the Cicada (1997). Harvey and Stout strengthened each other's personal aesthetic visions without compromising the integrity of either; if Stout took anything from her elder mentor, it was the profound validation of her own project. A New York City native, Kerry Schuss was raised in Columbus, Ohio, and studied art in the early 1970s at Ohio State University. Like Stout, he began as a painter, naming as his early influences Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Also like Stout, he shifted his interest to sculpture and an investigation of the artmaking process, his early three-dimensional oeuvre reflecting the influences of conceptual artists such as Jonathan Borofsky and Jackie Windsor. He also recognizes his father, who made a living as a wallpaper designer, as a profound influence. In yet another similarity with Stout, Schuss did not come into contact with self-taught artists until after the formulation of his own aesthetic. In 1972, he met the great self-taught carver Elijah Pierce and was deeply impressed, recognizing Pierce to be "a high being, linked to his craft."6 In 1976, Schuss began curating exhibitions, an activity that was to become both a creative outlet and his livelihood in years to come. He moved back to New York City in 1986, helping to conduct art workshops for elderly and handicapped groups, and together with his friend Mark Davis, established Sale of Hats, a gallery dedicated to promoting the work of self-taught artists; in 1989, he assumed control of the gallery. That same year, he organized the exhibition "American Outsiders" in Sweden, and in 1991, he curated the critically well-received "Art's Mouth" in New York; both featured the work of unknown artists whom he met through his workshops. Today he is sole proprietor of K.S. Fine Art, a Tribeca gallery notable for its consistently serious, minimally installed, and curatorially edgy exhibitions of the work of self-taught artists, including Chris Murray, Ray Hamilton, Freddie Brice, Phillip Travers, and Aaron Birnbaum. For Schuss, curating and even dealing the work of these artists has been a part of what he considers his conceptual oeuvre. In conjunction with his curating projects, Schuss has consistently produced and exhibited his own sculpture and installation work, for which he has received both commer-
62 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
cial and critical recognition. Although profoundly inspired by the self-taught artists with whom he has enjoyed constant contact, his own aestheticâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;cool, minimal, reductiveâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; differs dramatically from that of those artists, for the most part painters whose work shares a painterly, expressionistic sensibility. In his own words, his influence has manifested itself "not aesthetically, but by example." Here is another example of moral influence. In his roles as workshop director, coach, dealer, and curator, Schuss has never sought to alter the unique aesthetic vision of each self-taught rs artist he has worked with, but instead has worked to encourage and nurture that vision. In return, he has received encouragement to pursue his own artwork, from his contact with the painters Freddie Brice and Aaron Birnbaum. Birnbaum especially has been both muse and father figure to Schuss, inspiring him through example "to draw from my own family life and experience."' Following the death of his father in 1991, Schuss embarked on a major sculptural project that would engage him for years. This project, P.S. (Postscriptfor Phillip Schuss), which was fully realized in a major installation at the Colgate University Gallery in Hamilton, New York, in 1997, incorporates cast sculptural elements as well as silkscreened wallpaper, repeating Schuss' images of his father's house, personal belongings, and the clock that marked the moment of his passing. Even in this impressive conceptual exploration of both the artmaking and mourning processes, situated well within the idiom of mainstream contemporary art, the artist shares several creative strategies with his mentors Pierce, Brice, and especially Birnbaum. From Pierce's example, Schuss found the courage to pursue his own "sculptural memoirs," of which P.S. is a mature expression. Within that context, concerns of time and place have been of paramount importance to him, as the repeated images of clocks and houses reveal. Only after P.S. was well underway did Schuss note that his own interest in marking time was echoed in Brice's paintings of clocks and watches; he also realized that his emphasis on remembering, mourning, and celebrating a lost home was echoed in the memory paintings of Birnbaum, a Polish immigrant whose animated, painterly images recalled the Old World home he left behind. It is significant to note that just as Stout and Har-
CLOCKS Freddie Brice New York 1993 Acrylic on wood 48 32" Collection of Kerry Schuss
Detail of THE CLOCK/TWO VIEWS Kerry Schuss New York 1999 Transparent rubber 4" / 2 7 13 1 4/ per unit
vey shared a common cultural experience as African American women, Schuss and Birnbaum shared a similar bond in their Jewish heritage. Like Bimbaum, Schuss has recognized in his own project an "obsession with telling his tale" through his artwork.8 More than simply sharing creative concerns, Birnbaum and Schuss had a relationship built on mutual inspiration, and driven by what Schuss has called "reciprocity."9 Birnbaum's prolific oeuvre would not be known to the world were it not for Schuss' curatorial and "cheerleading" efforts, which Schuss sees as his own responsibility to "complete the circle" and express his gratitude for lessons learned from the elder artist.'° From the example of Birnbaum's life and work, Schuss took a creative, do-it-yourself approach to realizing his own curatorial and artmaking vision. Their relationship, which renders invalid the notion of a cultural inside or outside, holds the promise of recognizing an equivalence of integrity and value in the work of those artists engaged with the history of Western art and those artists not so engaged. Self-taught artists have always been "artists' artists," offering a wellspring of inspiration to their often alienated, art-educated colleagues charged with the difficult task of making historically significant work by engaging the canon. As they create from a place beyond the scope of history and the artworld, self-taught artists have not been afforded recognition as artists in their own right, but have been cast in the role of outsiders, and their work has been removed from a context in which it might receive serious critical consideration. By looking at the revealing exchanges between mainstream artists and their marginalized muses, we would do well to heed the words of the art
critic Lucy Lippard in avoiding "the temptation to fix our gaze solely on the familiarities and the•unfamiliarities, on the neutral and the exotic, rather than on the area in between—that fertile, liminal ground where new meanings germinate and where common experiences in different contexts can provoke new bonds." * Jenifer P. Borum is currently a Ph.D. candidate in art history at the City University ofNew York's Graduate Center. She is a lecturer at the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art's Folk Art Institute, and has writtenfor Artforum, New Art Examiner, Raw Vision, and this publication.
NOTES 1 Carol S. Eliel,"Moral Influence and Expressive Intent: A Model of the Relationship between Insider and Outsider," Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art(Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1992), 17. 2 Alison Weld,"Drearnsingers, Storytellers: An African-American Presence," in Dreamsingers, Storytellers: An African-American Presence(Trenton: New Jersey State Museum,and Prefecture of Fulcui, Japan: Fukui Fine Arts Museum, 1992), 17. 3 Ibid., 40. 4 Renee Stout, letter to the author, July 2000. 5 Ibid. 6 Kerry Schuss, interview with the author. July 2000, New York City. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Lucy Lippard: Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America(New York: Pantheon Books, 1990),9.
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART Olt
ANNOUNCEMENT
Charleston Savannah March 20-25, 2001
A Museum of American Folk Art
Explorers' Tour For tour information and an intinerary, contact: Membership Department Museum of American Folk Art 555 West 57th Street New York, NY 10019-2925 Telephone: 212/977-7170 Fax: 212/977-8134 E-mail: folkartexplorers@ folkartmuseum.org
04
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
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Volume One 568 pages 801 illustrations (756 in full color) Hardcover ISBN 0-9653766-0-5 Tinwood Books African American Vernacular Art
in association with The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture The New York Public Lbrary
Available at: www.tinwoodbooks.com 1-877-370-3337 (toll free) and in bookstores
35 contributing authors Topics include historical overviews African legacies civil rights decorative arts commemorations funerary traditions narrative arts
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Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art "Because this will long be the definitive work on this subject, it is highly recommended." LibraryJournal (starred review) "More than a book, Souls Grown Deep is a historical landmark, a millennial signpost. W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk announced a new era in the beginning ofthe twentieth century. Souls Grown Deep lays the seed for as profound a revelation of art and culture in the twenty-first century as the arrival of ragtime, blues, and jazz in the early i900s. For those who dared to think that the flame of black culture had exhausted itself, think again." Clyde Taylor. Acting director, Africana Studies Program, The Institute of African American Affairs, New York University "Souls Grown Deep is a once-in-a-lifetime educational experience." The Honorable John Lewis. Member of Congress; civil rights leader; co-founder of S.N.C.C. "Destined to be a definitive reference and a family heirloom for the next several generations ... The historical value of Souls Grown Deep is boosted beyond the priceless by the essays that describe and respond to the art.... And the artists' words are here, too, as well as their sculptures, paintings, and multimedia embodiments of critical intelligence, aesthetic skill, and spiritual attunement. My soul grows deeper each time I sit with this oracular production, this bible of 20th-century southern African American art." Crisis (the magazine ofthe N.A.A.C.P.)
