Past Exhibitions
The Ins and Outs of Self-Taught Art
Reflections on a Shifting Field
January 10, 2012 - April 7, 2012
The Lady and the Tramp
Images of Women in Austrian and German Art
October 11, 2011 - December 30, 2011
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
July 5, 2011 - September 30, 2011
Decadence & Decay
Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz
April 12, 2011 - June 24, 2011
Self-Taught Painters in American 1800-1950
Revisiting the Tradition
January 11, 2011 - April 2, 2011
Marie-Louise Motesiczky
Paradise Lost & Found
October 12, 2010 - December 30, 2010
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
July 13, 2010 - October 1, 2010
Käthe Kollwitz
A Portrait of the Artist
April 13, 2010 - June 25, 2010
Seventy Years Grandma Moses
A Loan Exhibition Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Artist's "Discovery"
February 3, 2010 - April 3, 2010
Egon Schiele as Printmaker
A Loan Exhibition Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Galerie St. Etienne
November 3, 2009 - January 23, 2010
From Brücke To Bauhaus
The Meanings of Modernity in Germany, 1905-1933
March 31, 2009 - June 26, 2009
They Taught Themselves
American Self-Taught Painters Between the World Wars
January 9, 2009 - March 14, 2009
Elephants We Must Never Forget
New Paintings Drawings and Prints by Sue Coe
October 14, 2008 - December 20, 2008
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 24, 2008 - September 26, 2008
Hope or Menace?
Communism in Germany Between the World Wars
March 25, 2008 - June 13, 2008
Transforming Reality
Pattern and Design in Modern and Self-Taught Art
January 15, 2008 - March 8, 2008
Leonard Baskin
Proofs and Process
October 9, 2007 - January 5, 2008
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 5, 2007 - September 28, 2007
Who Paid the Piper?
The Art of Patronage in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
March 8, 2007 - May 26, 2007
Fairy Tale, Myth and Fantasy
Approaches to Spirituality in Art
December 7, 2006 - February 3, 2007
More Than Coffee was Served
Café Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna and Weimar Germany
September 19, 2006 - November 25, 2006
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 6, 2006 - September 8, 2006
Parallel Visions II
"Outsider" and "Insider" Art Today
April 5, 2006 - May 26, 2006
Ilija!
His First American Exhibtion
January 17, 2006 - March 18, 2006
Coming of Age
Egon Schiele and the Modernist Culture of Youth
November 15, 2005 - January 7, 2006
Sue Coe:
Sheep of Fools
September 20, 2005 - November 5, 2005
Recent Acquisitions
And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market
June 7, 2005 - September 9, 2005
Every Picture Tells a Story
The Narrative Impulse in Modern and Contemporary Art
April 5, 2005 - May 27, 2005
65th Anniversary Exhibition, Part II
Self-Taught Artists
January 18, 2005 - March 26, 2005
65th Anniversary Exhibition, Part I
Austrian and German Expressionism
October 28, 2004 - January 8, 2005
Sue Coe: Bully: Master of the Global Merry-Go-Round and Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 8, 2004 - October 16, 2004
Animals & Us
The Animal in Contemporary Art
April 1, 2004 - May 22, 2004
Henry Darger
Art and Myth
January 15, 2004 - March 20, 2004
Body and Soul
Expressionism and the Human Figure
October 7, 2003 - January 3, 2004
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 24, 2003 - September 12, 2003
In Search of the "Total Artwork"
Viennese Art and Design 1897–1932
April 8, 2003 - June 14, 2003
Russia's Self-Taught Artists
A New Perspective on the "Outsider"
January 14, 2003 - March 29, 2003
Käthe Kollwitz:
Master Printmaker
October 1, 2002 - January 4, 2003
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 25, 2002 - September 20, 2002
Workers of the World
Modern Images of Labor
April 2, 2002 - June 15, 2002
Grandma Moses
Reflections of America
January 15, 2002 - March 16, 2002
Gustav Klimt/Egon Schiele/Oskar Kokoscha
From Art Nouveau to Expressionism
November 23, 2001 - January 5, 2002
The "Black-and-White" Show
Expressionist Graphics in Austria & Germany
September 20, 2001 - November 10, 2001
Recent Acquisitions (And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 26, 2001 - September 7, 2001
Art with an Agenda
Politics, Persuasion, Illustration and Decoration
April 10, 2001 - June 16, 2001
"Our Beautiful and Tormented Austria!": Art Brut in the Land of Freud
January 18, 2001 - March 17, 2001
The Tragedy of War
November 16, 2000 - January 6, 2001
The Expressionist City
September 19, 2000 - November 4, 2000
Recent Acquisitions (And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 20, 2000 - September 8, 2000
From Façade to Psyche
Turn-of-the-Century Portraiture in Austria & Germany
March 28, 2000 - June 10, 2000
European Self-Taught Art
Brut or Naive?
