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Folk art: 'Does it include your nan's knitting?' Folk art: 'Does it include your nan's knitting?'
(about 3 hours later)
One of the glories of Tate Britain's new summer show is a single, massive leather boot, nearly 3ft long and officially sized at 74. It looks exactly like something a giant would wear. Gnarled and bulbous, yet finely detailed too, each stitch is exactly right, the sole solidly finished, the high ankle cuff almost delicate. It is moulded out of good strong leather and blacked to within an inch of its life. The first question is – why does such a smart giant need only one boot? And the second one is, what is it doing here anyway? This is Tate Britain not Tate Modern, and hardly the obvious home for conceptual art.One of the glories of Tate Britain's new summer show is a single, massive leather boot, nearly 3ft long and officially sized at 74. It looks exactly like something a giant would wear. Gnarled and bulbous, yet finely detailed too, each stitch is exactly right, the sole solidly finished, the high ankle cuff almost delicate. It is moulded out of good strong leather and blacked to within an inch of its life. The first question is – why does such a smart giant need only one boot? And the second one is, what is it doing here anyway? This is Tate Britain not Tate Modern, and hardly the obvious home for conceptual art.
Even when you learn that the title of this summer's exhibition is British Folk Art, the monstrous boot doesn't make immediate sense. "Folk art", if it conjures anything more than blank stares, is assumed to denote samplers, corn dollies and quilts, the products of an emphatically rural culture. This boot by contrast comes from somewhere smokier: for decades it hung outside a Northampton cobbler, a sign to the unlettered that here was a place to get your footwear fixed. In the Tate's exhibition it sits alongside other flotsam from the industrialised world: pub signs, toby jugs, ships' figureheads, all made by artisans and workers who may be accounted at least semi-skilled. It is a world away from stick-whittling and patchwork.Even when you learn that the title of this summer's exhibition is British Folk Art, the monstrous boot doesn't make immediate sense. "Folk art", if it conjures anything more than blank stares, is assumed to denote samplers, corn dollies and quilts, the products of an emphatically rural culture. This boot by contrast comes from somewhere smokier: for decades it hung outside a Northampton cobbler, a sign to the unlettered that here was a place to get your footwear fixed. In the Tate's exhibition it sits alongside other flotsam from the industrialised world: pub signs, toby jugs, ships' figureheads, all made by artisans and workers who may be accounted at least semi-skilled. It is a world away from stick-whittling and patchwork.
"We decided to back away from providing definitions of folk art" explains co-curator Martin Myrone. Very sensible for, once you start, where do you end? Every time Myrone ventured out socially during the genesis of the exhibition he found himself fielding a barrage of questions: "Will you be including tattoos, traveller art, my nan's knitting?" Instead of attempting answers, Myrone and his colleagues Ruth Kenny and Jeff McMillan embarked on a country-wide rummage in museum vaults for objects that had already been labelled as "folk" by local curators. In practice, this often meant items that had arrived decades earlier that no one had ever quite known what to do with: a sporting print, a weather vane, a horse vertebra that has been painted to look like – of all things – the Methodist preacher John Wesley."We decided to back away from providing definitions of folk art" explains co-curator Martin Myrone. Very sensible for, once you start, where do you end? Every time Myrone ventured out socially during the genesis of the exhibition he found himself fielding a barrage of questions: "Will you be including tattoos, traveller art, my nan's knitting?" Instead of attempting answers, Myrone and his colleagues Ruth Kenny and Jeff McMillan embarked on a country-wide rummage in museum vaults for objects that had already been labelled as "folk" by local curators. In practice, this often meant items that had arrived decades earlier that no one had ever quite known what to do with: a sporting print, a weather vane, a horse vertebra that has been painted to look like – of all things – the Methodist preacher John Wesley.
