Folk Art Paintings
Velvet Underdogs: In Praise of the Paintings the Art World Loves to Hate
By Lisa Hix — Without a doubt, black-velvet painting lives up to its reputation as the pinnacle of tackiness. You could point to any number of cheap, poorly done images of Elvis, scary clowns, matadors, “Playboy” nudes, and strange unicorns sold to American tourists by Mexican painters starting in the '50s. But when velvet collectors Caren Anderson and Carl Baldwin look at these pieces, they see something else. "Most velvet paintings are things that somebody wanted to pay money for, but sometimes you...
Homespun Beauty: Jim Linderman on Folk Art’s Authentic Appeal
By Maribeth Keane and Bonnie Monte — My interest in 20th-century American self-taught art came about after I had gone through a million other things—from stamps to bootleg records to books about who killed JFK. I had been at CBS News in New York City for about 8 or 10 years, and I was kind of burned out from working too hard and drinking too much. So I just stopped doing both for a while. It was 1981, and the art scene was exploding. The most entertaining thing to do in New York at the time was to go gallery hopping....
Peaceable Kingdoms by Three Pennsylvania Primitives
By Jean Lipman — With interest focusing today on plans for world peace, it seems timely to juxtapose three remarkable versions of the Peaceable Kingdom, as interpreted by three generations of native American artists. Edward Hicks is the first of these. He was born in Attleborough, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1780. He became, successively, a coach maker and painter, farmer, preacher, sign painter, and painter of pictures. His numerous Peaceable Kingdoms, which Hicks the Quaker minister must have...
Collecting American Primitives
By Jean Lipman — The start of a collection always seems surprising in retrospect. My collecting began because, over a sofa in our Connecticut farmhouse, there was a large space which clearly demanded an old picture. One day my husband told me that he'd seen a very cheap old painting that might be right — and added that he'd also seen a very expensive picture that we certainly wouldn't consider. But he suggested that I take a look at the latter, and if after that I still liked the first, he was sure it would...
Primitive American Portraits
By Richmond Huntley — Various articles on what and how to collect have stressed the importance of broadening one's interest. "Remember," says one writer, "that the neglected antique of today may become the sought-after one of tomorrow." Nowhere is the truth of this more evident than with the type of American portraiture known as primitive. Less than a decade ago these likenesses of moderately well-to-do Americans, done by unknown and largely self-taught artists during the Federal and Early Republican...