"A landmark in art and cultural history ... Volume One is a must have—beautiful to look at and an accessibly informative read, piquing our interest for what hidden gems Volume Two has to offer." Black Issues Book Review "This book is a singularly important documentation, presentation, and celebration of African American culture." The Honorable Andrew Young. Civil rights leader, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations "Souls Grown Deep is a superb achievement, a landmark in the study and appreciation of African American culture." Charles Reagan Wilson. Coeditor of Encyclopedia of Southern Culture "Here is an opus that decisively breaks new ground, dives deep, and doesn't hold back.. .. The magnificent visuals alone are enough to leave readers of this volume trembling, awestruck, humbled, and forever transformed." Lynne Spriggs. Curator of folk art, High Museum of Art, Atlanta "For anyone who cares about the true sap and genius ofthe American experience, this book is indispensable. It ensures that a vitally important dimension of late-twentieth-century American art will not be lost to history. Souls Grown Deep is a publishing event in every sense." Jane Livingston and John Beardsley. Coauthors of Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980
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outsider art fair january 26-28 friday noon - 8pm saturday llam - 7pm sunday llam - 6pm
opening night preview january 25
benefitting the museum of american folk art uncommon artists IX symposium saturday january 27
presented by the museum of american folk art and new york university preview and symposium information: 212.977.7170
the puck building Lafayette & houston streets soho, new york city sanford 1. smith & associates 212.777.5218 fax: 212.477.6490 info@sanfordsmith.com www.sanfordsmith.com
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Traveling the Rainbow The Life and Art of Joseph E. Yoakum By Derrel B. DePasse Foreword by Gerard C. Wertkin The first full-length celebration of an African American and Native American self-taught master's landscapes and travels. Copublished with the Museum of American Folk Art $50.00 hardcover, $28.00 softcover
Muffler Men By Timothy Corrigan Correll and Patrick Arthur Polk How creations welded from the scrapheap have become a folk art rage $38.00 unjacketed hardcover, $18.00 softcover
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Saturday, January 27, 2001 10:00 A.m.-12:00 P.M. New York University Barney Building 34 Stuyvesant Street (off 9th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues) Room 105 New York City Museum members: $30 Non-members: $35 Greetings Dr. Judith Weissman Director offolk art studies, associate professor ofart, New York University Gerard C. Wertkin Director, Museum ofAmerican Folk Art Introduction Lee Kogan Director, Folk Art Institute and curator ofspecial projectsfor The Contemporary Center, Museum ofAmerican Folk Art
Charles A.A. Dellschau: The Butcher Who Wanted to Fly Tracy Baker-White Director ofpublic programs, Southwest School ofArt and Craft Passion and Spectacle: The Writing Behind Henry Darger's Art Michael Bonesteel Author,journalist The Influences that Surround My Art Renee Stout Artist Bessie Harvey and Michelangelo: The SelfTaught Artist in an Expanded Context Jenifer P. Borum Instructor, Folk Art Institute; art critic; PhD.candidate in art history, City University's Graduate Center
For reservations, call the Folk Art Institute at 212/977-7170.
INSIDE OUTSIDER ART IN NEW YORK A Museum of American Folk Art Explorers' Day Trip Thursday, January 25, 2001 10:00 A.M.-4:00 P.M. Museum members: $70 Non-members: $85 Lunch included
in Brooklyn, visiting artists and galleries. Brooke Anderson, director and curator of the Museum's Contemporary Center, will accompany the group.
This annual tour will leave from the Museum of American Folk Art, Eva and Morris Feld Gallery on Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets promptly at 10:00 A.M. The day will be spent
Motorcoach transportation and lunch are included in the tour cost. Enrollment is limited. For reservations, call the membership office at 212/977-7170.
ANNOUNCEMENT
OUTSIDER ART FAIR BENEFIT PREVIEW Presented by the Museum of American Folk Art Thursday, January 25 6:30-9:00 P.M. (early admission for Benefactors, 5:30 P.m.) The Puck Building Lafayette and Houston Streets New York City Join us for a festive evening on the opening night of the Outsider Art Fair for cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and an online auction hosted by icollector.com.
Benefit Chairs Michael Donovan & Nancye Green Richard & Amy Rubenstein Selig & Angela Sacks Benefit Co-Chairs Deborah Bush Andrew Edlin Early Admission to the Benefit Preview at 5:30 P.M. Benefactor $500 per person ($440 tax-deductible) Supporter $200 per person ($150 tax-deductible)
Americus Specially pricedfor those 35 years and younger $100 per person ($50 tax-deductible) General Admission to the Benefit Preview at 6:30 P.M.
Friend $75 per person ($35 taxdeductible) To purchase tickets, please contact the Special Events Coordinator at 212/977-7170 ext. 308 or specialevents @folkartmuseum.org.
The Qutsider Art Fair Benefit Preview is sponsored in part by: icollector Donovan & Green Flooz.com Kate Spade
SATURDAY NIGHT Clementine Hunter Melrose Plantation, Nachitoches, Louisiana c. 1968 Acrylic on board 24 ,< 16" Museum of American Folk Art, gift of Mary Bass Newlin, 1989.9.1
Invitation design is courtesy of Donovan & Green. The Outsider Art Fair is produced and managed by Sanford L. Smith & Associates, Ltd.
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24 X 36
INCHES
OR BY EMAILING TO: harpers@jImunro.com
NORTHEAST AUCTIONS
riiiiirmigirogroga Sold by Northeast Auctions The Folk Art Collection of Virginia Ramsey-Pope Cave Sold August 5t" 2000
Grossed $2.5 million
Upcoming Auctions in 2001 March 3"1-4`", May 20th, August 4th-5th, August 18th-19th and November 3rd-4th
NORTHEAST AUCTIONS RONALD BOURGEAULT, Auctioneer 93 Pleasant Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801 Tel: 603-433-8400 Fax: 603-433-0415 New Hampshire License # 2109 - Buyer's Premium
Original Works / Limited Production Commissions Accepted spirations"
mi •
AMR
FOLK ART r
' I
FURNITURE
• J.R.PRUCE.
•N•ci=mi P. 0. Box 34023 Indialantic, Fl. 32903 United States of America (321)779-3934 jrpruce@hotmail.com folkartUS.com
Photos: Gebhazthy
74 WINTER 2003/2001 FOLK ART
hies: Osprey Graphics
WILTON ANTIQUES SHOW arc
9 200
Wilton High School Field Hous Route 7, Wilton, Connecticut
ILTON,the acclaimed venue for the most exciting antiques shows in the count more than 100 distinguished dealers offering country and high-style period rniture American an European decorative arts, folk and fine art for its 34th annual antiques sho Comprehensive in scope, it offers wonderful objects from the 18th, 1 handsomely presented and at a range of prices. It is planned to serve both advanced collectors and thos beginning to acquire authentic antiques. Managed by Marilyn Gould
Early buying and continental breakfast Saturday 8:30 - 10 a.m., Admission $25
Saturday 10 to 5 & Sunday 11 to 5 Admission $8 with ad $7 sy to reach by major highways and Metro North R.R. to Cannondale station and only 5 •5 1/2 miles north of Exit 39B Merritt Parkway • 8 miles north of Exit 15,1-95 • 12 miles south of Exit 3,1-84
CT
Billie Hutt
Irriilay Night at Grainbna's- (Lo. Conversos Series) acrylics on cailiI 1
P.O. Box 6087, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87502
76 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
x36"
Telephone:(505) 474-2855
HE DESIGN ER CRAFISMEN SHOW JANUARY 26, 27 & 28, 2001 Radisson Valley Forge Hotel Ballrooms King of Prussia. Pennsylvania OPENING NIGHT PREVIEW PARTY
FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 2001 6:00pm - 9:00pm Admission: $35.00 per person
SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 2001 10:00am - 5:00pm
SUNDAY, JANUARY 28, 2001 11:00am - 4:00pm Saturday and Sunday Admission: $10.00 per person ($8.00 with this ad)
Ti JIE 1)ES 11 G F,R CRA F J'SM EN
MARCH 9, 10 & 11, 2001 Colonial Center, Sheraton Colonial Hotel Wakefield, Massachusetts OPENING NIGHT PREVIEW PARTY
FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 2001 6:30pm - 9:30pm Admission. $40.00 per person
SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2001 Produced by Goodrich iNt Company Promotions, Inc. 717-796-2380. For travel accommodations, call Priority Travel toll-free at 1-888-796-9991.
