Naive Art: Southern United States and Balkans Region of Southeastern Europe

1560 Words4 Pages

While folk art is unique to it's individual cultures we can't help but recognize running themes in subject, style, and feel. From these groups comes a remarkably rich and unique collection of music, food, holidays, arts and crafts, and literature. Naïve Art could simply be classified as folk art, but is distinctly the work of untrained, or rather, self taught artists, many of whom are capable of creating the most evocative and relatable scenes with tools as simple as matchsticks and mud.
Contributions from religion, climate, agriculture, politics, and nationality affect these artists, and there is an undeniable congruence in the rich (often naturally derived) color choices, distorted or fantastically unreal use of scale and perspective, and a seemingly optimistic or grandiose take on reality. I've chosen to compare the works of Naïve Artists from the Southern United States and the Balkans region of Southeastern Europe, to explore where their similarities and differences stem from, and to ask the question, what is it about their environment that impacts their art? My theory is that many of the similarities in style and content are due to these artists’ rural and impoverished existences as well as their Christian upbringings.
For centuries we've seen chaos and order ebb and flow amongst the ethnic groups of the Balkans. From the Adriatic to the West, and the Black sea to the East; Albanians, Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Greeks, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Romanians, Serbs, Slovenes, and Turks are widely spread across this mostly mountainous region. Higher elevations experience bitter cold and windy winters, and the majority those regions suffers from poor quality soil making tillage difficult. In the midst of the various mountain...

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...I maintain that creativity is accessible to everyone; self expression, inspiration, and artistic vision are in the mind of every individual.

Bibliography
Artist Information: http://www.rabuzingallery.com/ Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Folk Artist, Is Dead at 97, By MARGALIT FOX
Published: September 9, 2007
Susan Crawley, ed. THE LIFE AND ART OF JIMMY LEE SUDDUTH, 2005 pg 309-31 http://www.folkartlife.com/articles/clementinehunter.shtml#.UpI7QGTF3Uh http://www.gseart.com/Artists-Gallery/Fejes-Emerijk/Fejes-Emerijk-Biography.php http://www.gseart.com/Artists-Gallery/Basicevic-Ilija-Bosilj/Basicevic-Ilija-Bosilj-Biography.php American Folk Art (Google eBook) by Kristin G. Congdon, Kara Kelley Hallmark

Geographical, Historical, and Statistical Information http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/religion/history2.html http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2010_5/168337.htm

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