Thoughts on the Folk Art

Abstract

During the last decades, due to global shifts in both international and domestic culture, notions of the traditional folk art and its place in the contemporary artistic life have become blurred and imprecise. The article discusses the issue of specificity of folk art as a whole (taking into account both its performative, folkloric and its non-verbal, “material”, i.e. decorative and applied dimension). In the author’s view, the core feature setting the folk art apart from other types of art consists in its belonging to the so called oral form of culture that is characterized by a particular mythological or folkloric consciousness. It is in the folk life milieu that the surviving elements of oral traditions define such facets of art as collectivity, canonicity, and improvisation.