The curators also rifled the Tate's own store-cupboard for items that appeared not to fit into the canonical categories by which we normally make sense of "art" (even the Tate has acquired its fair share of oddities over the decades). An obvious example here is The Cholmeley Ladies (1600-10), a painting of two gentlewomen executed not by a named professional artist but by an artisan whose lack of formal technique results in a piece of work that is as vivid as it is puzzling. Are the women sisters, even twins? Why do they each have a baby? And why is the perspective so flat? Is it simply because the artist didn't know how to do depth?The curators also rifled the Tate's own store-cupboard for items that appeared not to fit into the canonical categories by which we normally make sense of "art" (even the Tate has acquired its fair share of oddities over the decades). An obvious example here is The Cholmeley Ladies (1600-10), a painting of two gentlewomen executed not by a named professional artist but by an artisan whose lack of formal technique results in a piece of work that is as vivid as it is puzzling. Are the women sisters, even twins? Why do they each have a baby? And why is the perspective so flat? Is it simply because the artist didn't know how to do depth?
The Tate's exhibition, which goes from The Cholmeley Ladies right up to the mid 20th century, is part of a new interest in vernacular forms. Over a decade ago Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane's Folk Archive reframed Morris dancing, garage sales and cake-making as worthy of serious thought and a second look. And contemporary practitioners these days can't get enough of the old ways of doing things. Grayson Perry broke through with pots, Tracey Emin now makes quilts, and Bob and Roberta Smith has made painting signs his identifying mark.The Tate's exhibition, which goes from The Cholmeley Ladies right up to the mid 20th century, is part of a new interest in vernacular forms. Over a decade ago Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane's Folk Archive reframed Morris dancing, garage sales and cake-making as worthy of serious thought and a second look. And contemporary practitioners these days can't get enough of the old ways of doing things. Grayson Perry broke through with pots, Tracey Emin now makes quilts, and Bob and Roberta Smith has made painting signs his identifying mark.
There is a neat circularity too in the way that many of the items in the Tate's British Folk Art exhibition would not look out of place in a space devoted to contemporary work. The Boudyware from the north-east of England is made from bits of china stuck to the outside of clay pots, the thick joins traced with gilt paint as if calling attention to their own clumsy making. And the Bangor slates, carved with abstract images, could easily appear in a contemporary show dedicated to art and the environment.There is a neat circularity too in the way that many of the items in the Tate's British Folk Art exhibition would not look out of place in a space devoted to contemporary work. The Boudyware from the north-east of England is made from bits of china stuck to the outside of clay pots, the thick joins traced with gilt paint as if calling attention to their own clumsy making. And the Bangor slates, carved with abstract images, could easily appear in a contemporary show dedicated to art and the environment.
The borders between high and low, art and artifact, have been troubled and troubling ever since people started choosing what to hang on their walls. When the Royal Academy was established in 1769, it made a point of declaring that "no needlework, artificial flowers, cut paper, shell work, or any such baubles should be admitted" within its elite precincts. No place, then, for the work of Mary Linwood, the 18th-century needleworker whose embroidered pictures feature in the Tate's exhibition. Linwood, from Leicester, made a fortune out of her "needle paintings" of well-known contemporary works by Reynolds, Gainsborough and Stubbs.The borders between high and low, art and artifact, have been troubled and troubling ever since people started choosing what to hang on their walls. When the Royal Academy was established in 1769, it made a point of declaring that "no needlework, artificial flowers, cut paper, shell work, or any such baubles should be admitted" within its elite precincts. No place, then, for the work of Mary Linwood, the 18th-century needleworker whose embroidered pictures feature in the Tate's exhibition. Linwood, from Leicester, made a fortune out of her "needle paintings" of well-known contemporary works by Reynolds, Gainsborough and Stubbs.
Looked at afresh, Linwood's work teeters between the downright naff and the slyly smart. You could easily mistake her pictures for a clever investigation into what happens when high-art images, such as Rembrandt's Mother or Gainsborough's The Woodman mutate into the lower status medium of embroidery. Alternatively, you might just as easily stumble across them when clearing out your late great aunt's bungalow.Looked at afresh, Linwood's work teeters between the downright naff and the slyly smart. You could easily mistake her pictures for a clever investigation into what happens when high-art images, such as Rembrandt's Mother or Gainsborough's The Woodman mutate into the lower status medium of embroidery. Alternatively, you might just as easily stumble across them when clearing out your late great aunt's bungalow.
