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Mexican Folk Art
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In the United States, the term “folk art” describes paintings, sculptures, and textiles produced by artists and craftspeople with little or no formal training. In Mexico, the same criteria could also be applied to that nation’s folk art, but...
In the United States, the term “folk art” describes paintings, sculptures, and textiles produced by artists and craftspeople with little or no formal training. In Mexico, the same criteria could also be applied to that nation’s folk art, but traditional Mexican folk art differs from its northern relative in that the techniques executed by Mexican folk artists are just about always applied to functional objects, whether their task is to carry water from a well or help the living commune with souls in the afterlife.
Traditional Mexican folk art also differs from modern pieces and curios created exclusively for the tourist trade. While these objects often do a very good job of replicating the design and appearance of traditional folk art, their manufacturing techniques and production as items for sale differentiates them from vintage and antique examples of folk art. Still, for many collectors, the aesthetic of Mexican folk art is more alluring than a particular object’s provenance, which is why the market for modern Mexican folk art is brisk.
Categories of Mexican folk art range from pottery to painted paper and wood, and within each of these categories are entire universes of objects. Taking pottery first, one of the most acclaimed types of ceramic folk art is found in the Michoacán town of Ocumicho, where artists use local clay to create small sculptures crowded with Biblical figures, mermaids, animals, and devil figures known as diablitos. In the Zapotec community of San Bartolo Coyotepec, located in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, ceramists use their local clay, which is gray when dug but black when fired, to make coiled ovoid forms that are shaped on a wheel before being polished smooth with quartz. Often, these wide pieces with small openings at the top are pierced all around to produce a latticework of black flowers.
Of the painted forms of Mexican folk art, the brightly colored paintings on traditional amate paper are fairly recent arrivals, produced mostly in the state of Guerrero since the 1960s, although the paper has been used by indigenous peoples since pre-Columbian times. Today, the dusty color of the paper, which is made from the bark of trees such as ficus (to produce a darker paper) and mulberry (to produce a lighter paper), is usually treated as a rustic backdrop for vibrant blues, reds, and whites, depicting water, sky, earth, and clouds.
Painted clay is even more widespread. The brightly colored Talavera ceramic tiles are made of Puebla clay, as are hand-modeled figures of peasants, which are fired only once before being painted with aniline dyes and then sealed with varnish. Related to the figures are the clay dolls produced in Oaxaca and San Agustin Oapan. The skirts of these dolls give the figures a wide, stable base, while their surface color is similar to that of amate paper. Sometimes these zoomorphic dolls are not colored at all, their earth-tone forms covered instead with smaller hand-modeled animals, birds, and beasts.
The Nahuatl people of Guerrero are among the foremost practitioners of painted Mexican folk art, decorating everything from ceramic pots to wooden fish with pictures of Mexican villages, animals, and patterns taken from nature, particularly from flowers. Oaxacan wood carvings are painted directly in acrylic onto pieces of light-colored copal wood, whose natural forms are used as foundations for reptiles, mammals, and birds. Sometimes whiskers are added to a creature’s features, providing a counterpoint to the often dizzying grid of patterns that sometimes suggest woven textiles.
Close cousins of these painted figures are the beaded animals, skulls, and gourd bowls produced by the Huichol people, who live in the Sierra Madre mountains. The almost psychedelic design of these pieces reflects the Huichol’s adoration of peyote, whose geometric flowers are frequently used as decorative motifs. Huichol pieces, though, do not reply on natural forms as much as Oaxacan copal carvings do, the one-of-a-kind gourd bowls being an important exception. Instead, the Huichol use circles of common plywood or replicable papier-mâché armatures that can be coated with pine resin and beeswax before being painstakingly covered with multi-colored glass beads.
Papier-mâché is also used by Mexican folk artists in Guanajuato as the foundation for all sorts of masks, although masks in this central Mexican city are also made of clay. Historically, Guanajuato was also a center for majolica ware, usually in the form of plates and platters used for serving food, while Puebla was known for its elaborate ceramic candelabra, which resemble the more common “tree of life” sculptures that are so popular as tourist souvenirs today.
Continue readingIn the United States, the term “folk art” describes paintings, sculptures, and textiles produced by artists and craftspeople with little or no formal training. In Mexico, the same criteria could also be applied to that nation’s folk art, but traditional Mexican folk art differs from its northern relative in that the techniques executed by Mexican folk artists are just about always applied to functional objects, whether their task is to carry water from a well or help the living commune with souls in the afterlife.
Traditional Mexican folk art also differs from modern pieces and curios created exclusively for the tourist trade. While these objects often do a very good job of replicating the design and appearance of traditional folk art, their manufacturing techniques and production as items for sale differentiates them from vintage and antique examples of folk art. Still, for many collectors, the aesthetic of Mexican folk art is more alluring than a particular object’s provenance, which is why the market for modern Mexican folk art is brisk.