January 18, 2000 - March 11, 2000
Saved From Europe
In Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Galerie St. Etienne
November 6, 1999 - January 8, 2000
The Modern Child
(Images of Children in Twentieth-Century Art)
September 14, 1999 - November 6, 1999
Recent Acquisitions
(And a Look at Sixty Years of Art Dealing)
June 15, 1999 - September 3, 1999
Sue Coe: The Pit
The Tragical Tale of the Rise and Fall of a Vivisector
March 30, 1999 - June 5, 1999
Henry Darger and His Realms
January 14, 1999 - March 13, 1999
Becoming Käthe Kollwitz
An Artist and Her Influences
November 17, 1998 - December 31, 1998
George Grosz - Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler
Art & Gender in Weimar Germany
September 23, 1998 - November 11, 1998
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts About Looted Art)
June 9, 1998 - September 11, 1998
Taboo
Repression and Revolt in Modern Art
March 26, 1998 - May 30, 1998
Sacred & Profane
Michel Nedjar and Expressionist Primitivism
January 13, 1998 - March 14, 1998
Egon Schiele (1890-1918)
Master Draughtsman
November 18, 1997 - January 3, 1998
The New Objectivity
Realism in Weimar-Era Germany
September 16, 1997 - November 8, 1997
Recent Acquisitions
A Question of Quality
June 10, 1997 - September 5, 1997
Käthe Kollwitz - Lea Grundig
Two German Women & The Art of Protest
March 25, 1997 - May 31, 1997
That Way Madness Lies
Expressionism and the Art of Gugging
January 14, 1997 - March 15, 1997
The Viennese Line
Art and Design Circa 1900
November 18, 1996 - January 4, 1997
Emil Nolde - Christian Rohlfs
Two German Expressionist Masters
September 24, 1996 - November 9, 1996
Breaking All The Rules
Art in Transition
June 11, 1996 - September 6, 1996
Sue Coe's Ship of Fools
March 26, 1996 - May 24, 1996
New York Folk
Lawrence Lebduska, Abraham Levin, Isreal Litwak
January 16, 1996 - March 16, 1996
The Fractured Form
Expressionism and the Human Body
November 15, 1995 - January 6, 1996
From Left to Right
Social Realism in Germany and Russia, Circa 1919-1933
September 19, 1995 - November 4, 1995
Recent Acquisitions
June 20, 1995 - September 8, 1995
On the Brink 1900-2000
The Turning of Two Centuries
March 28, 1995 - May 26, 1995
Earl Cummingham - Grandma Moses
Visions of America
January 17, 1995 - March 18, 1995
Three Berlin Artists of the Weimar Era: Hannah Höch, Käthe Kollwitz, Jeanne Mam
September 13, 1994 - November 5, 1994
55th Anniversary Exhibition in Memory of Otto Kallir
June 7, 1994 - September 2, 1994
Drawn to Text: Comix Artists as Book Illustrators
May 15, 1994 - January 7, 1995
Sue Coe: We All Fall Down
March 29, 1994 - May 27, 1994
The Forgotten Folk Art of the 1940's
January 18, 1994 - March 19, 1994
Symbolism and the Austrian Avant Garde
Klimt, Schiele and their Contemporaries
November 16, 1993 - January 8, 1994
Art and Politics in Weimar Germany
September 14, 1993 - November 6, 1993
Recent Acquisitions
June 8, 1993 - September 3, 1993
The "Outsider" Question
Non-Academic Art from 1900 to the Present
March 23, 1993 - May 28, 1993
The Dance of Death
Images of Mortality in German Art
January 19, 1993 - March 13, 1993
Art Spiegelman
The Road to Maus
November 17, 1992 - January 9, 1993
Käthe Kollwitz
In Celebration of the 125th Anniversary of the Artist's Birth
September 15, 1992 - November 7, 1992
Naive Visions/Art Nouveau and Expressionism/Sue Coe: The Road to the White House
May 19, 1992 - September 4, 1992
Richard Gerstl/Oskar Kokoschka
March 17, 1992 - May 9, 1992
Scandal, Outrage, Censorship
Controversy in Modern Art
January 21, 1992 - March 7, 1992
Viennese Graphic Design
From Secession to Expressionism
November 19, 1991 - January 11, 1992
The Expressionist Figure
September 10, 1991 - November 9, 1991
Recent Acquisitions
Themes and Variations
May 14, 1991 - August 16, 1991
Sue Coe Retrospective
Political Document of a Decade
March 12, 1991 - May 5, 1991
Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka
Watercolors, drawings and prints
January 22, 1991 - March 2, 1991
Egon Schiele
November 13, 1990 - January 12, 1991
Lovis Corinth
A Retrospective
September 11, 1990 - November 3, 1990
Recent Acquisitions
June 12, 1990 - August 31, 1990
Max Klinger, Käthe Kollwitz, Alfred Kubin
A Study in Influences
March 27, 1990 - June 2, 1990
The Narrative in Art
January 23, 1990 - March 17, 1990
Grandma Moses
November 14, 1989 - January 13, 1990
Sue Coe
Porkopolis--Animals and Industry
September 19, 1989 - November 4, 1989
Galerie St. Etienne
A History in Documents and Pictures
June 20, 1989 - September 8, 1989
Gustav Klimt
Paintings and Drawings
April 11, 1989 - June 10, 1989
Fifty Years Galerie St. Etienne: An Overview
February 14, 1989 - April 1, 1989
Folk Artists at Work
Morris Hirshfield, John Kane and Grandma Moses
November 15, 1988 - January 14, 1989
Recent Acquisitions and Works From the Collection
June 14, 1988 - September 16, 1988
From Art Nouveau to Expressionism
April 12, 1988 - May 27, 1988
