The Folk Stylists

Warren Kimble is often touted as “America’s best known contemporary folk artist” and is the subject of an exhibit in the Lighthouse Galleries at the Shelburne Museum on view through October. I saw this exhibit on my recent trip to the museum and thought it would be useful to use the occasion to introduce my readers to the world of trained artists who paint in a folk art style. In the past, these artists have been referred to as “faux naives” or “folk stylists,” but as you can tell from the tag line above, people often confuse the issue and call them folk artists in order to market exhibitions or products relating to this artwork. It is important to know the difference between their work and the folk art that is the primary subject of this blog and the folk art galleries at the Fenimore Art Museum.

Warren Kimble is a fine artist; no question about it. He received his training at Syracuse University and joined the art faculty at Castleton State College in Castleton, Vermont. This training shows in the works displayed on the second floor of the Lighthouse, which deal with themes of war and its human toll and hope for the future (see "Widows of War" installation below). His abstract compositions and object installations are quite good and much more substantive than his stylized folk pieces in the first floor galleries.

The latter feature his trademark style of exaggerated proportions and nostalgic themes that take some of the common attributes of folk art and generalize them for broad audience appeal (the cow, below, is perhaps his best known example). They are basically folk décor – which is fine, if you enjoy that – but they are not folk art in any real sense.

Kimble is by no means the only artist to appropriate folk art style into a commercially viable genre – Charles Wysocki comes to mind – but he may be the most successful. Vermont Living claims his licensing contracts bring in more than $100 million annually.

While there’s nothing wrong with consciously and deliberately painting in a folk art style even after years of artistic training, and nothing wrong with decorating one’s home with this type of art, it’s better not to confuse this output with folk artists who learned to create art informally or through community traditions, and who make art because of an inescapable desire to communicate something important about their lives and the world as they see it. In my mind, nothing trumps the aesthetics of meaning.

Trash Becomes Electra

There are only a few places in the United States where you can see large collections of classic American folk art. I mean the folk art that was collected in the early decades of the 20th century, when Americana enthusiasts were just beginning to realize how broad and diverse the country’s heritage really was. I spent last Friday at one of these destinations: the Shelburne Museum, in Shelburne, Vermont.

Founded by Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888-1960), an heiress to the Havemeyer fortune, the museum includes much more than folk art. In her lifetime, Mrs. Webb acquired more than 150,000 pieces and relocated 25 historic buildings to her property in Shelburne. The result is a fascinating and wide-ranging romp through American material culture and architecture, not as a cohesive historic village like our own Farmers’ Museum, but as a collection of experiences, each very different from the one before.

Mrs. Webb started collecting folk art early by Americana standards, acquiring her first piece, a cigar store figure purchased for $15, in 1907. Her mother, Louisine Havemeyer, a collector of European and Asian art, saw the trade signs and cigar store figures that Electra had at her Long Island home and asked her: “How can you, Electra, you who have been brought up with Rembrandts and Manets, live with such American trash?”

Talk about the glorious results of a misspent youth. The Shelburne’s folk art collection can be seen in a number of different buildings at the museum, but most of the best pieces are in the Stagecoach Inn. The collection is stunning in its quality and breadth, and ranks right up there with our own collection at the Fenimore Art Museum in many categories. To be honest, it is better than our in some areas. For my own amusement, I did a quick and unscientific scorecard comparing our two collections, based upon what was on view and the pieces I could recall from past visits and publications.

Folk Art Scorecard: Fenimore vs. Shelburne

Portraits: Fenimore
Landscapes/townscapes: Fenimore
Schoolgirl art: Shelburne
Quilts: Shelburne
Sculpture: Shelburne
Ceramics (stoneware): Fenimore
Ceramics (redware): Shelburne
20th century: Fenimore

All in all, pretty evenly matched. The point for you, however, is not a useless and indefensible curatorial exercise. If you love folk art, these are two collections you must see, as they complement each other in many ways and are of very high quality. They are an important window into the lives of ordinary Americans, and prove beyond dispute that the academy has no monopoly on great art.

And it is even more fascinating to consider that, barely a century ago, this material was referred to as trash. We should be grateful to the few passionate and stubborn people, like Mrs. Webb and our own Stephen Clark, who knew better.