Folk Art
(Arte Popular)
Since the Mexican Revolution (1910-20), Mexican artists and intellectuals like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Miguel Covarrubias, and Gerardo Murillo ("Dr. Atl") have collected and advocated the indigenous arts of Mexico. By the 1950s, the Mexican government was actively supporting and encouraging the production and sale of folk art. It set up a system of buyers, marketing boards, competitions, stores, and regional museums. Today, an estimated 8 percent of the Mexican population, many of them Indian, earns a livelihood producing and selling forms of folk art and craft.
Although the definition of "folk art" is fluid, at its heart are forms of painting and sculpture, representative objects that have no utilitarian use, but are made expressly for sale as decorative objects. They are folk because they derive from communal traditions.
Although they may be communal, folk arts often begin with the creative innovations of a single person or a family, and are then taken up by others in the village. The state of Oaxaca in the 1950s and 1960s was such an instance. Here Josefina Aguilar and Teodora Blanco and their families created popular styles of ceramic figurines. Although the prospective buyer may wish to acquire a beautiful object that authentically captures the essence of a traditional life-style, in many cases the cultural reality may be considerably more complex.
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