10:00am - 5:00pm Children under 15 are admitted for free. Strollers are not permitted on the show floor.
Visit our web site at www.goodrichpromotions.com
SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 2001 11:00am - 4:00pm Saturday and Sunday Admission: $10.00 per person ($8.00 with this ad)
MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART COLLECTION
Inspired by nineteenth century designsfrom the Museum o 'American Folk Art's collection ofover 400 quilts. 222 COLUMBUS AVE., SAN FRANCISCO CA 94133
AMERICAN PACIFIC
PHONE 415.782.1250
FAX 415.782.1260
MUSEUM
REPRODUCTIONS
PROGRAM
ALICE J. HOFFMAN
flq4dt MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART COLLECTION
Representing more than 300 years ofAmerican design,from the late 1600s to the present, the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art CollectionTM brings within reach ofthe public the very best ofthe past to be enjoyed for generations to come. New Directions The Museum welcomes its newest licensee: * Organic Lands No Phoney Baloney...Food for Thought! Organic Lands, an organic charcuterie, is producing a line of lunch meats and convenience foods, made of only organic ingredients—no hormones, no antibiotics, no nitrites or nitrates. Packaging for these products, including that American institution, the hot dog, as well as bologna and other deli items, will feature details from the Museumowned painting Coney Island Boardwalk with Parachute Jump, by Vestie Davis, plus information about the artist, the painting, and the Museum. Organic Lands and the Museum believe that these labels will serve as a platform for promoting interest in folk art in homes and schools throughout the United States. News from Museum Licensees Share our legacy; look for new products from our family of licensees, featuring unique designs inspired by objects from the Museum's collection. * American Pacific Enterprises A cover for all seasons! What better way to welcome the change of seasons than by redecorating. In September,five new quilt designs were introduced on QVC—Town Square,Lone Star Floral, Folk Star, Diamond Star, and Feathered Box. Alice Hoffman,the Museum's director of
licensing was the guest host."The designs of these bedcovers are so visually striking that I couldn't choose among them. I ended up buying all five!" she told viewers. Each of the new designs features a unique combination of floral, plaid, checkered, and geometric prints, creating a dramatic effect in an explosion of fall and winter colors—navy,burgundy, yellow, gold, green, mauve, wine, sage, and tan.
Magic Cubes C elebrate!
IP *
Ole *Fotofollo Cheer for the year! Celebrate, Rejoice, Warm Wishes, Peace on Earth—it's not too late to Warm Wishes send one or all four of the Museum's holiday cards(now available at the Museum's Book and Gift Shop)to friends, family, and business associates. Four exquisite objects from the Museum's permanent collection are featured in this series. *On the Wall Productions Unfolding Beauty!"Glorious American Quilts" is the first in a series of Magic Cubes featuring masterpieces from the Museum's permanent collection. Puzzle Cube unfolds to reveal details from nine quilts: Bird ofParadise Quilt Top; S.H. Crazy Quilt; Diamond in Square Variation Quilt Top; Log Cabin Quilt, Pineapple Variation; Double Wedding Ring Quilt; Double Nine Patch Quilt; Center Star Crazy Throw; Tumbling Blocks Quilt; Log Cabin
Quilt, Barn Raising Variation. Included in the packaging is a foldout with text and a full-color illustration of each quilt. Dear Customer Your purchase of Museumlicensed products directly benefits the exhibition and educational activities of the Museum. Thank you for participating in the Museum's continuing efforts to celebrate the style, craft, and tra-
dition of American folk art. If you have any questions or comments regarding the Museum of American Folk Art Collection, contact us at 212/977-7170. Family of Licensees American Pacific Enterprises(415/7821250) quilts, shams, and pillows. Carvin Folk Art Designs,Inc.(212/755-6474) gold-plated and enameled jewelry.* Fotofolio (212/2260923)art postcard books, wooden postcards, boxed note cards, and magnets.* Galison (212/354-8840)boxed note cards.* Gallery Partners(718/797-2547)scarves and ties.* Hermitage Artists(518/966-8733)tramp art objects.* LiquidArt, Ltd.(312/644-0251) digital art reproduction screensavers. Manticore Inc.(800/782-2645) mouse pads, screen savers, coasters, note cubes. Mary Myers Studio(800/829-9603) wooden nutcrackers, nodders, and tree ornaments.* Museum Masterpieces, Ltd.(617/923-1111) note cards, "notelets," jigsaw puzzles,journals, and gift bags.* On The Wall Productions,Inc. (800/788-4044) Magic Cube.* Organic Lands(315/858-3810) organic deli items. Salamander Graphix,Inc.(803/451-5311) gifts and accessories.* Takashbnaya Company,Ltd.(212/350-0550) home furnishings and decorative accessories (available only in Japan). Tyndale,Inc.(773/384-0800)lighting and lamp shades. Wild Apple Graphics,Ltd. (800/756-8359) fine art reproduction prints and posters.* *Available in the Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shop. Visit our website and Online Shop at www.folkartmuseiun.org.
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 79
AMERICAN FURNITURE AND DECORATIVE ARTS AT AUCTION
Selectionsfrom the Fritz Collection.
Featuring the Folk Collection of Ken and Brenda Fritz, Los Angeles, California Saturday, February 24, 2001 and Sunday, February 25, 2001 357 Main Street Bolton, Massachusetts For information please call Stephen Fletcher or Martha Hamilton at (978)779-6241 or fax (978)779-5144
SKINNER Auctioneers and Appraisers ofAntiques and Fine Art
The Heritage On The Garden, 63Park Plaza, Boston, MA 02116 Tel: 617.350.5400â&#x20AC;˘357Main Street, Bolton, MA 01740 Tel: 978.779.6241 www.skinnerinc.com online bidding at http://skinnerlycos.com
BOOKS
OF
INTEREST
he following recent titles are great gift-giving ideas for the holiday season. All titles are available at the Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shop,2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets, New York City. To order, please call 212/4962966. Museum members receive a 10 percent discount.
