Tag Archives: folk art

Review in Burnaway Magazine: “Outliers and American Vanguard Art”

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Installation view, Outliers and American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., January 28–May 13, 2018

Read my new review “Outliers and American Vanguard Art” Levels the Playing Field in Burnaway Magazine. I saw the Outliers exhibition at the National Gallery of Art this past spring, and it opens today at the High Museum in Atlanta. The exhibition is truly exciting for the myriad ways it offers to unravel the modernist canon, opening up rich possibilities for a new understanding of American modern art.

“Outliers and American Vanguard Art”—from the title, it is not immediately clear that this exhibition reconsiders art often referred to as outsider, visionary, or folk, in order to examine its relationship to the development of modern art in America. Curator Lynne Cooke chose the term “outlier” to counter the dismissive or limiting connotations that previous descriptors have taken on. It also stakes out a theoretical position. “Outlier” suggests that an artist’s distance from centers of institutional power can create space for different goals or values. The exhibition debuted at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., this spring, and opens on June 24 at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, a museum known for its strong holdings in self-taught artists from the South. Comprising some 250 works — with slight variations between the venues — the show opens up the definition of American art, from the beginning of modernism to today, and challenges familiar notions of what modernism can look like.

Continue reading on Burnaway…

 

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A Folk Art Paradise in Georgia: Howard Finster’s Paradise Gardens

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Over on Burnaway Magazine, there’s a new article up that I wrote about visiting folk artist Howard Finster’s former home and garden in Summerville, Georgia. The artist created an area full of folk art, religious text, and junk intermingled at every turn, and visiting is a fun daytrip from Atlanta or elsewhere in North Georgia. Seeing the artist’s work here, as opposed to a museum, clarifies where the artist was coming from in both a literal and figurative sense, and strengthened my appreciation of his work. I’ve included more pictures here, and just follow the link to read the article “Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden Continues to Thrive” on Burnaway.

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I visited Paradise Gardens in June. Now that I’ve gotten back from a long vacation (without a computer–possibly not the best decision I’ve ever made), I hope to catch up and posts of some of the things I’ve seen soon.

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Imre Bukta: Another Hungary at the Mucsarnok

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The House, 2012

Imre Bukta: Another Hungary, a large show at Budapest’s Mucsarnok (or Kunsthalle), takes you through the Hungarian painter’s well-known  older works as well as new paintings, installations, and videos. Themes of rural life, of a Hungary outside of Budapest, run through his work with an emphasis of agrarian life, for example through the incorporation of common farm materials, and local community, thus the title. This exhibition shows the skill and distinct vision of an intelligent artist that it would be incorrect to dismiss as ‘merely’ a folk artist. As an exhibition, it would have been stronger for a better editing of the works. It felt as if everything the artist had ever made was thrown up on the walls, but that’s another story.

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Grandmother, grandson (Photo via Pontoldal’s photostream. More here.)

The presentation of these themes is highly sophisticated, whether it be in the integration of video into an installation or in his complex, worked-over board compositions, whose sophistication belie the rustic materials (straw, nails, corn) and aesthetic. Perhaps most of all, I liked how Bukta combines both a real feeling for the people and world he presents with intellectual distance. This can be seen in the irony of the word “Nostalgy” carved into the knife balanced on the plain country table with its video image of meat beneath.

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While it uses symbols of rural Hungary, this is no glorified folk art, but something very contemporary and intelligent. In both the older, iconic work of the artist above and the recent work below , there is (ahem) a certain edge to his work, but any coldness of dry irony is softened by an honest, sympathetic portrayal of a place that resists stereotypes.

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Hungarian Landscape, 2010