"Fascinating!!!" -- The New York Times

I just received word that a terrific review of our William Matthew Prior exhibition appeared in today's New York Times. You can find it here. It is a remarkable insightful review that recognizes the complexities of calling people "folk artists" in a time well before the term was ever used. Prior's case is one of the most interesting and complex, and the reviewer notes that his work, "were it to appear in an exhibition of paintings by Manet and his followers, would not be out of place."

Wow. I love that. Another reminder to forget the categories and look at the art. Enjoy the review, and please see the exhibition if you can. It will be at the American Folk Art Museum until May 26.

Mr. Folk Art

On my recent trip to New York City, I decided to stop by the American Folk Art Museum, which as you probably know had to vacate its 53rd building last year and return to its old location opposite Lincoln Center owing to financial difficulties. I must say it looks as good as ever in the space that I associated with the museum in the 1980s, and the exhibition, "Jubilation/Rumination," was a terrific exploration of the stellar permanent collection.

But the most nostalgic moment for me was happening upon an old acquaintance who, for me, represents the face of the folk art museum. His name is Ken, and he has been a guard at the museum for more than a quarter century. For most of that time, he has gone out of his way to greet me by name and chat with me when I happen to come by. And I must say, it was usually only once or twice a year. Ken knew who I was long before I knew his name.

I wish all museums had an ambassador as personable as Ken. People like him are such a valuable asset; they are a vital link between the public and the collection. And remember, he is a guard, not a docent. His enthusiasm for the subject is admirable, and, I'm sure for many, infectious. If there is a "Mr. Folk Art," I have no doubt that it is Ken the guard.

Waving the Flag

What is the difference between good folk art and great folk art? Here’s an instructive comparison for you: two flag gates from two different Upstate New York farms.


Our flag gate is on view at The Farmers’ Museum, just across the road from the Fenimore Art Museum here in Cooperstown. As I was roaming through the museum the other day it caught my eye, as usual, and reminded me of a blog post idea I had some time ago to compare it to the flag gate in the collection of the American Folk Art Museum in New York.

Ours is a good item, a wonderful example of the creativity of rural folk. And it couldn’t be simpler. The person who fashioned the gate was no doubt inspired by the horizontal slats of wood to create the red stripes of the American flag. From there it was a relatively easy matter to make the field of stars from a rectangular piece of fiberboard, painted blue, and cutouts of stars to populate it. Thirty nine stars in total, if that is a reliable estimation of the gate’s date: both Dakotas were added to the Union in 1889 as the 39th and 40th states. The gate was purchased from a Connecticut dealer in 1975, just before the Bicentennial, with a history of coming from a farm in Davenport, New York, about 30 miles south of Cooperstown. All in all, a nice piece, proudly displayed on the second floor of The Farmers’ Museum’s Main Barn, over the orientation area.

The flag gate at the American Folk Art Museum is another matter altogether. Conceptually similar to our gate, in that it is constructed out of the basic form of a slatted gate, this piece goes far beyond ours in expressive power.

In fact, it is amazing. Where our gate has negative space to stand in for the white stripes, the Folk Art Museum’s gate has white stripes set back from the red ones, giving the gate a three-dimensionality that adds to its vibrancy. But that’s just the beginning. The Folk Art Museum’s gate has stenciled stars set in a beautiful oval pattern. There are 37 stars, suggesting a date of 1876, the nation’s centennial. But most of all, in this gate the artist has carved the horizontal slats so that they actually wave as if the flag in flying in a stiff breeze.

The effect is truly spectacular. Looking at this gate, one gets a sense of energy and patriotic spirit that is rare in utilitarian folk art. This dynamism has made it an icon of the museum since the early 1960s, when it was founded.

We owe the existence of this great piece of folk art to Herbert Waide Hemphill, who had an unparalleled eye for finding folk art in the unlikeliest of places. This gate, thought to be from rural northern New York State, Jefferson County in particular, turned up at an Americana auction surrounded by garden furniture.

These two gates are both remarkable survivals and speak volumes about rural culture in 19th-century America. Yet in one of them, a few crucial visual tricks on the part of the unknown artist has created a truly magnificent work of art.

Boy Wonder

Anyone who has worked with American folk portraiture knows that while portraits in oil and watercolor are plentiful, it is extremely rare to see one in wood. We have had one such portrait in the Fenimore Art Museum collection for many decades, our “Head of a Boy” carved by Asa Ames in 1847 and given to us by Stephen C. Clark in 1955.

This bust has an odd presence about it. It certainly commands your attention when you are in the gallery or storage area with it. It is life size, and the face is so lifelike and the eyes so intense that it can leave you with the eerie feeling that it is somehow alive. The title suggests that we do not know who the subject was, and for many years I resigned myself to never knowing.

That is, until a 2008 exhibition by Stacy Hollander at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, entitled "Asa Ames: Occupation Sculpturing." Stacy gathered together a group of Ames carvings (there aren’t many known – only about 12 – but she managed to assemble 9 really terrific pieces) and presented the artist’s work in the context of his tragically short life (you can view the online catalogue to “Asa Ames: Occupation Sculpturing” here).

Ames worked in western New York State, around Evans in Erie County, carving likenesses of friends and neighbors. He thought enough of his work to list his occupation as “sculpturing” in the 1850 Federal Census (note his fancy carved signature on the underside of the carving). Ames died in 1851 of consumption at the age of just 27.

Despite the lack of biographical information on the artist, Stacy uncovered a stunning new find that, to me, speaks volumes about Ames. It is a photograph of the artist near the end of his life, mallet and chisel in hand, working on a bust that looks like a self portrait. He is surrounded by his sculptures along with other props and, somewhat inexplicably, an unidentified man posing as a sculpted bust at the lower left.