Three Pre-Expressionists
Lovis Corinth Käthe Kollwitz Paula Modersohn-Becker
January 26, 1988 - March 12, 1988
Käthe Kollwitz
The Power of the Print
November 17, 1987 - January 16, 1988
Recent Acquisitions and Works From the Collection
April 7, 1987 - October 31, 1987
Folk Art of This Century
February 10, 1987 - March 28, 1987
Oskar Kokoschka and His Time
November 25, 1986 - January 31, 1987
Viennese Design and Wiener Werkstätte
September 23, 1986 - November 8, 1986
Gustav Klimt/Egon Schiele/Oskar Kokoschka
Watercolors, Drawings and Prints
May 27, 1986 - September 13, 1986
Expressionist Painters
March 25, 1986 - May 10, 1986
Käthe Kollwitz/Paula Modersohn-Becker
January 28, 1986 - March 15, 1986
The Art of Giving
December 3, 1985 - January 18, 1986
Expressionists on Paper
October 8, 1985 - November 23, 1985
European and American Landscapes
June 4, 1985 - September 13, 1985
Expressionist Printmaking
Aspects of its Genesis and Development
April 1, 1985 - May 24, 1985
Expressionist Masters
January 18, 1985 - March 23, 1985
Arnold Schoenberg's Vienna
November 13, 1984 - January 5, 1985
Grandma Moses and Selected Folk Paintings
September 25, 1984 - November 3, 1984
American Folk Art
People, Places and Things
June 12, 1984 - September 14, 1984
John Kane
Modern America's First Folk Painter
April 17, 1984 - May 25, 1984
Eugène Mihaesco
The Illustrator as Artist
February 28, 1984 - April 7, 1984
Early Expressionist Masters
January 17, 1984 - February 18, 1984
Paula Modersohn-Becker
Germany's Pioneer Modernist
November 15, 1983 - January 7, 1984
Gustav Klimt
Drawings and Selected Paintings
September 20, 1983 - November 5, 1983
Early and Late
Drawings, Paintings & Prints from Academicism to Expressionism
June 1, 1983 - September 2, 1983
Alfred Kubin
Visions From The Other Side
March 22, 1983 - May 7, 1983
20th Century Folk
The First Generation
January 18, 1983 - March 12, 1983
Grandma Moses
The Artist Behind the Myth
November 15, 1982 - January 8, 1983
Kollwitz
The Artist as Printmaker
September 28, 1982 - November 6, 1982
Aspects of Modernism
June 1, 1982 - September 3, 1982
The Human Perspective
Recent Acquisitions
March 16, 1982 - May 15, 1982
19th and 20th Century European and American Folk Art
January 19, 1982 - March 6, 1982
The Folk Art Tradition
Naïve Painting in Europe and the United States
November 17, 1981 - January 9, 1982
Austria's Expressionism
April 21, 1981 - May 30, 1981
Eugène Mihaesco
His First American One-Man Show
March 3, 1981 - April 11, 1981
Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele
November 12, 1980 - December 27, 1980
Summer Exhibition
June 17, 1980 - October 31, 1980
Kollwitz: The Drawing and The Print
May 1, 1980 - June 10, 1980
40th Anniversary Exhibition
November 13, 1979 - December 28, 1979
American Primitive Art
November 22, 1977
Käthe Kollwitz
December 1, 1976
Neue Galerie-Galerie St. Etienne
A Documentary Exhibition
May 1, 1976
Martin Pajeck
January 27, 1976
Georges Rouault and Frans Masereel
April 29, 1972
Branko Paradis
December 1, 1971
Käthe Kollwitz
February 3, 1971
Egon Schiele
The Graphic Work
October 19, 1970
Gustav Klimt
March 20, 1970
Friedrich Hundertwasser
May 6, 1969
Austrian Art of the 20th Century
March 21, 1969
Egon Schiele
Memorial Exhibition
October 31, 1968
Yugoslav Primitive Art
April 30, 1968
Alfred Kubin
January 30, 1968
Käthe Kollwitz
In the Cause of Humanity
October 23, 1967
Abraham Levin
September 26, 1967
Karl Stark
April 5, 1967
Gustav Klimt
February 4, 1967
The Wiener Werkstätte
November 16, 1966
Oskar Laske
October 25, 1965
Käthe Kollwitz
May 1, 1965
Egon Schiele
Watercolors and Drawings from American Collections
March 1, 1965
25th Anniversary Exhibition
Part II
November 21, 1964
25th Anniversary Exhibition
Part I
October 17, 1964
Mary Urban
June 9, 1964
Werner Berg, Jane Muus and Mura Dehn
May 5, 1964
Eugen Spiro
April 4, 1964
B. F. Dolbin
Drawings of an Epoch
March 3, 1964
Austrian Expressionists
January 6, 1964
Joseph Rifesser
December 3, 1963
Panorama of Yugoslav Primitive Art
October 21, 1963
Joe Henry
Watercolors of Vermont
May 1, 1963
French Impressionists
March 8, 1963
Grandma Moses
Memorial Exhibition
November 26, 1962
Group Show
October 15, 1962
Ernst Barlach
March 23, 1962
Martin Pajeck
February 24, 1962
Paintings by Expressionists
January 27, 1962
Käthe Kollwitz
November 11, 1961
Grandma Moses
September 7, 1961
My Friends
Fourth Biennial of Pictures by American School Children
May 27, 1961
Raimonds Staprans
April 17, 1961
Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Alfred Kubin
March 14, 1961
Marvin Meisels
January 23, 1961
Egon Schiele
November 15, 1960
My Life's History
Paintings by Grandma Moses
September 12, 1960
Watercolors and Drawings by Austrian Artists from the Dial Collection
May 2, 1960
Martin Pajeck
February 29, 1960
Eugen Spiro
February 6, 1960
Käthe Kollwitz
December 14, 1959
Josef Scharl
Last Paintings and Drawings
November 11, 1959