Millennial Dreams: Vision and Prophecy in American Folk Art, Gerard C. Wertkin, Museum of American Folk Art, 1999, 40 pages, paperback,$10
The Art of William Edmondson, Cheekwood Museum of Art/ University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 256 pages, paperback,$30
Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives, Cohn Rhodes, Thames & Hudson, 2000, 224 pages, paperback, $14.95
Bill Traylor(1854-1949), Deep Blues, Josef Helfenstein and Roman Kurzmeyer, eds., Yale University Press, 1999, 192 pages, paperback, $29.95
Painting by Heart: The Life and Art of Clementine Hunter, Louisiana Folk Artist, Shelby R. Gilley, St. Emma Press, 2000, 180 pages, hardcover, $50
The Cast-OffRecast: Recycling and the Creative Transformation of Mass-Produced Objects, Timothy Corrigan Correll and Patrick Arthur Polk, eds., UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1999, 148 pages, paperback, $29
Quilting Traditions: Piecesfrom the Past, Patricia T. Herr, Schiffer Publishing, 2000, 160 pages, paperback, $29.95
T
Folk Art, Robert Young, Mitchell Beazley Publishing, 1999, 171 pages, hardcover, $45 Henry Darger Art and Selected Writings, Michael Bonesteel, Rizzoli, 2000, 256 pages, hardcover, $85 Henry J. Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal, John M. MacGregor and Koide Yulciko, Sakuhinsya Press, 2000, 136 pages, hardcover,$69. All text in Japanese The Kingdoms ofEdward Hicks, Carolyn J. Weekley, Abrams, 1999, 312 pages, hardcover, $39.95 The Ledgerbook of Thomas Blue Eagle, Jewel H. Grutman and Gay Matthaei, Lickle, 1999, 72 pages, hardcover, $18.95
Metamorphosis: The Fiber Art ofJudith Scott, John M. MacGregor, Creative Growth Art Center, 1999, 183 pages, hardcover, $45
Red & White: American Redwork Quilts and Patterns, Deborah Harding, Rizzoli, 2000, two volumes, 144 pages and 64 pages, boxed, $39.95
AMERICAN STONEWARE COLLECTORS "AUCTION AND APPRAISAL SERVICES"
Richard C. Hume P.O. Box 281 Bay Head, N.J. 08742 732-899-8707
JOHN C. HILL
Carl Wissler 2015 Lititz Pike Lancaster, PA. 17601 717-569-2309
ANTIQUE INDIAN ART
Self Taught, Outsider, and Folk Art: A Guide to American Artists, Locations and Resources, Betty-Carol Sellen with Cynthia J. Johanson, McFarland, 1999, 368 pages, paperback, $39.95 Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art ofthe South, Paul Arnett and William Arnett, eds., Tinwood Books, 2000,568 pages, hardcover, $95 Window into Collecting American Folk Art: Edward Duff Balken Collection at Princeton, Charlotte Emans Moore and Colleen Cowles Heslip, Art Museum Princeton University, 1999, 162 pages, paperback, $18
6962 East 1st Avenue • Scottsdale, Arizona 85251 (480) 946-2910 • email: antqindart@aol.com
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART Si
TRUSTEES/DONORS
MUSEUM
AMERICAN
OF
FOLK
ART
BOARD OF TRUSTEES Executive Committee Ralph 0. Esmerian Chairman ofthe Board L. John Wilkerson President Frances Sirota Martinson Esq. Executive Vice President and Chairman, Executive Committee Lucy C. Danziger Executive Vice President Joan M.Johnson Vice President
Members Barbara Cate Joseph F. Cullman 3rd
David L. Davies Jonathan Green Susan Gutfreund Kristina Johnson Esq. David Krashes Nancy Mead George H. Meyer Esq. Lauren S. Morgan Cyril I. Nelson Laura Parsons
Mrs. Daniel Cowin Mr.& Mrs. Edgar M. Cullman Elissa F.& Edgar M. Cullman Jr. Joe & Joan Cullman Susan R. Cullman Kendra & Allan Daniel David & Sheena Danziger Lucy & Mike Danziger Peggy & Richard M. Danziger David L. Davies Deborah & Arnold Dunn Ray & Susan Egan Joyce Eppler Ralph 0. Esmerian Sam & Betsey Farber Bequest of Eva & Morris Feld Jacqueline Fowler Gretchen Freeman & Alan Silverman Furthermore, the publication program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund Gallery of Graphic Arts, Ltd. Rebecca & Michael Gamzon James & Nancy Glazer Mr.& Mrs. Merle H. Glick Russ & Karen Goldberger Pat Guthman Cordelia Hamilton Audrey Heckler Mr.& Mrs. George Henry Pamela & Timothy Hill The Hirschhorn Foundation, Robert & Marjorie Hirschhorn, Carolyn Hirshhom Schenker Thomas Isenberg
In Memory of Laura N. Israel Johnson & Johnson Joan & Victor Johnson Kristina Johnson Esq. Julie & Sandy Palley and Samuel & Rebecca Kardon Foundation Allan & Penny Katz Richard Kemble & George Korn, Forager House Collection Susan & Robert Klein Nancy Kollisch & Jeffrey Pressman Joel & Kate Kopp Wendy & Mel Lavitt The Edith and Herbert Lehman Foundation,Inc. John A. Levin & Co., Inc. The Lipman Family Foundation Jolie Kelter & Michael Mace Paul Martinson, Frances Martinson & Howard Graff in memory of Burt Martinson Mr.& Mrs. Christopher Mayer Mr.& Mrs. Dana G. Mead Robert and Meryl Meltzer George H. Meyer Keith & Lauren Morgan Cyril Irwin Nelson New York City Department of Cultural Affairs New York State Northeast Auctions, Ronald Bourgeault Bequest of Mattie Lou O'Kelley Olde Hope Antiques
Bonnie Strauss Vice President Barry D. Brislcin Treasurer Jacqueline Fowler Secretary Anne Hill Blanchard Joyce B. Cowin Samuel Farber
Margaret Z. Robson Selig D. Sacks Esq. Nathaniel J. Sutton Thaddeus S. Woods Trustees Emeriti Cordelia Hamilton George F. Shaskan Jr.
CAPITAL CAMPAIGN DONORS The Museum of American Folk Art has announced a $34.5 million campaign to construct and endow a new home on West 53rd Street. As of September 20, 2000, $25,249,025 has been raised by the following donors: Alconda-Owsley Foundation R.R. Atkins Foundation Marcia Bain Judy & Barry Beil in honor of Alice & Ron Hoffman Bankers Trust Company Mrs. Arthur M. Berger Big Apple Wrecking & Construction Corporation Edward V. Blanchard & M. Anne Hill Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund Mr.& Mrs. James A. Block Edith S. & Barry D. Brislcin Florence Brody Lewis P. Cabot Bliss & Brigitte Camochan John W.Castello in memory of Adele Earnest Caterpillar Foundation Edward Lee Cave Virginia G. Cave Christie's Richard & Teresa Ciccotelli Alexis & George Contos
The Overbrook Foundation J. Randall Plummer & Harvey S. Shipley Miller Ricco/Maresca Gallery John & Margaret Robson Foundation Shirley Schlafer The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation The George and Myra Shaskan Foundation, Inc. Arthur & Suzanne Shawe Mr.& Mrs. Peter J. Solomon Sotheby's Rachel & Donald Strauber Bonnie & Tom Strauss The R. David Sudarsky Charitable Foundation Talcashimaya Co., Ltd. Richard & Maureen Taylor Peter Tillou Jean I. 8z. Raymond S. Troubh Fund David & Jane Walentas Clifford A. Wallach Don Walters & Mary Benisek Mr. Alan N. Weeden Well, Gotshal & Manges LLP Ben Werticin David Wheatcroft John & Barbara Wilkerson Robert & Anne Wilson Dr. Joseph M.& Janet H. Winston Susan Yecies Seven anonymous donors
RECENT DONORS FOR EXHIBITIONS AND OPERATIONS—as of Oct. 1, 2000 The Museum of American Folk Art greatly appreciates the generous support of the following friends: $100,000 and above Fireman's Fund Insurance Company Two anonymous donors $99,999—$50,000 Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Ralph 0. Esmerian Two anonymous donors $49,999—$20,000 Edward V. Blanchard & M. Anne Hill Edith S. & Barry D. Brislcin
U WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
Burnett Group Country Living magazine David L. Davies & Jack Weeden Samuel & Betsey Farber The Lipman Family Foundation, Inc. Joseph Martinson Memorial Fund Mr.& Mrs. Dana G. Mead George H. Meyer Esq. New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Pfizer Inc John & Margaret Robson Geoffrey & Elizabeth Stern Time Warner Two anonymous donors 519,999-510,000 Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Mrs. Daniel Cowin Lucy C.& Frederick M. Danziger William Doyle Galleries Mr.& Mrs. John H. Gutfreund Jacqueline Fowler Furthermore,the publication program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund Joan M.& Victor L. Johnson Barbara & Dave 'Crashes Mr.& Mrs. Keith Morgan Julie K.& Samuel Palley The Parsons Family Foundation The Pinkerton Foundation The Ridgefield Foundation Salomon Smith Barney, Inc. The Shirley Schlafer Foundation Schlumberger Foundation, Inc.
Barbara & Thomas W.Strauss Fund Tenneco John & Barbara Wilkerson One anonymous donor $5,990—$4,000 ABC,Inc. The Bay Fund The John R. and Dorothy D. Caples Fund Barbara & Tracy Cate Con Edison The Goodnow Fund Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies Jerry & Susan Lauren The Magazine Group Marstrand Foundation
Slain Folk Art Auction Spring Masterpiece Sale
Ellis Ruley,"Moose In Stream," 19 x 23, Featured on page 70 of Discovering Ellis Ruley.
