The importance of folk art should not be underestimated

Folk art may be the sentimental work of amateurs, but it is also a window into a deeper understanding of popular culture.

John Bolger (1776–1839), Walloomoolloo The Seat of Jno Palmer Esqr Port Jackson . Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

The title of this book is well-suited to its subject, for the word “vernacular”, like “demotic” is a term defined by its antithesis, not one that has an independent meaning. Strictly, of course, all words have their significance as part of a system of signs; nonetheless, some have an essentially positive sense, like “brave”, while others are essentially negative, like “cowardly”, which merely refers to a lack of courage.

The word “vernacular” refers to a language spoken by the people, in contrast to some more formal language spoken and written by the ruling and administrative classes. And whereas the formal language is codified and regulated, vernaculars are not; instead they are shaped by convention and habit. Especially before modern attempts at universal education, most people spoke their native language in this informal way, learning complex grammatical rules from usage alone.

In modern Europe, the term most often refers to the new languages that emerged or developed after the fall of the Roman Empire and in many cases out of a popular form of Latin; thus medieval schools and universities were taught in Latin, but in the streets and markets people were speaking the patois that became French and Italian. From the 14th century onwards, these vernaculars evolved into sophisticated languages capable of literary expression and technical analysis, although it was not until the 17th century that French could equal Latin as a vehicle for philosophy and science.

To call folk art “vernacular” is thus at once to define it in opposition to something more formal, or what is sometimes called “high art”. And this is correct, for folk art does not exist where the other pole is missing. If we consider the elegantly simplified forms of Cycladic art from 3000 to 5000 years ago, for example, it is clear that they can in no sense be considered an expression of folk art: on the contrary, these sculptures, produced by highly skilled craftsmen for religious or spiritual purposes, were the high art of their time.

For the same reason, tribal art is not vernacular, because it is not the popular version of or an alternative to a higher or more articulate tradition; nor therefore is traditional Aboriginal work vernacular or folk art. Some forms of Aboriginal work, adopting western materials or genres, may be considered as vernacular, although the kind of large semi-abstract paintings that do so well in the art market are neither true high art nor folk art, but a hybrid commercial form.

Kitsch is another important point of difference. Tribal arts are never kitsch, that is vulgar or sentimental, because kitsch arises from two things: sentiment that is false or unreal, and materials, media or conventions that are misunderstood. The sentiment in tribal art is never unreal; it is always the expression of urgency and conviction; and the media employed are fully understood, because the skill and craft are as it were native to the material and media.

Folk art frequently verges on kitsch because it tends to be sentimental and is the work of amateurs who are often more or less imitating the work of highly-trained professional artists. What saves real folk art, however, is that it is naive: technically it is not a botched version of professional art but another kind of formal synthesis, more akin to the “bricolage” or tinkering described by Claude Lévi-Strauss. And although folk art is sentimental, the feelings it expresses are not false or inauthentic, but fundamentally sincere.

And this brings us to the other crucial distinction in relation to folk art. Folk, vernacular or popular culture in all its manifestations is made by the people; it is completely different from commercial art made by corporations for the consumption of the masses. It is a fundamental mistake to confuse mass culture, whose stock in trade is kitsch, with popular culture: the difference is as stark as that between traditional cuisine, cooked by the people for their own nourishment, and junk food sold to them by corporations.

Noris Ioannou’s book is well-researched, beautifully produced and clearly a labour of love. It is full of fascinating examples of popular art in Australia and is at is best in the close discussion of particular cases, like that of the German migrants to South Australia. A large number of Germans settled in Queensland and Victoria as well, but it was only in South Australia that they congregated in tight-knit groups – there were whole villages that came out together – and thus reconstituted themselves here socially and culturally.

In these circumstances, popular traditions could resume and be carried on despite a very different land and climate. The case of a potter, Samuel Hoffmann (1818-1900), is particularly notable, with his wood-fired kiln on the farm, his secret sources of fine clay and the necessity of firing pots in the intervals between the essential tasks of running the farm. But his work was supported for a time at least by the community that knew and recognised the traditional pots he made, even when English-born manufacturers with a new industrial approach could produce ceramics more economically.

