American Folk Art, American Outsider Art and American Self-Taught Art

American Folk, Outsider and Self-Taught Art

DVD/VHS videos

Beautiful Losers (2008), 90 minutes, IMDb says: "This documentary follows the lives and careers of a collective group of Do-it-yourself artists and designers who inadvertently affected the art world." Accessed August, 2015.

Boneshop of the Heart: Folk Offerings from the American South. Explores a rich vein of American individuality through incisive portraits of five contemporary southern folk artists four of whom are African American. Includes interviews with the folk artists Enoch Tanner Wickham, Charlie Lucas, Vollis Simpson, Thornton Dial Sr., Bessie Harvey, Lonnie Bradley Holley. 1990. 53 min. Video/C MM612. Available from Media Resources Center, Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Collecting America: Folk Art and the Shelburne Museum. A 28 minute exploration of the thousands of American folk objects housed in Vermont's Shelburne museum. Narrated by Ann Sothern and hosted by John Wilmerding, the film plays homage to the craftsmanship of folk art. More than 100,000 art objects are housed in this unique museum dedicated to preserving American folk art history.

Earl Cunningham exhibition at the Orlando Musem of Art is a 26-minute VHS recording of the Earl Cunningham exhibit at the Orlando Museum of Art. Features narration by, and recollections of collectors Michael and Marilyn Mannello.

Earl Cunningham: The Dragon of St. George Street from WFME is a 60-minute documentary that tells the story of Earl Cunningham. "Known as a primitive artist, Cunningham was essentially a self-taught memory painter who utilized a unique visionary technique to record his adventures as a wanderer and mariner. The program uses the ocean and nautical symbols and metaphors to characterize the art and the artist

Highwaymen: Florida's Outsider Artists, The is a 58 minute story of a group of young, untrained African-American landscape painters that emerged from the small central Florida town of Fort Pierce in the late 50s and early 60s. Segregation and racist attitudes of the time prevented them from working with traditional art galleries. Instead, they traveled throughout the state selling their paintings out of the trunks of their cars. The Highwaymen had no pretensions about their art. They saw themselves as craftsmen, painting pictures strictly to earn a living. They mainly painted Florida back-country scenes -- coastal savannahs, hardwood hammocks, lonely tannin-stained rivers... expansive skies, capacious clouds, using bold strokes of dramatic colors. Theirs is an inspirational story of ingenuity and entrepreneurship, and ultimately, of perseverance in the face of societal limitations.

Graffiti/Post-Graffiti. Explains the art style that evolved from graffiti spray-painted on subway surfaces to canvas paintings now hung in major art galleries. In this documentary of the early '80's movement, the viewer listens to the movers and shakers of this imaginative trend, and examines the Hip-Hop culture in action, traveling to the South Bronx where most of it started. Interviews: Charlie Ahearn, Patti Astor, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Fred Brathwaite (Fab 5 Freddy), "Crash," Stefan Eins, Futura 2000, Keith Haring, Sidney Janis, "Lady Pink," Dolores and Hubert Neumann, Rammellzee and Tony Shafrazi. c1984. 28 min. Video/C 6323

Graffiti Verite: Read the Writing on the Wall. Los Angeles graffiti artists discuss the themes and motivations of their work, and how they evolved from taggers to artists. Several are shown at work on projects, indoors as well as outside. The history and significance of graffiti is addressed, as is its role in the Hip Hop culture. Written, produced, and directed by Bob Bryan. c1995. 45 min. Video/C 4469 Available from Media Resources Center, Library, University of California, Berkeley.

GV2: Graffiti Verite 2 A follow-up film to the award winning documentary Graffiti Verite. Includes interviews with more graffiti artists and street scenes with over 400 tags, throw-ups and pieces of "street art" all presented to a backdrop of Hip Hop music. Includes coverage of the winning artwork of the First International Graffiti Art Competition. Written, produced, and directed by Bob Bryan. 1998. 58 min. Video/C 5719 Available from Media Resources Center, Library, University of California, Berkeley.