Still Accepting Quality Consignments
May 5, 2001- Buford, GA Catalog $25 • Fully-Illustrated, Hundreds of Color Photos 5967 Blackberry Ln. Buford, GA 30518 • 770 932-1000 • slotin@netdepot.com
DONORS
MBNA America, NA. The Mattie Lou O'Kelley Memorial Trust Mr.& Mrs. Richard D. Parsons Pheasant Hill Foundation Philip Morris Companies Inc. Dorothea & Leo Rabkin Ricco/Maresca Gallery Selig D. Sacks Frederic A. & Jean S. Sharf The William P. & Gertrude Schweitzer Foundation, Inc. Two anonymous donors
-fi, " - --" 41,--: ,).7 Minnie Evans
CONIWORARY AMI RICAN f011( ART & Silf-IAUGHT ART Mike Smith A At Home Gallery 2802 Shady Lawn Drive Greensboro, North Carolina 27408 AtHome98@aol.com (336)540-0080
www.athonnegalleSt.com
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$3,999-$2,000 Dr. Charles L. Abney Jr. Bell Atlantic Mr.& Mrs. Richard H. Bott Charles E. Culpeper Fund Duane, Morris & Heckscher T.J. Dermot Dunphy Mr.& Mrs. Alfred C. Eckert BEI Fastsigns Burton & Helaine Fendelman in memory of Ellin Ente Eric J. & Anne Gleacher Vira Hladun-Goldmann Mr.& Mrs. Ronald Goldstein Kristina Johnson Esq. The Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies Employee Matching Gifts Program Mr. and Mrs. Ronald S. Lauder Dan W.Lufkin & Silvia Kramer Gladys Nilsson & Jim Nutt Anthony J. Petullo William D. Rondina Peter L. Schaffer Jean S. & Frederic A. Sharf R. Scudder & Helen Smith Mr.& Mrs. David Stein David Teiger The Zanlcel Fund One anonymous donor
$1,99941,000 Amicus Foundation, Inc. Deborah & James Ash Didi & David Barrett Daniel Berman Billy Ray Hussey"Charlie Usk ' Lanier Meaders t. Mrs. Peter Bing Burton Craig Lucien Koonce ' Kim Ellington Thomas Block & Marilyn Friedman •-.. Marie Rogers"Jim Havner ' Steven Abee ... Robert & Katharine Booth .: Joe Reinhardt ' Walter Fleming ' Roger Hicks Marvin & Lois P. Broder t. ii• Brenda Brody •. 2 ! Edward J. & Margaret Brown Marjorie Chester Citicorp Foundation Matching Gifts Program Liz Claiborne Foundation ... The Coach Dairy Goat Farm Allan & Kendra Daniel Richard M.& Peggy Danziger LYNN MELTON .. Michael Del Castello .i. P.O Box 10152 Greensboro NC 27404-0152 Derrel B. DePasse (336) 632-1413 e-mail: LMelton222@aol.com The Echo Foundation www.selectpottery.com Gloria G. Einbender Douglas G. Ente c' L2M1OgtagE012P3r2raM:01.2:11.2l..aff070:01.- "len"... In memory of Ellin Ente
-.
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84 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
Select Southern Pottery
Janey Fire & John Kalymnios Laura Fisher/Antique Quilts & Americana Maxine & Stuart Frankel Foundation Jill Gallagher Daniel M. Gantt David A. Gardner Roger L. Garrett Barry & Merle Ginsburg Dr. Kurt A. Gitter & Ms. Alice Yelen Jonathan Green Studios, Inc. Nancy & Ben Greenberg Fund Cordelia Hamilton Mr.& Mrs. James Harithas Terry B. Heled Stephen Hessler & Mary Ellen Vehlow Thomas Isenberg Mr.& Mrs. Thomas C. Israel Louise & George Kaminow Mr.& Mrs. Lawrence J. Lasser Mr.& Mrs. Mark Leavitt Barbara S. Levinson Mr. and Mrs. Carl M.Lindberg Jane Marcher Charitable Foundation The Helen R.& Harold C. Mayer Foundation Mrs. Myron L. Mayer Judith & James Milne Judith & Bernard Newman David O'Connor Philip V. Oppenheimer & Mary Close Dr. Burton W.Pearl Mr.& Mrs. Daniel Pollack Polo Ralph Lauren Mr.& Mrs. Mortimer Propp Jack & Roberta E. Rabin Irene Reichert Mr.& Mrs. Keith Reinhard Paige Rense Betty Ring Mr.& Mrs. Daniel Rose Mr.& Mrs. Jeff T. Rose Stella Rubin Antiques The San Diego Foundation Charmaine & Maurice Kaplan Fund Merilyn Sandin-Zarlengo Mr.& Mrs. Henry B. Schacht Carol P. Schatt Kerry Schuss Mr.& Mrs. Marvin Schwartz Sernlitz Glaser Foundation Harvey S. Shipley Miller Myron B.& Cecile B. Shure Hardwicke Sirmnons Nell Singer Mr.& Mrs. Elliott Slade Donald & Rachel Strauber Patricia & Robert Stempel Doris & Stanley Tananbaum Mr.& Mrs. Jeff Tarr Dennis Thomas Tiffany & Co. Mr.& Mrs. James S. Tisch Mr. 8z Mrs. Laurence Tisch Peter & Lynn Tishman Barbara Trueman Mr. & Mrs. Barry Tucker
DONORS
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Ms. Karel F. Wahrsager Mr.& Mrs. David C. Walentas Clinton Walker Foundation Don Walters & Mary Benisek Mr.& Mrs. Charles G. Ward ifi Irwin H.& Elizabeth V. Warren Gerard C. Wertkin Mr.& Mrs. William M. Wetsman G. Marc Whitehead Robert N. Wilson Dr. & Mrs. Joseph M. Winston John & Phyllis Wishnick Laurie Wolfe & Ann C.S. Benton Three anonymous donors S999—$500 The Acorn Foundation Joan H. Adler Ms. Mary Lou Alpert Richard C.& Ingrid Anderson Mr.& Mrs. Al Bachman Joel & Lucy Banker Jeremy L. Banta Frank & June Barsalona Mr.& Mrs. Barry Beil Charles Benenson Leonard Block Jeffrey & Tina Bolton Marilyn & Orren Bradley Marc & Laurie Krasny Brown Deborah Bush Paul & Dana Cam Laurie Carmody Mr.& Mrs. Dick Cashin The Chase Manhattan Foundation Matching Gift Program Mr.& Mrs. Robert Cochran Mrs. Phyllis Collins Stephen H. Cooper & Prof. Karen Gross Judy Cowen Michael F. Coyne & Monica Longworth Karen L. Cramer Simon Critchell Mr.& Mrs. Lewis Cullman Kathryn M.Curran Aaron & Judy Daniels Gary Davenport Debevoise & Plimpton Don & Marion DeWitt Mr.& Mrs. Gerald T. DiManno Maureen D. Donovan Cynthia Drasner Nancy Druckman Arnold & Debbie Dunn Edward Clifford Durrell III Shirley Durst Raymond C. Egan Mr.& Mrs. Alvin Einbender Epstein Philanthropies Ross & Gladys Faires Burton & Helaine Fendelman Mr.& Mrs. Scott Fine Pamela J. Hoiles Firszt Annie Fisher Erin Flanagan Evelyn Frank Ken & Brenda Fritz
Denise Froelich Dale G. Frost Mr.& Mrs. Bruce Geismar Margaret A. Gilliam Elizabeth Gilmore William L. & Mildred Gladstone Kelly Gonda Baron J. & Ellin Gordon Mrs. Terry S. Gottlieb Howard M.Graff Robert M. Greenberg Stanley & Marcia Greenberg Nanette & Irvin Greif Ronald & Susan L. Grudziecki Susan Rosenberg Gurman Anton Haardt Foundation Audrey B. Heckler Mr.& Mrs. Richard Herbst Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hess Leonard & Arlene Hochman Mr.& Mrs. Robert Hodes John & Laima Hood Mr.& Mrs. Ken Iscol Pepi & Vera Jelinek Betty Wold Johnson & Douglas F. Bushnell Guy Johnson Maurice & Charmaine Kaplan Nancy Karlins-Thoman Sherry Kass & Scott Tracy Allan & Penny Katz Steven & Helen Kellogg Ms. Joan E. Kend Arthur & Sybil Kern Mary Kettaneh Robert Kleinberg Barbara S. Klinger Sherry Kronenfeld Mr.& Mrs. Theodore A. Kurz Elizabeth Larson Mr.& Mrs. Leonard A. Lauder Wendy & Mel Levitt Stanley A. Lewis Sherwin & Shirley Lindenbaum Mr.& Mrs. Gerry Lodge Gloria & Patrick Lonergan Nancy B. Maddrey Michael T. Martin Mr.& Mrs. Jonathan Marvel Al Marzorini Kelley McDowell Emily McMahon M.P. McNellis Grete Meilman Mr.& Mrs. Robert Meltzer Michael & Gael Mendelsohn Robert & Joyce Menschel Evelyn S. Meyer Frank J. Miele Timothy & Virginia Millhiser Joy Moos Kathy S. Moses Museums New York Leslie Muth Gallery Ann & Walter Nathan Cyril I. Nelson Mr.& Mrs. Bruce Newman Rachel B. Newman David Nichols
Reer?
