Volkskunst#

Popular Art, term introduced in academic discourse by A. Riegl in 1894, vaguely describing a field that is determined by the interdisciplinary interests of ( Folklore Studies) in aesthetic and creative forms that have existed before, outside of and parallel to the practice of classical and modern art rather than by actual conditions of production or reception.

The discovery of popular art as a field of academic study corresponds in time with its supposed disappearance as a form of popular culture in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Its promotion and the compilation of its objects was originally inspired by economic and educational motives. In line with the theories of primitivism, popular art was regarded as a timeless, pre-modern form of expression which was expected to contribute to the revival of national arts, popular taste and the cultivation of national identities. This approach was at the base of a broad reception of popular art in the visual and applied arts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (compare Wiener Werkstaette). While in the early 20th century the term was applied comprehensively to all artistic forms of Popular Culture (folk song, folk music, folk dancing, etc.), its meaning was later narrowed down to anonymous applied art as collected and exhibited mainly in folklore museums. Many objects that only a few decades ago were regarded as the folkloric products of peasant art have been attributed by more recent studies to rural artisans ( Rustic Furniture), workshops (e.g. ceramics, majolica, eglomise paintings) or recognised as mass products of a cottage industry (e.g. objects made of wood, animal horn, and bone).

Popular art is seen as the expression of world views and social orders, of values (e.g. piety expressed through devotional pictures, votive tablets or gifts) and collective memory. Its "styles" are determined by the aforementioned factors as well as by materials, techniques and the production process (e.g. serial production in cottage industry). Popular art frequently preserves styles, techniques and ornamental forms that in some respect or other imitated so-called high art, which, in turn, has been inspired by popular art from early modern times. In recent times, creative expressions of popular and youth culture, such as wall decorations, graffiti and other forms of lay art, have also been subsumed under the term of popular art and have become the object of exhibitions and empirical studies.

Collections of historic popular art, usually from the 18th and 19th centuries, are exhibited in regional museums as well as in provincial and national ones, for instance in the Austrian Folklore Museum in Vienna and in the Tyrolean Folklore Museum in Innsbruck. From the time between the two World Wars, the promotion and renewal of popular art in the field of domestic handicrafts has been carried out mainly by the Heimatwerk centres in the Austrian Provinces.

Literature#