ABSTRACT
As art historians become more self-conscious about methodological practice, the review essay emerges as an opportunity to examine the beliefs that guide the process of historical inquiry. In his review of a recently published book on American folk art, John Vlach argues that scholarship on American folk art has been plagued by a set of flawed definitions and questionable assumptions. A lingering preoccupation with the aesthetic appreciation of folk art, rather than attempts at critical investigation leading to genuine understanding of the objects and the cultures that produced them, has caused students of folk art to create more confusion than clarity.
Vlach identifies a set of polarities used both to characterize folk art and to establish its difference from so-called fine art. Because these definitions rest not on genuine insight into folk cultures and their artistic traditions but are rooted rather in somewhat arbitrary aesthetic judgments and romanticized notions of the folk artist’s naïveté, they are at once patronizing and misleading. Vlach insists on the need to reconsider the vast array of objects currently occupying the category of folk art, and he calls for greater precision of definition and more rigorous investigation into the meaning and function of these objects for the cultures that produced them.