Categories of Mexican folk art range from pottery to painted paper and wood, and within each of these categories are entire universes of objects. Taking pottery first, one of the most acclaimed types of ceramic folk art is found in the Michoacán town of Ocumicho, where artists use local clay to create small sculptures crowded with Biblical figures, mermaids, animals, and devil figures known as diablitos. In the Zapotec community of San Bartolo Coyotepec, located in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, ceramists use their local clay, which is gray when dug but black when fired, to make coiled ovoid forms that are shaped on a wheel before being polished smooth with quartz. Often, these wide pieces with small openings at the top are pierced all around to produce a latticework of black flowers.
Of the painted forms of Mexican folk art, the brightly colored paintings on traditional amate paper are fairly recent arrivals, produced...
In the United States, the term “folk art” describes paintings, sculptures, and textiles produced by artists and craftspeople with little or no formal training. In Mexico, the same criteria could also be applied to that nation’s folk art, but traditional Mexican folk art differs from its northern relative in that the techniques executed by Mexican folk artists are just about always applied to functional objects, whether their task is to carry water from a well or help the living commune with souls in the afterlife.
Traditional Mexican folk art also differs from modern pieces and curios created exclusively for the tourist trade. While these objects often do a very good job of replicating the design and appearance of traditional folk art, their manufacturing techniques and production as items for sale differentiates them from vintage and antique examples of folk art. Still, for many collectors, the aesthetic of Mexican folk art is more alluring than a particular object’s provenance, which is why the market for modern Mexican folk art is brisk.
Categories of Mexican folk art range from pottery to painted paper and wood, and within each of these categories are entire universes of objects. Taking pottery first, one of the most acclaimed types of ceramic folk art is found in the Michoacán town of Ocumicho, where artists use local clay to create small sculptures crowded with Biblical figures, mermaids, animals, and devil figures known as diablitos. In the Zapotec community of San Bartolo Coyotepec, located in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, ceramists use their local clay, which is gray when dug but black when fired, to make coiled ovoid forms that are shaped on a wheel before being polished smooth with quartz. Often, these wide pieces with small openings at the top are pierced all around to produce a latticework of black flowers.
Of the painted forms of Mexican folk art, the brightly colored paintings on traditional amate paper are fairly recent arrivals, produced mostly in the state of Guerrero since the 1960s, although the paper has been used by indigenous peoples since pre-Columbian times. Today, the dusty color of the paper, which is made from the bark of trees such as ficus (to produce a darker paper) and mulberry (to produce a lighter paper), is usually treated as a rustic backdrop for vibrant blues, reds, and whites, depicting water, sky, earth, and clouds.
Painted clay is even more widespread. The brightly colored Talavera ceramic tiles are made of Puebla clay, as are hand-modeled figures of peasants, which are fired only once before being painted with aniline dyes and then sealed with varnish. Related to the figures are the clay dolls produced in Oaxaca and San Agustin Oapan. The skirts of these dolls give the figures a wide, stable base, while their surface color is similar to that of amate paper. Sometimes these zoomorphic dolls are not colored at all, their earth-tone forms covered instead with smaller hand-modeled animals, birds, and beasts.
The Nahuatl people of Guerrero are among the foremost practitioners of painted Mexican folk art, decorating everything from ceramic pots to wooden fish with pictures of Mexican villages, animals, and patterns taken from nature, particularly from flowers. Oaxacan wood carvings are painted directly in acrylic onto pieces of light-colored copal wood, whose natural forms are used as foundations for reptiles, mammals, and birds. Sometimes whiskers are added to a creature’s features, providing a counterpoint to the often dizzying grid of patterns that sometimes suggest woven textiles.
Close cousins of these painted figures are the beaded animals, skulls, and gourd bowls produced by the Huichol people, who live in the Sierra Madre mountains. The almost psychedelic design of these pieces reflects the Huichol’s adoration of peyote, whose geometric flowers are frequently used as decorative motifs. Huichol pieces, though, do not reply on natural forms as much as Oaxacan copal carvings do, the one-of-a-kind gourd bowls being an important exception. Instead, the Huichol use circles of common plywood or replicable papier-mâché armatures that can be coated with pine resin and beeswax before being painstakingly covered with multi-colored glass beads.
Papier-mâché is also used by Mexican folk artists in Guanajuato as the foundation for all sorts of masks, although masks in this central Mexican city are also made of clay. Historically, Guanajuato was also a center for majolica ware, usually in the form of plates and platters used for serving food, while Puebla was known for its elaborate ceramic candelabra, which resemble the more common “tree of life” sculptures that are so popular as tourist souvenirs today.
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