il.com wwvv.garde-ra tel 206.760.3720
1==i irrio
nirlse Re SELPTAUGHT Akriumirr*roku
mcirticASOUTH P LEASE VISIT OUR NEWLY D ESIGNED WEB SITE AT
www.YARDDOG.com 1510 S. Congress Austin, TX 78704 512.912.1613 MEMNIEL
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 85
DONORS
AMERICANA 1* * * AT THE * * *
101 11:.I
S
SATURDAY & SUNDAY
JANUARY 13 ST 14 * Celebrating Americana Week In New York *
OVER 300 ANTIQUES EXHIBITS Period & Classical Furniture & Accessories, Fine Art, Folk Art, Quilts, Textiles, Country & Rustic Furniture, Silver, Rugs & More. Passenger Ship Terminal Piers 90 & 92, 12th Ave. at 50th - 55th Streets
NEW YORK CITY
Free Shuttle to & from Midtown Manhattan Admission $10.00 * Show Hours - Saturday & Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. New Collectors Free Admission Sunday 10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. STELLA SHOW MGMT.CO.212-255-0020 www.stellashows.com for dealer list & hotel information
Nancy Ann Oettinger Mr.& Mrs. John E. Oilman Paul L. & Nancy Oppenheimer David Passerman Bob Patton & Busser Howell Janet S. Petry Mr.& Mrs. Laurence B. Pike J. Randall Plummer Dr. & Mrs. Roger Rose Robert A. Roth Johnes Ruta Riccardo Salmona Mr.& Mrs. Robert T. Schaffner Margaret Schmidt Mr.& Mrs. Carl J. Schmitt Mr.& Mrs. Jospeh D. Shein Robert & Minds Shein Mr.& Mrs. Ronald Shelp Bruce B. Shelton Joel & Susan Simon Philanthropic Fund Michael Simon Raymond & Linda Simon Steven Simons & Cheryl Rivers Rita A. Sklar
John & Stephanie Smither Theresa Snyder Richard & Stephanie Solar Peter J. Solomon Kathryn Staley Mr.& Mrs. Victor Studer Barbara & Donald Tober Foundation Mr. Frank Tosto Dorothy Treisman Mr.& Mrs. Raymond S. Troubh United Way of Dutchess County Angela Usrey Mr.& Mrs. Hugh Vanderbilt Mr.& Mrs. Joseph Viener Robert & Ruth Vogele Jennifer Walker Herbert Well In honor of Bennett Weinstock from his firends Margaret Wenstrup Susi Wuennenberg Diana Zanganas Jon & Rebecca Zoler Anonymous in honor of Gerard C. Wertkin
THE JEAN UPMAN FELLOWS 2000 Fellows Jeremy L. Banta Ronald Bourgeault Mary Benisek & Don Walters Edith S. Briskin Edward & Margaret Brown Virginia G. Cave Marjorie Chester Nancy Druckman Andrew Ecllin Gloria Einbender Su-Ellyn Goldstein Peter & Barbara Goodman Howard M. Graff Mr. Richard W. Herbst Harvey Kahn Susan Kleckner Susan & Jerry Lauren
Eric J. Maffei Anne & Jeff Miller Keith Morgan Wendy Nadler J. Randall Plummer Cheryl Rivers Luise Ross Carol Peden Schatt Donna & Marvin Schwartz Jean S. & Frederic A. Sharf Harvey S. Shipley Miller Linda & Ray Simon Mr.& Mrs. R. L. Solar Donald & Rachel Strauber Mr. William W.Stahl Jr. Tracy Goodnow Art and Antiques Dr. Sin von Reis Elizabeth V. Warren
RECENT DONORS TO THE COLLECTIONS
New full-color catalog featuring over 200 fine quality reproductions of quilts, samplers, portraits,landscapes and still lifes. Decorative works from prestigious museums and galleries. Send $8.00 for 32-page catalog and free 5" x 7" mini print. Aaron Ashley Inc., 230 Fifth Avenue, Suite 400, New York, New York, 10001, or call 212-532-9227.
86 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
Gifts Judith Alexander Jill & Sheldon Bonovitz Briskin Family Fund William C. Engvick Ralph 0. Esmerian Samuel & Betsey Farber Jacqueline L. Fowler Millie & Bill Gladstone Ellin & Baron Gordon Lewis B. Greenblatt Sally & Paul Hawkins Vera & Pepi Jelinek Joan & Victor Johnson N.F. Karlins David & Barbara Krashes Jane, Steven and Eric Lang
The Lipman Family Foundation in honor of Jean & Howard Lipman Ezra Mack Robert L. Marcus Family Edward A. McCabe Cyril Irwin Nelson J. Randall Plummer & Harvey S. Shipley Miller Jan Raber Dorothea & Leo Rabkin John & Margaret Robson Linda & Ray Simon Maurice C.& Patricia L. Thompson Janice Turecki Ruth & Robert Vogele Martha Detert Walbolt Dr. & Mrs. Stuart Zweibel
America's leading source for antique American fireplace mantelpieces from 1750 to 1830.
Always over one hundred and fifty mantels. No reproduction mantels. No catalogue available.
251 North 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106 â&#x20AC;˘ 215 574-0700 Appointment Advised.
--....13 an art studio & gallery opportunities for adults with Sophie' creating disabilities through creativity
It's more than just another credit card it's a contribution.
109 Rea Avenue El Cajon CA
Black Angel @ Cindy Chappell 2000
92020
619 593 2205
wings & snow a Show Of angels & snowmen Nov 22-Dec 31
Greeting Cards . Prints . Original Art Brochure Available . www.stmsc.org
our Bets Q7t s7:3 r-(.5
MUSEUM OF AlvIERICAN FOLKART EVA AND MORRIS FEED GALLERY AT LINCOLN SQUARE
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TTY users, call: 1-800-833-6262 Please mention priority code FDNI when you call. There are costs associated with the use of this card. You may contact the issuer and administrator of this program, MBNA America' Bank, to request specific information about the costs by calling 1-800-847-7378 or writing to P.O. Box 15020, Wilmington, DE 19850. *Certain restrictions apply to this benefit and others described in the benefits brochures sent soon after your account is opened. MBNA and MBNA America are federally registered service marks of MBNA America Bank, N.A. MasterCard is a federally registered service mark of MasterCard International Inc., used pursuant to license. 1997 MBNA America Bank, N.A. ADG-H-5 ADG-8-4-97 ADG-OAAB-8/97
American Folk Art Sidney Gecker
RARE 19TH CENTURY PUSH TOY WOOD & IRON MAKER UNKNOWN
226 West 21st Street New York, N.Y 10011 (212)929-8769 Appointment Suggested Subject to prior sale.
Classic Rug Collection, Inc. QUILT PATTERNED RUGS & RUNNERS made of laser-cut hand-pieced carpet Each rug is a unique work of art. Custom sizes, colors and patterns. We can make a rug to match your favorite quilt. call for a free catalog 718 369 9011 or 1 888 334 0063 (toll free)
www.classicrug.com
Nancy Weaver Folk Art Potter & Woodcarver Fine Arts Conservator 76 Weaver Road, Cedartown, GA 30125 Ph:(770) 748-7035 Email: restorer@mindspring.com http://www.nancyweaver.com
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 89
n
FELD6ALLEI` MUSEUM
NEWS
The Fall Season Opens he Museum held a Members' Reception on Tuesday, Sept. 12, to celebrate the fall opening of the exhibition "An Engagement with Folk Art: Cyril I. Nelson's Gifts to the Museum." Museum Trustees and friends came together to honor and thank Trustee Cy Nelson and to view a collection that has been 20 years in the making.
For this exquisite presentation, curator Elizabeth V. Warren selected 60 splendid examples of American folk art from Nelson's more than 100 promised gifts to the collection."An Engagement with Folk Art: Cyril I. Nelson's Gifts to the Museum" is made possible with the generous support of The Lipman Family Foundation, Inc. and Friends of
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Cyril Irwin Nelson and Trustees of the Museum of American Folk Art. The exhibition will be on view through Jan. 13,2001. Free public programming offered in conjunction with the exhibition included lectures on Sept. 14 and Oct. 12, a "Quilt Day" on Oct. 21, a special family program on children's collections on Nov.4, and an adult symposium on folk art collecting on Nov. 9.
