American Primitive: Discoveries in Folk Sculpture

by Frank Maresca, Roger Ricco

Until recently, American primitive sculpture was seen as a kind of folk objects whose design and purpose ere rooted in a community of tradition and related to the daily material and spiritual needs of ordinary people. But in recently years, collectors and historians have begun to place this body of art within the realm of fine and not folk art. Pictured here are scarecrows and lampstands, hat forms and face jugs, weather vanes and whirligigs, toys, decoys, and carnival figures, icons, architectural embellishments, three-dimensional protraits, and more. These are artists unconcerned with rules or with the success of their methods, or with the commercial possibilities of their creations. They neither intended nor hoped that their work would be acknowledged as art nor they as artists. This very innocence has produced daring solutions to practical problems and audacious artistic results.

Genres: Art

290 pages, Hardcover

First published September 12, 1988