European and American Expressionists
September 22, 1959
Our Town
One Hundred Paintings by American School Children
May 23, 1959
Marvin Meisels and Martin Pajeck
May 1, 1959
Gustav Klimt
April 1, 1959
Käthe Kollwitz
January 12, 1959
Oskar Kokoschka
October 28, 1958
Village Life in Guatemala
Paintings by Andres Curuchich
June 3, 1958
Two Unknown American Expressionists
Paintings by Marvin Meisels and Martin Pajeck
April 28, 1958
Paula Modersohn-Becker
March 15, 1958
The Great Tradition in American Painting
American Primitive Art
January 20, 1958
Jules Lefranc and Dominique Lagru
Two French Primitives
November 18, 1957
Margret Bilger
October 22, 1957
The Four Seasons
One Hundred Paintings by American School Children
June 11, 1957
Grandma Moses
May 6, 1957
Alfred Kubin
April 3, 1957
Franz Lerch
March 2, 1957
Egon Schiele
January 21, 1957
Josef Scharl
Memorial Exhibition
November 17, 1956
Irma Rothstein
May 19, 1956
Käthe Kollwitz
April 16, 1956
A Tribute to Grandma Moses
November 28, 1955
As I See Myself
One Hundred Paintings by American School Children
May 20, 1955
Juan De'Prey
April 19, 1955
Erich Heckel
March 29, 1955
Freddy Homburger
March 2, 1955
Masters of the 19th Century
January 18, 1955
Oskar Kokoschka
November 29, 1954
Isabel Case Borgatta and Josef Scharl
October 12, 1954
James N. Rosenberg and Eugen Spiro
April 30, 1954
Per Krogh
April 2, 1954
Cuno Amiet
February 16, 1954
Eniar Jolin
January 14, 1954
Irma Rothstein
December 8, 1953
Josef Scharl
November 11, 1953
Grandma Moses
October 21, 1953 - October 24, 1953
Wilhelm Kaufmann
September 30, 1953
Lovis Corinth, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele
May 27, 1953
A Grandma Moses Album
Recent Paintings, 1950-1953
April 15, 1953
Streeter Blair
American Primitive
February 26, 1953
Paintings on Glass
Austrian Religious Folk Art of the 17th to 19th Centuries
December 4, 1952
Hasan Kaptan
Paintings of a Ten-Year-Old Turkish Painter
October 29, 1952
Margret Bilger
May 10, 1952
American Natural Painters
March 31, 1952
Ten Years of New York Concert Impressions by Eugen Spiro; Four New Paintings by
January 26, 1952
I-Fa-Wei
Watercolors of New York by a Chinese Artist
December 1, 1951
Käthe Kollwitz
October 25, 1951
Drawings and Watercolors by Austrian Children
May 21, 1951
Grandma Moses
Twenty-Five Masterpieces of Primitive Art
March 17, 1951
Roswitha Bitterlich
January 18, 1951
Oskar Laske
Watercolors of Vienna and the Salzkammergut
October 14, 1950
Tenth Anniversary Exhibition
Part II
May 11, 1950
Austrian Art of the 19th Century
From Wadlmüller to Klimt
April 1, 1950
Chiao Ssu-Tu
February 18, 1950
Anton Faistauer
January 1, 1950
Tenth Anniversary Exhibition
Part I
November 30, 1949
Autograph Exhibition
October 26, 1949
Gladys Wertheim Bachrach
May 24, 1949
Oskar Kokoschka
March 30, 1949
Eugen Spiro
February 19, 1949
Frans Masereel
January 13, 1949
Ten Years Grandma Moses
November 22, 1948
Käthe Kollwitz
Masterworks
October 18, 1948
American Primitives
June 3, 1948
Egon Schiele
Memorial Exhibition
April 5, 1948
Miriam Richman
February 7, 1948
Vally Wieselthier
Memorial Exhibition
January 10, 1948
Christmas Exhibition
December 4, 1947
Fritz von Unruh
November 10, 1947
Käthe Kollwitz
October 4, 1947
Grandma Moses
May 17, 1947
Lovis Corinth
April 16, 1947
Hugo Steiner-Prag
March 15, 1947
Mark Baum
January 11, 1947
Eugen Spiro
November 25, 1946
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
May 17, 1946
Ladis W. Sabo
Paintings by a New Primitive Artist
April 8, 1946
Georges Rouault
The Graphic Work
February 26, 1946
Käthe Kollwitz
Memorial Exhibition
November 21, 1945
Fred E. Robertson
Paintings by an American Primitive
June 13, 1945
Max Liebermann
The Graphic Work
April 18, 1945
Vienna through Four Centuries
March 1, 1945
Eugen Spiro
January 20, 1945
Grandma Moses
New Paintings
December 5, 1944
Käthe Kollwitz
Part II
October 26, 1944
A Century of French Graphic Art
From Géricault to Picasso
September 28, 1944
Max Liebermann
Memorial Exhibition
June 9, 1944
Juan De'Prey
Paintings by a Self-Taught Artist from Puerto Rico
May 6, 1944
Abraham Levin
April 15, 1944
Lesser Ury
Memorial Exhibition
March 21, 1944
Grandma Moses
Paintings by the Senior of the American Primitives
February 9, 1944
Betty Lane
January 11, 1944
WaIt Disney Cavalcade
December 9, 1943
Käthe Kollwitz
Part I
November 3, 1943
Will Barnet
September 29, 1943
Lovis Corinth
May 26, 1943
Josephine Joy
Paintings by an American Primitive
May 3, 1943
Oskar Kokoschka
Aspects of His Art
March 31, 1943
Eugen Spiro
February 13, 1943
Seymour Lipton
January 18, 1943
Illuminated Gothic Woodcuts
Printed and Painted, 1477-1493
December 5, 1942
Abraham Levin
November 4, 1942
Walt Disney Originals
September 23, 1942
Documents which Relate History
Documents of Historical Importance and Landmarks of Human Development
June 10, 1942
Honoré Daumier
April 29, 1942
Bertha Trabich
Memorial Exhibition of a Russian-American Primitive
March 25, 1942
Alfred Kubin