Museum Trustee Jonathan Green
Museum Trustee Laura Parsons Cyril Irwin Nelson
Cyril Irwin Nelson with dealer and Mend Laura Fisher
Partners in Education n Oct. 11, Salomon Smith Barney presented the Museum with a check for $10,000 to be used to help to support vital education programs for students and educators of the New York City school system. The Museum's school partnerships are designed to introduce educators and students to works of art in the Museum's collection, incorporate folk art into a wide variety of subject curricula, and foster cross-cultural learning and respect. Programs planned for the coming year include "Come to
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90 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
the Carousel," a multidisciplinary curriculum exploring the artistry and history of the carousel using objects from the Museum's collection, and "Teaching Mathematics Through Quilts," which will approach the study of quilt artistry and design by focusing on mathematics—the roles played by color, line, and pattern—and literacy. On behalf of Salomon Smith Barney, Liz Ross, first vice president—investments, portfolio manager and financial consultant and David Madee, senior vice president, branch manager, presented
Liz Ross, L John Wilkerson, David Midas,and Diana Schlesinger
the $10,000 check to the Museum's new director of education, Diana Schlesinger, and L. John Wilkerson, president of the
Museum's Board of Trustees. Salomon Smith Barney's support of these innovative programs is deeply appreciated.
Photography by Damian Sandone
Treasures from an Untapped Source
(Ave Tonheuk auk Camody, Mittectok
L iotki..g, Lnitiggouiti VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE! www.galeriebonheur.com
VENEZUELAN FOLK ART
!NNW ARTS
Ty appointment: (214) 992-9851 Ty gay: (214) 992-9260 emaiV: gbonkettead.com uutthgakkiebonheutcom
EUROPEAN SELF-TAUGHT NAIVE ART M S KU RJ E N I Skurjeni's first exhibition 1962 was hailed by the Paris surrealists. Andre Breton: "A big welcome to Skurjeni! This is enchanting painting." His work was included in the exhibition entitled "Surrealism" 1970 at the Moderns Museet in Stockholm, in Paris Grand Palais 1976. Dr. B. Kelemen: "He is one of the leading artists of self-taught naive painters. M.Skurjeni is and will be a great painter of naive art." A. FEJES M.JONAS J. KNJAZOVIC I. LACKOVIC M.SKURJENI I. RABUZIN LVECENAJ (younger generation) B. BAHUNEK and others.
Hairdresser's Sign (Togo)
Popular and Folk Art from Asia, Africa and the Americas Haitian Paintings • Metal Sculpture Vodou Flags West African Barber Shop Signs•Huichol Paintings Mexican & Latin American Folk Carvings 6- Paintings Ethnographic Sculpture, Furniture &Textiles 151 N. 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106 215-922-4041 fax: 215-922-0895 www.indigoarts.com
laza Musician" 1971 16-1/4 10-3/4 oil on canvas
Exhibited In U.S.: Smithsonian Institution - Carnegie Institute Museum of Art Scottsdale Center for the Arts - Milwaukee Museum Art Center - Chicago Public Library C.W.Post Art Gallery/Long Island University
MODERN ART COLLECTORS Ltd Sandra B. Premrou By Appointment. 165W 66 Street,#3V, New York, NY 10023. 212.873.0162 www.modernartcollectors.com e-mail: sashamart@aol.com — please visit our website —
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 91
NEW LOCATION! QVC STUDIO PARK, WEST CHESTER, PA
CHESTER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
kw 54 NATIONALLY
ADMISSION $10.00
ACCLAIMED DEALERS SATURDAY,MARCH 10 10 AM -8 PM
SPECIAL EXHIBIT: In books or works or healthy play... A CHHD'S PLACE IN HISTORY
SUNDAY,MARCH 11 10 AM - 5 PM PREVIEW RECEPTION FRIDAY, MARCH 9,6 - 9 PM PREVIEW TICKETS $100.00 PER PERSON
isaaivitetal FOR INFORMATION:610-692-4800 WEB:www.chestercohistorical.org
AMERICMS OLDEST MAKERS OF COLONIAL AND EARLY AMERICAN LIGHTING FIXTURES
MUSEUM
NEWS
Virginia Cave Intern t is a pleasure to announce the establishment of the Virginia Cave Internship. This internship, created in September 2000, provides an opportunity for students of folk art to benefit from working in a museum setting on a day-to-day basis. It is also intended to provide the Museum's staff with the assistance needed to develop current projects and realize departmental objectives. The position of intern is full-time and runs for nine months. The Museum's first Virginia Cave Intern is J. Scott Ogden. Born in 1973 in Oklahoma City and raised in Plano, Texas, Scott Ogden earned a B.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.F.A.from Queens College, City University of New York. Scott, who is working on a film documentary on selftaught artists and who collects folk art, has worked part-time for the Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, Texas, and for the Phyl-
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AUTHENTIC DESIGNS 17 The Mill Road West Rupert, Vermont 05776 (802) 394-7713 Catalogue $3.00 WWI G.Cave and J. Sega Ogden
92 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
lis Kind Gallery in New York City. He has been assigned to Brooke Davis Anderson of the Museum's Contemporary Center and is working closely with her to learn all aspects of the curatorial process. He is assisting with correspondence with the folk art community—artists, collectors, researchers, and guest curators—and helping her with plans for the Museum's inaugural exhibition on the permanent collection. He will also assist in the research for other upcoming exhibitions, future acquisitions, and programming. To gain an understanding of museum work in general, Scott is attending staff meetings, exhibition committee meetings, and publications meetings. The Museum of American Folk Art community salutes Virginia Cave for this generous initiative and for her extensive efforts on behalf of the Capital Campaign. See page 27 for a report on the auction of the Cave collection.
Exhibiting the work of Clyde Angel Larry Ballard Francois Burland Edmond Engel Angela Fidilio Howard Finster Madge Gill Johann Hauser Nancy Josephson Albert Louden Dwight Mackintosh Michel Nedjar Gene Merritt Perifimou Marco Raugei Christine Sefolosha Genevieve Seine Sava Sekulic Gerard Sendrey Bill Traylor Oswald Tschirtner Anna Zemankova Carlo Zinelli + many others
us Come see at the
NEW YORK
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300 West Superior Chicago Illinois 60610 phone 312 9430530 fax 312 943 3970 jsaslow@corecomm.net
www.jsaslowgallery.com
Tuesday- Saturday 10 to 6 Carlo Zinelli, Untitled, 1967 tempera paint on paper, 27"x 20"
"Amazing"— Folk Art Finder "Invaluable"— Raw Vision "Highly recommended"—Library Journal 334 pages 2000 $39.95 softcover Fully indexed ISBN 0-7864-0745-X • galleries • auction houses • fairs and festivals
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WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART 93
Shaker Museum & library
Christopher Gurshin
Old Chatham. hew York
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Shaker Communities and Upcoming Explorers' Tours nThursday, Sept. 21, and Friday, Sept. 22, Director Gerard C. Wertkin accompanied a group of 33 Museum members on a Folk Art Explorers tour of Shaker life in Berkshire County, Mass., and Columbia County, N.Y. The tour focused on the art, crafts, community life, and religion of the Shakers. During the bus ride from New York on Thursday morning, Wertkin, a noted Shaker authority, spoke to the group about the history of the Shakers who came to America from Manchester, England,in 1774. The Explorers arrived at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Mass., around midday and were cordially invited to enjoy an authentic Shaker noon meal of salad, creamy tarragon chicken, wild rice, green beans, carrots, and chocolate pound cake. A tour of Hancock's new exhibition center included an opportunity to see its current exhibition,"Seen and Received: The Shakers' Private Art," which includes drawings by sisters Polly Collins and Polly Jane Reed, as well as other members of the Shaker community. With conservation requirements in mind, Hancock Shaker Village plans to exhibit these precious drawings on a rotating basis after the exhibition closes in April 2001. The group also enjoyed touring the Village and its famous round stone barn. Thursday wound down with a visit to the historic Dutch farmhouse of Suzanne Courcier and
O "Village Covered Bridge" This flat oil painting measures 9 x 14 on a canvas panel and has a gold / silver leaf frame
www.christophergurshin.com Box 634 Newburyport, Massachusetts 01950 978 - 462 - 7761
Mary Michael Shelley Painted low relief woodcarvings since 1973 a) .7 ) _c) a) C.) 4C; u) c 0
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109 Park Place, Ithaca, N.Y. 14850 (please call first).
