Some scholars have spent much of their lives studying American folk art, and nearly all have arrived at their own definitions. Perhaps the most pertinent was developed by Mary Childs Black, first director of the Museum of Early American Folk Arts in New York: "The genesis, rise, and disappearance of folk art is closely connected with the events of the nineteenth century when the disappearance of the old ways left rural folk everywhere with an unused surplus of time and energy. People were free to invent and make simple things for their own pleasure in each household and in each village, until the rise of industrial production toward the end of the nineteenth century. Folk art occupies the brief interval between court taste and commercial taste." Definitions used by other scholars support Black's theories in general, and it is possible to derive from them a consensus of the qualities usually associated with great folk art. Such words as freshness, directness, simplicity, and imaginative frequently occur in writings on the subject of Folk Art. Read more on Popular American Folk Art


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