Master of Drawing
December 4, 1941
Egon Schiele
November 7, 1941
Betty Lane
June 3, 1941
Flowers from Old Vienna
18th and Early 19th Century Flower Painting
May 7, 1941
Weavings by Navaho and Hopi Indians and Photos of Indians by Helen M. Post
January 29, 1941
Georg Merkel
November 7, 1940
What a Farm Wife Painted
Works by Mrs. Anna Mary Moses
October 9, 1940
Saved from Europe
Masterpieces of European Art
July 1, 1940
American Abstract Art
May 22, 1940
Franz Lerch
May 1, 1940
Wilhelm Thöny
April 3, 1940
French Masters of the 19th and 20th Centuries
February 29, 1940
H. W. Hannau
Metropolis, Photographic Studies of New York
February 2, 1940
Oskar Kokoschka
January 9, 1940
Austrian Masters
November 13, 1939
SELF-TAUGHT PAINTERS IN AMERICAN 1800-1950
Revisiting the Tradition
ARTISTS
Branchard, Emile
Doriani, William
Field, Erastus Salisbury
Hicks, Edward
Hirshfield, Morris
Kane, John
Lebduska, Lawrence
Litwak, Israel
Moses, Anna Mary Robertson ("Grandma")
Phillips, Ammi
Pickett, Joseph
Prior-Hamblen School
Stock, Joseph Whiting
ESSAY
In 1982, the Galerie St. Etienne mounted an exhibition titled "The Folk Art Tradition: Naive Painting in Europe and the United States." Accompanied by a book-length catalogue, the show attempted to present a cohesive overview of a genre that had long resisted precise definition. In the ensuing quarter-century, the field variously known as "folk art," "naive art," "primitive art," "art brut," "outsider art" and "self-taught art" has become even messier and more conflicted. At the same time, however, scholarship has improved exponentially. Ironically, the fact that we today know so much more than we once did about the creators who constitute this field only makes it harder to find a common rubric under which to group them. The origins of the field can be traced back to mid-nineteenth-century Europe. There, as later in the United States, interest in what the Germans dubbed Volkskunst initially had an ethnographic orientation. Urbanization and the ongoing erosion of handicraft by industrialization inspired Europeans to record and preserve for posterity the creations of the indigenous peasant class. From the outset, this mission had a political dimension: symbolically rooted in the native soil, folk art was readily appropriated to affirm national identity. For some observers, folk artists also evoked the Romantic ideal of the noble savage. These creators, it was believed, worked in atavistic idioms uncorrupted by modern society. Nationalistic and Romantic interpretations would reverberate through folk-art studies, both in the U.S. and abroad, for years to come. Interest in American folk art was an extension of the so-called colonial revival, which was itself an outgrowth of the patriotism sparked by the nation's centennial in 1876. The arts-and-crafts movement, introduced to the U.S. toward the end of the nineteenth century, drew further attention to well-designed, well-made folk objects. As in Europe, advancing industrialization was also a factor, spurring nostalgia for the past and a desire to recapture "America's golden age." Collections proliferated, along with shops, auctions and magazine articles, but the focus was on historical documentation and interior decoration. "Period rooms," popular in museums, were emulated at home. The idea of folk art as art, like awareness of the genre per se, originated in Europe. Picking up on the concept of the noble savage, European modernists decided in the early twentieth-century that untrained artists were inherently superior to members of the academic art establishment. The modernists made no real distinction between peasant craftsmen, children, self-taught contemporary painters like Henri Rousseau or creators from non-western cultures. All were commonly referred to as "primitives," because it was believed they could access the primordial roots of visual expression. And this is what the modernists hoped to achieve in their own work. Folk art legitimized modern art, and modern art in turn legitimized folk art. By 1910, some of America’s more advanced artists had begun collecting domestic folk art, but the trend only took off in the 1920s and acquired ideological cohesion in the 1930s. Among the key shapers of this trajectory were Hamilton Easter Field (whose art school in Ogunquit Maine became a magnet for supporters of modernism), the artist Elie Nadelman, the dealer Edith Gregor Halpert and the curator Holger Cahill. In 1931, with Cahill’s assistance, Halpert's Downtown Gallery opened an annex specializing in American folk art. Major collectors such as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller were at this point already onboard. Cahill further codified the field in his exhibitions "American Primitives: An Exhibit of the Paintings of Nineteenth-Century Folk Artists" (Newark Museum, 1930), "American Folk Sculpture: The Work of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Craftsmen" (Newark