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Reports Published 05/05/10 The Gentler Arts of Hearth and Home Women Only: Folk Art by Female Hands by CINDI Di MARZO Like notions of "craft" and "design", perceptions of folk art have dramatically shifted during the past few decades, as museums and galleries in major international cities and more modest venues in suburban and even rural areas exhibit artists whose works challenge conventional definitions and labels. The briefest run-through of the American Folk Art Museum's Approaching Abstraction show (on view through 5 September 2010) provides strong evidence that art made by self-taught artists would fit quite comfortably in museums of modern and contemporary art and in quality collections of abstract paintings and sculpture. The exhibit consists of a diverse but cohesive assembly of wonders, for example: a sampling from among hundreds of miniature figures fashioned by outsider artist the Philadelphia Wireman (c.1970–1982); Hens and Chicks with Rooster (1950–1970), Leroy Person's (aka Jay Tobler) crayon-on-wood sculpture echoing African tribal and aboriginal art; and a number of images reflecting the artists' nearly compulsive urge to create order through drawing and patterning.1 Located on the museum's second floor, Approaching Abstraction makes even greater impact when viewed after the museum's recently opened exhibit of objects made by 18th- and 19th-century American women. |
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Displayed on the third floor, Women Only: Folk Art by Female Hands contains 60 objects from the museum's permanent collection. As Approaching Abstraction moves forward in folk-art history, Women Only: Folk Art by Female Hands looks back, confirming the genre's roots as expressed by women. The works were selected by Senior Curator Stacy C. Hollander, who developed the exquisite – and daring – The Seduction of Light: Ammi Phillips/Mark Rothko Compositions in Pink, Green and Red.2 For the most part made by well-educated young women whose studies aimed at forming domestically accomplished Christian wives and mothers, the works attract and inform on many levels: as richly textured narratives of post-Revolutionary upper- and middle-class American society; windows into an under-explored but vibrant period in feminist history; and for their beauty. On the home front, women wielded extraordinary power as "keepers of the flame". Their key role as mothers and domestic managers enhanced their value in the eyes of fathers and future husbands, ensuring a surprising, if narrow, independence. Typically and through necessity, women in patriarchal societies have covertly pursued intellectual and artistic lives within strict boundaries. Talented, resourceful women have refused to view such strictures as crippling, reaching for a freedom afforded by being, in contemporary language, "under the radar". Certainly, this is true for American women fortunate to attend the many schools opened at this time by strong-minded, self-sufficient spinsters. Basic curricula included reading, mathematics and needlework, but proprietors might also supply at extra cost training in watercolour painting and finer ornamental arts. Depending on the character of the schoolmistress, girls studied Greek, Latin, botany, history, geography, philosophy and religion. The democratic Christian utopia dreamed by America's founders filtered into every aspect of a girl's education. Although the museum has not produced an exhibition catalogue, detailed wall texts convey the urgency felt by post-Revolutionary Americans to reap the benefits of a fiercely won independence. Many of the academies and seminaries for girls founded after the Revolution promoted a vision of Republican Motherhood in which mothers, wives and daughters cultivated in brothers, husbands and sons the new country's values. Aesthetically, neoclassical motifs and designs appealed to Americans' sense of order and justice. Clean lines, harmonious proportions and noble bearing fit neatly into American social, political and philosophical ideals. Like the men in their lives, women embraced these ideals; in their handcrafts, paintings and drawings, they merged neoclassicism with European decorative art motifs and Christian symbolism. The bulk of the exhibit provides a vibrant collective portrait of 18th- and 19th-century women as revealed through the works they created. Many objects were made by younger women while preparing for adult responsibilities, girls who studied under well-educated, skilled and aesthetically sophisticated proprietors of female academies. Never questioning their roles and responsibilities, most pursued prescribed activities and, in the process, were able to inject personal elements into typical forms and styles: quilts, purses and pocketbooks, needlework pictures, samplers, watercolours, botanical drawings, mixed-media mourning pieces, trinket boxes, hooked