Short Abstract:

As the lifeworlds have changed radically, the etic use of folk art became anachronistic, thus much of the current phenomena became largely unstudied and unwritten. How can we consider folk art and its role in the contemporary? How does it relate to popular, vernacular, naïve art, and everyday craft?

Long Abstract:

Ethnological and folkloristic studies of folk art were once regarded as a phenomenon within national or tribal frames, considered mainly as peasant, primitive, or rural art. As the lifeworlds have changed radically, the etic use of folk art became anachronistic and its appearance out of the original context has been regarded as folklorism, cultural (re)constructionism, revival movements, etc. Current phenomena attracted much less scholarly attention than their supposedly vanished antecedents. “Art of the folk” however never disappears and urges scholars to pay more attention to the current rural and urban lifeworlds and the usage of folk art in contemporary culture. Nevertheless, should we unwrite or rewrite folk art in the contemporary? Terms like Art Populaire or Popular art, Vernacular art, Tribal art, Traditional art, Peasant art, Craft Art, and Naïve art, have also come into use without a terminological clearance of how they relate to the largely unwritten folk art in the contemporary. What is the relation between folk, vernacular, and popular art? We consider art in a broader sense, including visual and performative forms. New phenomena open new venues for study. For example, digital technologies widen the possibilities of creative communication literally in everyone’s hands; social, economic, and cultural conflicts are often mirrored in an endeavour to redefine identity by using established or enduring cultural patterns; the revival movements often work as vivid and creative subcultures. We invite researchers to rethink and renew the academic discourse regarding this complex problem and add new perspectives to it.

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