Museum, 1931) and "American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America 1750-1900" (Museum of Modern Art, 1932). In 1938, MoMA expanded the genre's reach into the contemporary arena with "Masters of Popular Painting." Folk art's transition from the realm of ethnography to fine art was not uncomplicated, as evidenced by the shifting nomenclature in the 1930s' exhibition titles. High-art terms like "painting" and "sculpture" glossed over those aspects of folk art that were based in utilitarian craft and communal traditions. Left open was the question whether use of the adjective "folk" should be confined to pre-industrial creations. Twentieth-century manifestations of similar impulses were more difficult to classify and name. Nonetheless, by whatever name, self-taught art proved remarkably in sync with Depression-era tastes. The genre was seen as being quintessentially American, fulfilling the need for a distinctive native art and providing a foundation for American modernism that appeared independent of any European prototype. At a time of massive socio-economic upheaval, folk artists exemplified unifying national values such as freedom, individualism and democratic egalitarianism. As Cahill stressed, this was the "art of the common man." Anointed as well with the aura of the noble savage, the work was "simple, unaffected and childlike." It was, Alice Winchester would write some years later, "characterized by the qualities belonging to the original state of man." The stereotypes put forth by Cahill and carried through the twentieth century by successors like Winchester and Jean Lipman have only recently begun to be deconstructed and challenged. The "art of the common man," we now realize, was largely the art of white men of European descent living in the Northeastern United States. The "noble savage" paradigm proved equally insidious, requiring that each artist be viewed as a tabula rasa. Early studies ignored the elaborate interplay between idiosyncratic innovation, community-based standards and outside influences that characterizes most folk painting. The context in which the work originated was of scant interest. During America’s colonial period, art was essentially a European import, albeit one for which the early settlers had little time. The Revolution brought greater cultural independence, but Europe continued to be seen as the arbiter of upper-class standards, the place where ambitious American painters went to study. At the same time, the United States was developing a broad-based middle class with the means and desire to celebrate its success. An upsurge in consumerism increased the demand for portraits. Portraits affirmed the sitters’ social standing and, in an era of high mortality rates, supplemented the genealogical records that were commonly appended to family Bibles. As interior decoration, portraits were more acceptable to Puritan households than “fancy” subjects like landscapes. The first half of the nineteenth century was the heyday of the “limner”: itinerant artists who traveled the countryside painting portraits. The absence of guilds in the U.S. made it easy for a farmer to supplement his income by taking up a trade, and limning was an extension of crafts such as house-painting, gilding and sign-painting. Many limners combined portraiture with other sorts of decorative work; only the most successful, like Ammi Phillips, could live off portrait commissions alone. The best documented limners worked overlapping territories in Pennsylvania, New York and New England, and it is likely their paths crossed. Some had direct or indirect contact with academically trained artists; Erastus Salisbury Field studied with Samuel F. B. Morse, and Joseph Whiting Stock took lessons from a student of Chester Harding. Engravings and mezzotints, often imported from England, transmitted additional information about academic poses and techniques. From these sundry sources, limners cobbled together an ad-hoc approach that combined elements of polished realism with comparatively crude abstraction. Understandably, they paid the most attention to faces and used stylized garments to cloak their ignorance of anatomical rendering. Artists often enlivened compositions with decorative details such as lace and patterned fabrics to underscore the sitters’ prosperity. Economic considerations helped determine a portrait’s size, complexity and degree of finish. William Matthew Prior, who ran a workshop in collaboration with his relatives Sturtevant J. Hamblin and George Hartwell, advertised that, “Persons wishing for a flat picture can have a likeness without shade or shadow at one quarter price.” The Prior-Hamblin group also charged less for “side views and profiles of children.” Miniatures, watercolors and silhouettes, priced according to the amount of detail, served the lowest end of the market. Nonetheless, even the most elaborate