Other cases, like the feminine arts of quilting and sampling, are equally interesting and demonstrate that the study of these folk traditions can be an important window into a deeper understanding of popular culture and the experience of particular social groups and classes. Ioannou’s intimate knowledge of his subject – the material objects and the social circumstances in which they were produced – makes these case studies so useful.

The author’s general reflections on the theory of folk art are set out in a thoughtful and searching introductory chapter which nonetheless reminds us how elusive the categories of folk and popular art can be, like those of art and craft. Thus Ioannou suggests that precolonial Aboriginal art should be considered as a form of folk art, although as we have seen the term can have little meaning in the context of traditional Aboriginal culture. He talks about misleading dichotomies of a qualitative order, but seems not to see that folk art can only exist as the opposite pole of formal or high art.

There are some interesting examples of folk painting, the most historically important of which are the so-called Governor Davey’s Proclamation boards (1828-30), of which about seven survive from an original 100 or so. These boards were intended to encourage friendly relations between the settler and native populations, and to make it clear that the law applied equally to both. The original design was copied out by anonymous convict artists, so that each one is slightly different.

Another fine example of folk painting is John Bolger’s very early view of John Palmer’s house in Woolloomooloo (1803), then the most ambitious private residence in Sydney. This convict artist is clearly not a pure amateur like those who had copied the proclamation boards; his handling of space and of use of particular picturesque motifs such as boats and trees suggests he may have been trained as a painter of decorative designs on ceramics or furniture.

In any case, he looks down from the promontory diagonally opposite, exaggerating the sense of elevation and compressing the space; framing trees have been supplied on either side and lively little boats occupy a body of water that looks like a small pond, but is actually Woolloomooloo Bay. This picture is particularly interesting if we compare it to Joseph Lycett’s view of the same house, which had by then changed hands, The Residence of Edward Riley, Esquire, Woolloomooloo, in his Views in Australia (1825). Lycett looks at the house from further along Mrs Macquarie’s Road and closer to the water level; the emphasis is on broad open space and the calm expanse of the bay, admired by a lady and gentleman strolling on the right.

The next two artists discussed are, as indeed the author acknowledges, ambiguous cases. Robert Dowling’s early work has a slightly naive quality because he was initially trained as a saddler, but he had considerable talent and made rapid progress; in England in later years he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. Benjamin Duterrau was an ill-trained painter and always rather clumsy, but as I have shown elsewhere, he was deeply influenced by academic theory and particularly by Charles Le Brun’s ideas about expression.

Other artists discussed in this chapter reveal a range of style and ability so extreme as to be hard to fit into a single category, no matter how broad. There are, for example, semi-trained colonial portrait painters such as Joseph Backler, who probably capture a reasonable likeness without any great sophistication in the handling of either face, body, costume or background. Then there are primitive or naive painters such as Sam Byrne, naive to outsider artists such as Vitorio Ban and Anastasia Bekos, and finally the entirely different case of John Kalentzis, who appears to be a highly skilled practitioner of the ancient and traditional form of icon painting.

One of the most interesting categories is the improvised making of bush-furniture and other items, recalling Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage, mentioned earlier and cited by the author, too. And then there are the makers of chainsaw carvings of Ned Kelly and other naive or folk motifs. The really striking thing about these categories is the passion that untrained people have for making objects, which is particularly visible in the photographs of the makers with their works.

But this is ultimately the difference between what is called the “creativity” of amateurs and the work of those we consider artists. One hesitates to talk about “real artists” at a time when the art market is flooded with poorly-trained “real artists” who are less talented than many amateurs, but the fundamental point is the difference between the mastery of a medium from the inside, as it were, and tinkering with it (bricolage) from the outside.

In poetry, for example, the true poet inhabits language, masters meaning, feeling, metre and music and is thereby able to articulate meaning in a new form. The bad poet has no internal understanding of any of these things, but cobbles together sentimental phrases and shopworn, kitsch phrases, working entirely from the outside. In painting, the bad painter assembles effects and visual gimmicks.

In these art forms, we are entitled to speak quite clearly of good and bad, because the standards of real painting and poetry are very high, and as Boileau observed in his L’Art poétique (1674), there is no step between the mediocre and the worst – il n’est pas de degré du mediocre au pire. Art, in its highest form, is a cognitive and imaginative activity, not simply an obsessive, if “creative” process of making. But vernacular making is also a deep human instinct, and this book is a fascinating introduction to its many expressions in Australia.