The striking thing about this photo is the resemblance of Ames to our boy. Looking at his profile in the photo, the shape of his face and his hair, and comparing it to our carved bust, makes me wonder if our piece is a self portrait. It’s impossible to say with certainty, and I believe that Stacy thought our bust could perhaps be a sibling of the artist’s if not the artist himself, but the connection has caused me to see our piece in a whole different light than previously.

 One thing’s for sure: it would take a lot of biographical data to equal the value of this photo in enhancing our understanding of the artist.

Above:
 
Artist unidentified; plate marked Scovills (active c. 1839–1850), New York State, 1849–1851, 3 1/4 x 3 3/4 x 5/8 inches. Collection of John T. Ames, Austin, Texas, loaned in loving memory of John T. and LaVeda R. Ames

The Incidental Masterpiece

Stopping to smell the roses – or look at art – is not the sort of thing that crosses your mind when you are hurrying through a busy subway station in midtown Manhattan. On my recent trip to New York, however, I couldn’t help making a pilgrimage to one very important and nostalgic spot: the Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street Station, where Ralph Fasanella’s magnificent 1950 painting “Subway Riders” sits encased behind glass.


I know this painting well from years of seeing it up close in Ralph’s studio in Ardsley. He painted it after several years of riding the subway at all hours and sketching people on pieces of newspaper. It summarizes the daily transience of the urban dweller, the temporary moment in every day when one retreats to a zone of solitude in one of the noisiest and most public spaces. The painting “Subway Riders” seems to embody the notion that people of all backgrounds and from all levels of society share these moments. The great paradox of the work is the aloneness of togetherness in the course of a working day.

In 1991, union organizer Ron Carver founded an initiative to bring Fasanella’s art to the public. His organization, called “Public Domain,” actively raised funds to purchase the artworks out of private collections and place them on permanent public view. Not in museums, necessarily, but in spaces frequented by working people. Hence the painting in a subway station, installed there in 1995. “Subway Riders” is actually owned by the American Folk Art Museum, which is right down 53rd Street near 6th Avenue, but on permanent loan to the MTA for display in the station.

Public art is a noble endeavor, but not without its challenges. On my recent visit, I noticed that although untold thousands of people must see this painting every day, very few probably actually look. My informal observation seemed to indicate that they are more interested in the subway map next to the painting case (art should be useful, right?) and in the horizontal shelf in front of the case, where they could put down their cell phone and write down a number or note to themselves. Sometimes I think that it’s better for a painting to be admired by hundreds than ignored by thousands.

But that is a facile and ultimately pointless perspective. Seeing Fasanella’s masterpiece costs nothing (it is outside the turnstiles) and is on view 24 hours a day. Besides, you don’t need to study a painting to take something from it. A thousand sidelong glances places this work in the minds of many, regardless of whether they absorb it in detail. I like to think that in some small way “Subway Riders” gets people to realize that no matter how absorbed in our daily lives, we are all connected.

A Canal Runs Through It

I was in New York recently to attend the opening of the new exhibition of American genre painting, “American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915” at the Metropolitan and had the opportunity to spend some time in one of my favorite places, the American Folk Art Museum on 53rd Street. The museum has on display a feature exhibition on the life and work of landscape and marine painter Thomas Chambers, and the Fenimore Art Museum’s masterpiece by this artist, “Cold Spring and Mount Taurus from Fort Putnam” (above, oil on canvas, 34 1/8" x 49 1/2") is a highlight of the exhibition.

There were two statements by exhibition curator Kathleen Foster in the catalogue that gave me the ideas for this post. Foster rightly points out that Chambers’ bold and colorful painting style would have been right at home in a mid-1840s middle-class interior, and would have “echoed the boldly painted walls, patterned floor cloths or ingrain carpet, and faux-grained finishes of the interior.” This made clear that the availability of fancy goods had a large impact on the acceptance of Chambers’ artwork by his clientele.

The second statement was more speculative but no less compelling. Kathy noted the history of discovery of Chambers’ paintings in upstate New York cities such as Rochester and Syracuse, roughly due west of Albany, where the artist is known to have lived. There is no telling, of course, whether the artist, his paintings, or his clients followed this westward course, but when considered along with the previous idea about the availability of goods it called to mind a powerful historical context for understanding Chambers’ life and work in New York State, for this was the very path of the engineering marvel that transformed the economy and culture of New York; the Erie Canal.

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 had a profound impact on many aspects of life in New York State, not least on a wide range of rural artists and artisans who provided artwork and consumer goods deemed essential to any proper middle-class home. A flood of settlers came from eastern New York, New England, and Europe, creating an expanded market and new freedom of expression.

The Canal solved logistical problems for some craft industries, such as stoneware and textiles. Increased economic activity fostered a demand for finer decorative arts as well as for portraits, landscapes, and townscapes. By allowing the importation of fine European goods, and stimulating local industries who could now export virtually anywhere, the Canal was responsible for providing a competitive atmosphere whereby folk artists had to innovate in order to thrive.

Chambers’ large, bold, and colorful works were perfectly suited for this expanded and sophisticated market. And he would not have had to travel far to see similar examples of fancy work being done by the folk artists of his time. This 1848 view of State Street in Albany by John Wilson (above, owned by the Albany Institute of History and Art) shows a profusion of elaborate painted signs, banners, and wagons (see detail at right). Chambers lived and worked on this very street from 1852 to 1857. For him, the wonders wrought by the Erie Canal were right outside his door.