and costly limner portraits never achieved the level of three-dimensional accuracy found in their academic counterparts. Portrait-painting was a relatively low-status occupation, but America’s limners were often more financially successful than their better-educated colleagues. John Vanderlyn bemoaned the fact that people evidently preferred the portraits of Ammi Phillips to his own more refined landscapes and history paintings. “Were I to begin in life again,” Vanderlyn advised his young nephew, “I would not hesitate to follow this plan, . . . to paint portraits cheap & slight, for the mass of folks can’t judge the merits of a well-finished picture.” While Erastus Salisbury Field prospered, poverty forced his one-time teacher Samuel Morse to abandon art for science. Best remembered for inventing the telegraph, Morse in 1839 dealt a death-blow to the limner profession by introducing the daguerreotype to the U.S.. Daguerreotypes were simply cheaper, faster to produce and more accurate than any painted portrait. Some limners, like Field, tried to master the new technology or to work from photographic sources, but this yielded stilted, less pleasing paintings. In the 1840s, Field changed his professional title from “portrait painter” to “artist,” and began to depict more “artistic” historical and Biblical subjects. Similarly, William Mathew Prior switched to landscapes in the 1850s. However, technology had brought unbeatable competition into the market for “fancy” pictures as well. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, commercial lithographers like Currier and Ives turned out inexpensive prints by the thousands. There were images to suit every taste: landscapes, portraits of celebrities and historical figures, records of newsworthy events, religious themes, decorative subjects and cartoons. It was the end of the line for the professional folk painter, and the beginning of the age of the amateur. Industrialization gave people more leisure time for hobbies, and popular prints proved inspirational to amateur painters. Whereas portraits had predominated among their professional predecessors, self-taught artists active around the turn of the twentieth century favored landscapes. Signed or unsigned, many of these paintings appear as one-off attempts, impossible to connect to a larger body of work. The oeuvre of Joseph Pickett, now considered among the most important self-taught artists of this period, would probably have been lost had Holger Cahill not salvaged a few paintings for his 1930 exhibition. The art world’s quest for contemporary self-taught painters, which began when the Pittsburgh laborer John Kane was admitted to the Carnegie International Exhibition in 1927, rescued numerous talented amateurs from otherwise certain oblivion. Save for an initial dearth of professional opportunities, the best amateurs were in many fundamental respects similar to the nineteenth-century limners. They pursued their craft with wholehearted intensity, acquiring a knowledge of artistic process through trial-and-error and by studying available source materials. Kane haunted the Carnegie Museum and local libraries, assiduously copying pictures from art books. Morris Hirshfield, a retired garment manufacturer, produced full-scale templates, similar to dress patterns, for each of his paintings. Anna Mary Robertson (“Grandma”) Moses, like many of the anonymous amateurs who preceded her, loved the landscapes of Currier and Ives, but she soon replaced their typically narrow compositional format with a broader, quilt-like perspective that better suited her own experience of nature. Similarly, Kane combined views sketched from several locations to create scenes of Pittsburgh depicting what he knew in his mind’s eye to be there, rather than what could be seen from any one vantage point. Economic circumstances had prevented this modern cohort of self-taught painters from pursuing artistic training, but all of them harbored a need to share their work with the public. Otherwise they would not have been “discovered”: Kane by submitting his work repeatedly to the Carnegie International’s jury; Moses through a “women’s exchange” at a local drugstore; William Doriani at the Washington Square Art Mart; Patsy Santo at the Vermont state fair. Nevertheless, none of these artists was equipped to compete in the high reaches of the art world, whose agenda remained inscrutable and, as it turned out, not entirely friendly. Cahill and others who championed folk painting as America’s ur-artform failed to anticipate the anger this would arouse in the nation’s trained artists. Much like John Vanderlyn in the nineteenth-century, academic painters resented the fact that such crude upstarts could be more successful than they. Some attempted to discredit Kane by saying he painted over photographs. After MoMA gave Hirshfield a one-man exhibition in 1943, the museum’s director, Alfred