Cut-paper snowflake is a great equaliser
FOLK art is often dismissed too lightly. Because "folk art" suggests simplicity and is created by ordinary folk, that is, untrained amateurs with no specialist tools, it is easy to assume anyone can do it.
Sadly, in this way much art and appreciation for folk artists is lost. Having turned my hand to corn dollies, grass weaving, paper folding and dozens of other folk arts, I know better than to dismiss either the artistry or the skill associated with creating folk art.
Paper cutting suffers an additional blow to its standing in the arts world by being part of what collectors dub "ephemera". Being made of paper means it is less likely to endure than glass or stone or metal.
Fortunately, the vagaries of history have been kinder to Polish paper cutting than some other aspects of folk art and so we are able to see a varied display of contemporary examples of paper cutting in Thurso at the Swanson Gallery from now until October 27.
Unlike Estonia, where Soviets suppressed folk art, Poland’s folk arts, especially wycinanki, were encouraged after World War Two.
An essay by Peter Gessner suggests this investment in folk arts was a way to differentiate the new People’s Poland from its so-called bourgeois antecedent and to legitimise the new regime. Whether its propagandistic efforts were rewarded or not, the result was that wycinanki was preserved and contemporary artists can continue to enjoy the tradition and heritage it represents.
Wycinanki were originally created using sheep shears and were used to decorate the cottages of Polish peasants in the latter part of the 19th century. Their life span rarely exceeded the season from one whitewashing of walls to the next.
Special designs might be created for birthdays or other occasions and the exhibit in Thurso demonstrates the range of designs: complex, multicoloured kaleidoscopes, images of people and traditional motifs of birds and flowers.
Although paper cutting began in China (as did paper manufacture), paper cutting and the motifs chosen are now represented by cultures around the world. German/Swiss paper cutting is Scherenschnitte; Chinese, JianZhi; Indian, Sanjihi; Dutch, Knippen; Turks, ka ti; Ukrainian, vytynanky, and Mexican, papel picado. In addition to the traditional uses and motifs of paper cutting, emigrants have carried their art and their motifs into the new countries where it merged or mingled with the new culture or sometimes became frozen in nostalgia.
"Distelfink", a little used word from my times in Pennsylvania Dutch country, refers to a stylized goldfinch motif characteristic of the folk art of that culture. Gessner, in his essay on Polish paper cutting, suggests Polish emigres, like the Pennsylvania Dutch, sometimes preserve an antiquated idea of the folk art, thus belying the very nature of folk art to be dynamic and reflective of the culture in which it is created.
Paper cutting is not the exclusive province of folk artists. Henri Matisse, painter and sculptor, adopted paper cutting as his chosen medium near the end of his artistic career.
Unlike many paper-cutting artists who worked from a stencil or a standard motif, Matisse chose to work free hand. He would then select and assemble these free-hand cut motifs on a background of paper.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, which claims to have displayed "one of the largest concentrations of these important works worldwide" enthused his paper cutouts "remain without precedent or parallel".
I noticed in a corner of the Swanson Gallery a small table with scissors and paper and one recently folded and cut-paper snowflake, the great equaliser among paper-cut art everywhere.
When you or your children or grandchildren make a paper snowflake to decorate your house or trim the tree, perhaps it will be that much more beautiful to think it is part of a long tradition of folk art.