What you probably won't find tucked away in Auntie's bungalow – unless you are very lucky – is work by Alfred Wallis. Wallis forms the one great exception to the rule that self-taught artists have been historically overlooked by the art establishment. His paintings of boats and huts, often on torn-up cardboard boxes, have long hung in the Tate. Scholars write books about him. He sells. He counts.What you probably won't find tucked away in Auntie's bungalow – unless you are very lucky – is work by Alfred Wallis. Wallis forms the one great exception to the rule that self-taught artists have been historically overlooked by the art establishment. His paintings of boats and huts, often on torn-up cardboard boxes, have long hung in the Tate. Scholars write books about him. He sells. He counts.
The reason for this is that in the late 1920s the circle of formally trained artists who lived and worked in St Ives happened to stumble upon Wallis's "primitive" work and took it up with a passion. In particular Ben Nicholson spotted in Wallis's approach to his materials and the formal properties of picture-making something that chimed with his own modernist agenda. In other words, Wallis has been made to matter because he can be subsumed into a grand narrative that charts painting's century-long march from the representational and figurative towards abstraction. How interesting, then, to see Wallis reinstated as a folk artist in the Tate's exhibition. Looked at again, his crude little wave-tossed boats become less of an argument about perspective and more about the great tradition of sea-going painting (before he was a rag-and-bone man, Wallis had served on a transatlantic ship). And the fact that he uses paint – rather than the more usual bone, straw and wool favoured by mariners – makes him not thrillingly "primitive" but really rather staid.The reason for this is that in the late 1920s the circle of formally trained artists who lived and worked in St Ives happened to stumble upon Wallis's "primitive" work and took it up with a passion. In particular Ben Nicholson spotted in Wallis's approach to his materials and the formal properties of picture-making something that chimed with his own modernist agenda. In other words, Wallis has been made to matter because he can be subsumed into a grand narrative that charts painting's century-long march from the representational and figurative towards abstraction. How interesting, then, to see Wallis reinstated as a folk artist in the Tate's exhibition. Looked at again, his crude little wave-tossed boats become less of an argument about perspective and more about the great tradition of sea-going painting (before he was a rag-and-bone man, Wallis had served on a transatlantic ship). And the fact that he uses paint – rather than the more usual bone, straw and wool favoured by mariners – makes him not thrillingly "primitive" but really rather staid.
Linwood and Wallis are unusual in being what museum curators call "named makers". Folk art is usually assumed to be anonymous, expressive of a whole culture rather than one person's intention and design. But, stresses Myrone, it is impossible – not to say politically troubling – to imagine that you can discern a collective consciousness behind a body of work that just happens to be unsigned. In choosing which pieces to feature, the curators looked for the idiosyncrasies that suggested an individual imagination at work or play. Sorting through dozens of similar objects in the drawers and shelves of museum storerooms, it is the tobacco-shop highlander with the boss eyes or the sampler with the spelling mistake that have made the final cut.Linwood and Wallis are unusual in being what museum curators call "named makers". Folk art is usually assumed to be anonymous, expressive of a whole culture rather than one person's intention and design. But, stresses Myrone, it is impossible – not to say politically troubling – to imagine that you can discern a collective consciousness behind a body of work that just happens to be unsigned. In choosing which pieces to feature, the curators looked for the idiosyncrasies that suggested an individual imagination at work or play. Sorting through dozens of similar objects in the drawers and shelves of museum storerooms, it is the tobacco-shop highlander with the boss eyes or the sampler with the spelling mistake that have made the final cut.
