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Folk Art Quotes

Browse 26 quotes about Folk Art.

Folk Art Quotes

“At its outset in the mid-1960s, the historic preservation movement contributed to the racial splintering of the nation's urban fabric. It denied the freeway's entry into communities deemed historic while granting its passage through communities judged differently. It empowered some communities in their fight against the freeway while putting others at a disadvantage. In the disproportionate number of black communities that bore the brunt of urban highway construction, the preservation strategy had no chance, leaving displaced residents with a meager set of resources to recuperate their connection to the past. This is why we need to pay attention to murals, festivals, autobiographies, oral histories, and archival efforts. In the high-stakes struggles over the fate of the American city, these were the "weapons of the weak," the tools invented by displaced communities to fight the forced erasures of their past.”

PreservationFreewaysFolk Art
Book:The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City
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“The theme of this exhibition is folk art, and the building, which is usually a typical white-cube space, has been dressed up to look like a circus. The walls are covered in strange murals; level with my head are alligators eating trapeze artists who are, in turn, eating small alligators. In large display cases are arrangements by the famous Victorian taxidermist and artist, Walter Potter. There's a feast being had by little ginger kittens that look like they were once---before dying and being stuffed with hay and then seated on miniature dining chairs and put in front of tiny cakes, pots of tea, and samovars---from the same litter. Their eyes are beautiful, black, glistening marbles. Next to the cat feast is another Walter Potter---rabbits diligently working at desks in a miniature classroom. It's thrilling seeing these works. I've known them for years; I studied them for my A-levels. In photographs, they seem clean and unreal. Up close, I can see the little dimples in the animals' skin where their muscles used to attach; I can smell the tiny, microscopic traces of hundred-year-old-blood inside them.”

Folk ArtTaxidermyArt Exhibition
Book:Woman, Eating
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“The only thing I collect is art. I collect it because I like looking at it. A lot of it is really personal stuff that my friends have made, paintings that my husband's mother made, and things that I bought. I buy abstract art on eBay, and I buy some outsider art on eBay, or what is called folk art, I buy a lot of. I have a lot of professional art work as well as more stuff my friends' kids make. To have a wall of art to look at, I feel really surrounded by love, because so much of the work is related to my friendships.”

FeelsWellsLooksArtMadeKidsMotherStuffLove IsPaintingWallHusbandMy FriendsFolksRelatedAbstractMy HusbandOutsidersMy FriendshipAbstract ArtEbayFolk ArtPersonal StuffSurrounded By Love
Author:Kathleen Hanna
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“In spite of their obvious differences, folk art and popular art have much in common; they are easy to understand, they are romantic, patriotic, conventionally moral, and they are held in deep affection by those who are suspicious of the great arts. Popular artists can be serious, like Frederick Remington, or trivial, like Charles Dana Gibson; they can be men of genius like Chaplin or men of talent like Harold Lloyd; they can be as uni versal as Dickens or as parochial as E.P. Roe; one thing common to all of them is the power to communicate directly with everyone.”

MenArtArtistCultureEasyDifferencesCommonMoralOne ThingTalentSeriousGeniusFolksAffectionObviousCommunicateSpitePatrioticGreat ArtBe A ManSuspiciousPopular CultureDickensChaplinFolk ArtRemingtonDeep Affection
Author:Gilbert Seldes
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“I always thought the women of my age group got short shrift because the women's liberation movement came slightly after. You look at the yearbooks and you see the future homemakers of America - hurray for that - but you also see them in the engineers club. You see minority kids as student body presidents at a time when everyone was supposed to be terminally racist. Yearbooks are genres; they're also folk art, folk documentation.”

LooksArtBodyKidsAgeAmericaPresidentGroupsMovementStudentsFolksClubsSupposed To BeLiberationGenreMinoritiesRacistEngineersDocumentationHomemakerYearbookFolk Art
Author:Kevin Starr
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“When I left the theater… I was thinking that I’d seen a classic of American dance. It confers a mythic dimension on ordinary aspects of our daily lives – it’s unfaked folk art. The dancers, crashing wave upon wave into those falls, have a happy insane spirit that recalls a unique moment in American life – the time we did the school play or we were ready to drown at a swimming meet. The last time most of us were happy in that way.”

ThinkingWayArtPlayMomentsSchoolLastsSpiritFallLeftReadyUniqueOrdinaryAspectTheaterFolksWaveInsaneClassicDimensionsDancerDaily LifeSwimmingRecallsLast TimeAmerican LifeSchool PlaysFolk ArtCrashing Waves
Author:Arlene Croce
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“Until we can insert a USB into our ear and download our thoughts, drawing remains the best way of getting visual information on to the page. I draw as a collagist, juxtaposing images and styles of mark-making from many sources. The world I draw is the interior landscape of my own personal obsessions and of cultures I have absorbed and adapted, from Latvian folk art to Japanese screens. I lasso thoughts with a pen. I draw a stave church or someone from Hello! magazine not because I want to replicate how they look, but because of the meaning they bring to the work.”

WorldWayWantLooksArtCultureChurchStyleInformationSourcePagesDrawsEarsMarkRemainsFolksScreensDrawingBest WayObsessionMagazinesLandscapeVisualsPensOur ThoughtsInteriorsHelloAdaptedDownloadsInsertReplicateFolk Art
Author:Grayson Perry
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