Vernacular Art: Canadian and American

Vemacular Art: Canadian and American HUGO MCPHERSON J. Russell Harper. A People's Art: Primitive, Naive, and Folk Painting in Canada.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974. 176 pp. with 125 plates, many in color. Jean Lipman and Alice Winchester. The Flowering of American Folk Art: 1776-1876. New York: The Viking Press and the Whitney Museum, 1974. 288 pp. with 410 plates, many in color. These two exciting books belong together: they illuminate the history of Canadian-American realities in unexpected ways; though the images must be more revealing than the printed text, the text is invaluable. In his fine "Introduction" to A People'sArt, Russell Harper chooses to speak of the art of the people as "vernacular" - that is, the largely untutored imaginative expression of life as citizens understood it in their place and time, with whatever cultural baggage they may have brought from Europe or elsewhere. And though he speaks of "high art" as opposed to un-trained modes, he is clearly not elitist. Artis a way of seeing our realities, beliefs and ideals, and of recording them-less for commercial reasons than for delight. Art endures; in some sense it escapes time. Art is existential- a necessary part of human activity which brings together the past, present, future and dream in a multi-media amalgam. Harper, I am sure, would probably not go all the way with sculptor Donald Judd, who avows that" Anything I say is a work of art is a work of art." But the evidence that art is a prime way of "seeing" is expressed in Harper's essay, and in the images of both books. More specifically, Harper wonders whether in his search for "vernacular" painting he "could discover a Canadian ethos through its people's art." In my opinion, the answer is mainly negative. Yet the contrast of Harper's book with Lipman & Winchester is startling: there are genuine differences between the Canadian and American ways of seeing and feeling. The focus of the two books is not exactly parallel. Harper's concern is pain ting, drawing, paper-cutting, etc., and he ranges from late seventeenth-century work to the 1960's. Lipman and Winchester focus on the first century of the American Republic, and they include painting, sculpture, and various practical-decorative arts-ships' figureheads, furniture, weathervanes, gates, ceramics, floor andwall decoration, hunters' decoys, quilts, etc., plus the odd art of scrimshaw-incised carved and coloured whales' teeth. ' The American book is laced with such collectors' names as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Wm. and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, Howard and Jean Lipman; and the names of dozens of endowed museums and antiquarian collections. The Americans became interested in the art of "the folks" quite a long time before Canadians felt the same curiosity about their nameless, unsung artists. Thereis little point in attempting to catalogue the names of these homely, often charming artists, or of the collectors. The significant point is that obscure work, resurrected from the past, often reveals an integrity, a sense of tradition, and a willingness to blend the old with the new (raw facts with a sense of dignity) that shocks us into recalling both the regional colouring of the two nations, and our common humanity . In this sense, the works presented by Harper, and Lipman and Winchester, are best understood in interdisciplinary terms: the concerns of estheticians, historians , sociologists and anthropologists are all involved. The American book, for example, reveals the tough independence of people who assert both their ethnic background and their determined insistence that "I, 'Mr. Alpha,' am an American of conviction whose image will be recorded for my posterity." In nearly allof these portraits and family groups there is almost no psychological penetration, no expression in the eyes, and no hint of humour. In one portrait, a man holdsa woman's hand, but the rest of her is behind a curtain. In many, the title gives the age and other personal details which locate the time, place, members of the family, etc. The "fractur" mode of decorating or illuminating the title pages of family Bibles was highly respected. In nearly every case the sensualities and frivolities of European modes were rejected (or perhaps...