Barr, was excoriated in the press and, as a result, removed from his post. When the U.S. Information Service sent a Moses show to Europe in 1950, The New York Times was not pleased. “[The Europeans] praise our naiveté and integrity,” a reviewer wrote, “but they begrudge us a full, sophisticated art expression. Grandma Moses represents both what they expect of us and what they are willing to grant us.” As a rising superpower in the postwar years, America abandoned the effort to seek an artistic identity in its folk traditions and instead embraced the work of the Abstract Expressionists. And so it ended. Grandma Moses, one of the most popular American artists of the 1940s and ‘50s, went on to influence generations of children’s book illustrators and self-styled “naives,” but self-taught painters disappeared from the upper echelons of the art world. Folk art was relegated to the past, and to separatist institutions like New York’s Museum of Early American Folk Arts (today the American Folk Art Museum). Nonetheless, beyond the restrictive confines of the art world, self-taught artists were still making art in much the same ways they always had. Even as the American elite turned its back on self-taught art, the European artist Jean Dubuffet was laying the groundwork for the genre’s revival. Dubuffet’s concept of “art brut” (raw art) was essentially a revival of the old “noble savage” ideal, but taken to a greater extreme than previously. Whereas earlier definitions of "folk" and "primitive" art had hinged on lack of training, Dubuffet required that "his" artists operate at the furthest remove from “received culture.” Commonly translated as "outsider art," art brut could not (despite the best efforts of its most ardent champions) escape the taint of implied mental or social impairment. Awkward attempts to classify artists according to biography and to parse subjective issues like authenticity were further complicated by the inherent racism of the term "outsider," which assumed a white, "insider" perspective on cultural boundaries. As Dubuffet admitted, there is no such thing as "pure" art brut; all art is to a greater or lesser degree affected by received culture. And while folklorists, conversely, emphasize preexisting community traditions over idiosyncratic invention, the truth is that even folk crafts involve a mix of the two. Nineteenth-century limners, early twentieth-century self-taught painters and late twentieth-century outsiders navigated along a continuum, somewhere between the "raw" and the "cooked"; the wholly a-cultural and the fully cultured. What set these artists apart from the mainstream had nothing to do with some mythical ideal of purity, but was, quite simply, a matter of social class. Americans want to believe we live in a classless society, ignoring the differences in education, wealth, race, ethnicity and gender that separate the upper echelons of the art world from ordinary citizens. Championing the work of self-taught artists has sometimes been a way to deny those differences. Collectors like the Rockefellers could lay claim to a grass-roots tradition that both mollified and justified the enormity of their wealth. Dubuffet appropriated unschooled stylistic tropes to lend greater "authenticity" to his own work. By anointing certain self-taught artists with their approval, the elite turned dross into gold. But the alchemical powers vested in the elite, and their judgments of the unschooled were often tinged with condescension. Acceptance of lower-echelon creators by the art-world mainstream did not challenge class boundaries; on the contrary, it affirmed them. Understanding the field of self-taught art as an artifact of social class is the first step toward disentangling it from its distorted history. The second step requires understanding that this is not a genre, nor even a field, in any conventional sense, but rather a congeries of disparate creations. While there may be connections--communities of shared influence--among some of the artists, they do not hang together as a whole. Therefore, each body of work must be studied in terms of its specific context and the particular intentions of its creator. Judgments of authenticity must be replaced by judgments of quality. Self-taught artists deserve to be assessed by the same standards as trained artists: by weighing their assimilation of available visual resources and their success in developing formal vocabularies that effectively express an original vision.
We would like to express our wholehearted appreciation to the Bennington Museum, to its Director, Stephen Perkins, and its Curator, Jamie Franklin, without whose generous support this exhibition would not have been possible. We also extend warmest thanks to the private lenders and colleagues who assisted us with this show. Checklist entries are accompanied by their catalogue raisonné numbers where applicable; height precedes width.