!!!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.

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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 2%%sup nd/%  half of the 19%%sup th/%  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 19%%sup th/%  and early 
20%%sup th/%  centuries (compare  Wiener Werkstaette). While in the 
early 20%%sup th/%  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).

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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.

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Collections of historic popular art, usually from the 18%%sup th/%  
and 19%%sup th/%  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
A. Riegl, Volkskunst, Hausfleiss und Hausindustrie, 1894; 
M. Haberlandt, Oesterr. Volkskunst, 1914; L. Schmidt, Volkskunst in 
Oesterreich, 1966; idem, Werke der alten Volkskunst, 1979; K. Beitl 
et al. (eds.), Volkskunst, 1995.


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