94 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
Robert Wilkins to view their collection of Shaker furniture and objects; the group then split up to spend the night in three beautiful old inns in the village of Lenox, Mass. Friday's events included a ride through the former Shaker community of New Lebanon, N.Y., and a tour of the Shaker Museum in Old Chatham, N.Y., where the group enjoyed the exhibition "Gathering the Spirits: Fifty Years of the Shaker Museum and Library" before wending its way home. The Museum's trip to Toronto (Oct. 17-22) was sold out in record time; look for our report in the next issue of Folk Art. See page 64 in this issue for information on our upcoming March 2001 tour to Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga. We also have a fabulous trip to Spain planned for September 2001. Folk Art Explorers tours are organized by Beth Bergin and Suzannah Schatt; for information, call the Membership office at 212/9777170 or e-mail folkartexplorers@ folkartmuseum.org.
Helene Berger and Maryann Sudo
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HOWARD ANDERSON FOLK ARTIST CREATING UNIQUE HAND CARVED AND PAINTED WOODEN DECORATIVE AMERICANA
Jacob J. Kass 1910-2000 rooklyn-born folk artist Jacob J. Kass,known for his precisely rendered landscapes and farm scenes painted on steel handsaws and saw blades, died on Aug. 10 of heart failure in Largo, Fla. Kass, who worked in his family's carriage- and truck-painting business, specialized in handlettering, single-brush pinstriping, and gold leaf work. After retirement in 1976, he opened a junk store in Vermont and began collecting and refinishing old hand tools. It was then that he started painting scenes of rural Vermont and memories of his early years in New York. Kass began exhibiting his work in 1981 and received a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artists Grant that same year. His work appeared in many group and solo exhibitions,
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including "Working the Blade: The Painted Saws of Jacob Kass," Tampa Museum of Art, 1994;"Folk Traditionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Three Contemporary Masters" (Miles Carpenter, Earl Cunningham, and Jacob Kass), Federal Reserve Board Building, Washington D.C., 1990; and the Windows at Tiffany's, New York City, 1989. His last solo exhibition,"Saws, Sickles, Squares and Tongs: Paintings by Jacob J. Kass" was on view at the Mennello Museum of American Folk Art in Orlando, Fla.,from June 17 to Sept. 30, 1999. Kass is survived by his sons Raymond of Christianburg, Va., and Warren of South Pasadena, Ha.
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6000 KADERS ROAD VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA 23457 1757) 426-7013
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Betty Shamblen Folk Art Watercolor
Wallace Whipple 1933-2000 allace Whipple, director of the Museum of American Folk Art in 1971 and 1972, died of constrictive pericarditis, on Aug. 14 at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. He was 67. Whipple, a graduate of Stanford University with a B.A. in speech and drama, served as a Foreign Service Officer with the United States Information Agency overseas, organizing exhibitions of American art and arranging performances of visiting American singers, musicians, and theater groups. Following the first landing on the moon in 1969, he was selected by U.S.I.A. to travel around the world, setting up lunar rock exhibits. During his short time as the Museum's director, he oversaw a number of exciting exhibitions,
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including "An Eye On America,""Fabric of the State,""The Spirit of Christmas Past," and "Tattoo." After leaving the Museum, he served as Executive Officer of the American Stamp Dealers Association and was responsible for the annual ASDA National Postage Stamp Show at Madison Square Garden and the International Philatelic Fair. In 1978, he moved to Los Angeles with his wife to pursue a career in acting. He appeared in commercials and on television shows, and was a member of the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and Actors' Equity. He is survived by his wife, Sharon, a sister, and four nieces.
"Hand Cut Weathervanes" 2000 Original, 17" x 20" Reproductions
The Country Gardner
17 025'
Spring in the Country 17" x 20'
Spring Quilt Sale 17" x 20"
www.mygalleryandme.com Tele:(716) 223-3404
Fax: (716) 223-1769
WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
95
EPSTEIN/POWELL 66 Grand St., New York, N.Y. 10013 By Appointment(212) 226-7316 e-mail: artfolks@mindspring.com
Jesse Aaron Rex Clawson Donovan Durham Antonio Esteves Victor Joseph Gatto (Estate) Lonnie Holley S.L. Jones Charlie Lucas
Justin McCarthy Old Ironsides Pry Popeye Reed Max Romain Bill Roseman Jack Savitsky Clarence Stringfield Mose Tolliver and other American outsiders
We're a short walkfrom the Outsider Art Fair
INDEX
TO
ADVERTISERS
Aaron Ashley, Inc. 86 Allan Katz Americana 16 America, Oh Yes! 26 American Folk 26 American Pacific 78 American Pie 24 American Stoneware Collectors 81 The Ames Gallery 9 Anne Bourassa 71 Antique Quaint Quilts 76 Anton Haardt Gallery 68 At Home Gallery 84 Authentic Designs 92 Baker & Co. 74 Betty W.Shamblen 95 Billie Hutt 76 Carl Hammer Gallery 28, 29 Cavin-Morris Gallery 11 Charles Munro 72 Chester County Historical Society 92 Christie's 17 Christopher Gurshin 94 Classic Rug Collection Inc. 89 David Wheatcroft 13 Epstein/Powell 96 Fassbender Gallery 2 Fleisher/Oilman Gallery Back Cover
96 WINTER 2000/2001 FOLK ART
Francis J. Purcell Inc. Galerie Bonheur Galerie St. Etienne Garde Rail Gallery Gilley's Gallery Ginger Young Gallery Goodrich & Co. Promotions Hill Gallery Hypoint Art & Antiques Indigo Arts J. Crist Gallery J.R. Pruce Jackie Radwin Jeffrey Tillou Antiques John C. Hill Judy A. Saslow Gallery June Lambert K.S. Art Kimball Sterling Auctions Laura Fisher Lindsay Gallery Luise Ross Gallery Marcia Weber/Art Objects Mary Michael Shelley MBNA America McFarland Publishers The Mennello Museum
87 91 10 85 25 10 77 12 93 91 3 74 15 21 81 93 16 25 70 22 32 65 33 94 88 93 30
Modern Art Collectors Ltd. 91 Nancy Weaver 89 Northeast Auctions 73 Olde Hope Antiques 7 Primitive Folk Art 95 Ricco/Maresca Gallery Inside Front Cover Rising Fawn Folk Art 30 Robert Cargo Folk Art Gallery 23 Rosehips Gallery 32 Sanford L. Smith & Associates 67 Select Southern Pottery 84 Sidney Gecker 89 Skinner 80 Slotin Folk Art Auction 83 Sotheby's Inside Back Cover St. Madeleine Sophie's Center 88 Stella Show Management 86 Steve Miller 1 Tinwood Books 66 Tops Gallery 88 Tracy Goodnow 8 University Press of Mississippi 68 Walters/Benisek 4 Wilton Historical Society 75 Yard Dog Folk Art 85
Important Americana AUCTIONS IN NEW YORK: THURSDAY AND FRIDAY, JANUARY 18 AND 19, 2001
EXHIBITION OPENS
SOTHEBY'S
Saturday, January 13
1334 York Avenue New York, NY 10021
INQUIRIES
www.sothebys.com
Nancy Druckman 212 606 7225 fax 212 606 7038 CATALOGUES
800 444 3709 outside the continental U.S. 203 847 0465 fax 203 849 0223
A fine carved and painted cigar store Indian (detail), attributed to Samuel Robb, circa 1880 Height of full-standing figure with base: 72 'A in. Auction estimate: S60,000-80,000
Founded 1744
tr 6"3
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Major Route from New York to New Haven and Hartford Connecticut, 1971, colored pencil and ballpoint pen on paper, II x 39 3/4 inches
211 S. 17th Street Philadelphia 1 9 1 0 3 (215)545.7562 (Fax)54.5.6140
FLEISHER OLLMAN GALLERY
book with our exhibition, as a fitting tribute to both artist and writer
book will be a lasting memorial to Derrel, a truly fine person. We are honored -to present her
transformed her passion forYoakum's work into the first comprehensive book about him. This
Joseph E. Yoakum. Derrel was a rare individual whose intellectual drive and belief in self-taught art
celebrate the long awaited publication of her book, TRAVELING THE RAINBOW: The Life and Art of
This exhibition is dedicated to our friend Derrel DePasse. While we mourn her death we also
January 6 til February 3, 2001
An exhibition of drawings from private collections
R {nat..
Joseph Yoakum 1890- 1972