The curators are also keen to smudge any easy ideas about which sex did what in the making of vernacular art. Some of the finest needlework in the show was produced by the butchest of men. Between 1850 and 1910 recuperating soldiers were encouraged to cut up old serge and twill uniforms to make bright patchworks. Hardly an occupation for the faint of heart or fingers: the thickness and weight of the cloth meant that piercing and sewing the quilts became the equivalent of an energetic route march. That's why the government promoted the practice as a way of drawing soldiers away from liquor and dice. In 1875 the monthly periodical The British Workman published an article quoting a soldier who took up quilting when he gave up drink: "I must be employed, or I shall get into mischief." One of his patchwork quilts runs to over 28,000 pieces.The curators are also keen to smudge any easy ideas about which sex did what in the making of vernacular art. Some of the finest needlework in the show was produced by the butchest of men. Between 1850 and 1910 recuperating soldiers were encouraged to cut up old serge and twill uniforms to make bright patchworks. Hardly an occupation for the faint of heart or fingers: the thickness and weight of the cloth meant that piercing and sewing the quilts became the equivalent of an energetic route march. That's why the government promoted the practice as a way of drawing soldiers away from liquor and dice. In 1875 the monthly periodical The British Workman published an article quoting a soldier who took up quilting when he gave up drink: "I must be employed, or I shall get into mischief." One of his patchwork quilts runs to over 28,000 pieces.
Needlework wasn't used simply as a means of order and control. Soldiers and sailors were perfectly capable of subverting stitchwork to express their tenderest feelings. They often made exuberant heart-shaped pincushions to send to their girlfriends, extravagantly finished with fringing, sequins and pom-poms. One particularly ardent soul has even used pearls to pick out the slogan "Remember Me" and dated it for good measure.Needlework wasn't used simply as a means of order and control. Soldiers and sailors were perfectly capable of subverting stitchwork to express their tenderest feelings. They often made exuberant heart-shaped pincushions to send to their girlfriends, extravagantly finished with fringing, sequins and pom-poms. One particularly ardent soul has even used pearls to pick out the slogan "Remember Me" and dated it for good measure.
Other items in the exhibition seem almost designed to provoke a discussion about the nature and limits of folk art. Take the leather toby jugs. They follow the standard form of a seated figure in an oversized tricorn hat and knee breeches smoking a pipe. But over time the leather has distorted and buckled, so that the tobies have started to resemble squat and sinister gargoyles. In fact, closer examination reveals that the nails holding them together are frequently machine-made and date from the early 20th century. The best guess is that these unsettling objects are a joke from the fag-end of British industrialisation, a moment when some bright, ironic soul thought that it might be funny to mock the practice of exporting knock-off pottery toby jugs around the world as emblems of English good cheer.Other items in the exhibition seem almost designed to provoke a discussion about the nature and limits of folk art. Take the leather toby jugs. They follow the standard form of a seated figure in an oversized tricorn hat and knee breeches smoking a pipe. But over time the leather has distorted and buckled, so that the tobies have started to resemble squat and sinister gargoyles. In fact, closer examination reveals that the nails holding them together are frequently machine-made and date from the early 20th century. The best guess is that these unsettling objects are a joke from the fag-end of British industrialisation, a moment when some bright, ironic soul thought that it might be funny to mock the practice of exporting knock-off pottery toby jugs around the world as emblems of English good cheer.
As Myrone says, it is perhaps the ships' figureheads that ask the boldest questions about the border between artisanal and artistic production. In the 18th and 19th centuries figureheads were made in highly organised workshops by skilled craftsmen. Yet there is usually an element of knock-about crudity to them: the busty floozy, the jolly tar, the moustachioed mandarin. And then what happened when these massive structures were retired to dry land to become shop signs, memorials or even sculpture? No longer breasting the waves, some have even been provided with implausible legs on which to totter. For Myrone the figureheads' slippery status – a strange word perhaps to use of something so hulking – makes them "the exemplary form of folk art".As Myrone says, it is perhaps the ships' figureheads that ask the boldest questions about the border between artisanal and artistic production. In the 18th and 19th centuries figureheads were made in highly organised workshops by skilled craftsmen. Yet there is usually an element of knock-about crudity to them: the busty floozy, the jolly tar, the moustachioed mandarin. And then what happened when these massive structures were retired to dry land to become shop signs, memorials or even sculpture? No longer breasting the waves, some have even been provided with implausible legs on which to totter. For Myrone the figureheads' slippery status – a strange word perhaps to use of something so hulking – makes them "the exemplary form of folk art".
British Folk Art is at Tate Britain, London SW1, from 10 June to 31 August. tate.org.uk. • British Folk Art is from 10 June to 31 August. Venue: Tate Britain, London.