rugs and Shaker gift drawings.3 Hollander has also chosen period-specific theorem (stencil) and tinsel (reflective elements in glass) paintings; painted furniture; a silk-and-lace trousseau robe; small-scale portraiture; and a delightful map of the animal kingdom made in 1835 New England by a unidentified artist. Wall text explains that Quaker schools pioneered geography in primary and secondary school curricula. A few forward-looking schoolmistresses outside the Quaker circuit jumped on the bandwagon; for example, at one female academy in Litchfield, Connecticut, girls practiced geography lessons within the context of ornamental art. Framed with a theorem painting of roses, stems and leaves, the exhibited map of the animal kingdom reveals proprietors' efforts to ground their students' understanding of history and geography within a Christian world view. As a provocative opener, Hollander chose a sculpture made by a male artist, Samuel A. Robb's imposing Sultana (c.1880). Introductory text references Louisa May Alcott's 1870 novel An Old-Fashioned Girl. In Alcott's story, a city girl named Fanny awakens to her latent power after meeting a country-bred friend and a group of young women artists. Like visitors to the show, Fanny comes upon a startling image of femininity. In Fanny's case, it is a larger-than-life figure of a woman armed with needle, pen, palette, broom and ballot box. Not knowing what she should think about the figure, which reinforces certain aspects of the feminine ideal but projects a groundbreaking change, Fanny declares it to be more beautiful, bigger and lovelier than any woman she can conceive. Hollander follows Robb's Sultana with works by quintessential 20th-century grandmother, Anna Mary Robertson (1860–1961), the beloved Grandma Moses, and Robertson's apparent heir, Ohio folk painter Nan Phelps (1904–1990). The contrast between these polar opposites – politically empowered goddess of the future and elderly domestic goddess of the past – suggests a middle place for those living in the period under consideration. Aside from Deborah Goldsmith (1808–1836), who supported her family during the 1820s and early 1830s as an itinerant portrait painter in Western New York state, and Orra White Hitchcock (1796–1863), who taught science, painting and drawing at the Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, women did not compete with male artists on male terms.4 Having learned to wield needle, pen, palette and broom, most women never imagined the ballot box and would not have chosen to pursue art on a public, rather than domestic, stage. Nevertheless, by being educated to take the primary role at home, women were given the means to direct their personal and creative lives within a domestic frame. The closing section of Women Only consists of portraits of women painted by men from c.1788 to c.1850, and Stephen Warde Anderson's 1990 Fay Wray as Diane Templeton in Below the Sea. In the 1933 film, Wray played an heiress who agrees to finance an underwater expedition masking a bounty hunt for gold sunk in a German U-boat at the end of the First World War. Here, Wray symbolises female sexual power seeking romance and adventure on her terms. The other faces shown in these portraits present a vision of femininity championed by men. They show us who these women might have been to the men in their lives, but not how they saw themselves. Fortunately, the delicately wrought objects in the display contain many clues to individual personalities. It will be worth visitors' while to linger a bit longer at the venue and ponder a bit deeper. During the 18th and 19th centuries, American women established creative lives behind the scenes at home and in elite academies. Crafting for their own satisfaction and that of friends and family, they made objects that continue to appeal to contemporary artists, collectors and general audiences living in a dramatically different world; absorbing and adapting motifs drawn from different times and places, they helped to establish distinctive styles in the decorative arts that are as much of a piece with their specific milieu as elements in a much broader picture. Near the close of An Old Fashioned Girl, Alcott ponders the difference between the few "women who dare" and the many women who "stand and wait" and declares that the silent majority do, indeed, possess considerable communicative power, expressed through their work:
Although they may not have chosen to exhibit their works in a museum, their gentle arts have gracefully made the transition from hearth and home to 21st-century midtown Manhattan. References 1. For a closer look at the ways in which self-taught artists have manifested the urge to draw, see Studio International's review of the 2005 Obsessive Drawing show at the American Folk Art Museum: http://www.studio-international.co.uk/reports/obsessive_drawing.asp |
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