GV3: Graffiti Verite 3 (The Final Episode). The Final Episode is a poetic voyage, a meditation, into the iconography of Graffiti art featuring an eclectic sound track as it's emotional and intellectual core. "GV3 is a compelling sensorial experience; shockingly honest and defiantly politically incorrect." Written, produced, and directed by Bob Bryan. c2000. 54 min. Video/C 7118 Available from Media Resources Center, Library, University of California, Berkeley.

GV4: Graffiti Verite 4. Sano, two-time winner of the International Graffiti Art Competition, teaches this underground art form, by showing the concepts, aesthetics, techniques, and style needed to complete a perfect semi "Wild Style" masterpiece and aerosol art on canvas. Written, produced, and directed by Bob Bryan. c2003. 67 min. DVD 2987 Available from Media Resources Center, Library, University of California, Berkeley.

GV5: Graffiti Verite 5: The Sacred Elements of Hip-hop Records a historic 4 day Hip-Hop Summer Workshop conducted at Metro High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Captures the excitement of this innovative workshop and what emerges is a portrait of the educational value and liberating therapeutic power contained within the unique elements of the contemporary hip-hop movement. Written, produced, and directed by Bob Bryan. c2003. 42 min. DVD 2988 Available from Media Resources Center, Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Portrait of George Hardy. In this 30 minute Gabriel Coakley 1995 program we meet George Hardy, an elderly self-taught artist, living on the island of Deer Isle, Maine. Born on Deer Isle in 1917, Hardy has continued to live there ever since. After making a living as a mason, he began his career in folk art at the age of 60. Isolated from art trends, with no formal training and only a seventh-grade education, his work is concrete, raw, and direct. His sculpture is very much a part of his environment. From his roughened hands come the energized versions of wooden porcupines, tigers, red foxes with alligator teeth, blue howling coyotes, seagulls, and song birds. View a clip of the video here.

School's Out: Self-Taught Artists is a 28 minute L&S Video hosted by Anna Deavere Smith, created and produced by Linda Freeman and written and directed by David Irving. .Grandma Moses is played by Priscilla Pointer. Bill Traylor is played by Ossie Davis. William Hawkins is played by Geoffrey Holder. "Self-taught Artists" is a category of painters who never attended art school. These three artists create paintings because they were compelled to do so. In the video, each artist's art and life is explored with the insightful commentary of several guests: Lee Kogan, Director of the Folk Art Institute, Museum of American Folk Art; Roger R. Ricco, of the Ricco/Maresca Gallery; Jane Kallir, Co-Director of Galerie St. Etienne, NY; Bob Greenberg, Collector. Throughout the video, there are discussions meant to help define the term "Self-taught Artist", and the differences between Folk Art and so called "Outsider Art" are explored. Parallels are drawn between the work of these artists and the art movements of their times, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, and the other modern art "schools". Qualities that each of these artists have conveyed are self-confidence and a basic belief in what they were doing was meaningful. The video offers an inspiring, uplifting, yet "down to earth" account of these three important American Artists. ISBN 1-882660-18-8

To Be Seen: Street Art. Documentary on street art and the cultural and political significance of this form of artistic expression. The subculture of street art is significant because it is an embodiment of subversive content and a form of public expression, a form of media and a means of political and social protest. Integrates interviews with street artists and others, looking at who is making street art and why, and also investigates the public's perception of this work. 2006. 30 min. DVD 5143. Available from the Educational Distribution service of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) which has distributed high quality works by and about Asians and Asian Pacific Americans, since 1986, to educational institutions, libraries, community organizations, government agencies, film and art centers, and television.

Uncommon Beauty in Common Objects: The Legacy Of African-American Craft is a video available through the Sullivan Video Library at The Speed Art Museum which holds a sizable collection of art-related videos available to educators at no charge.

Uncommon Folk is a documentary film which focuses on seven South Carolina folk artists. The film, produced by the state television network, is a joint partnership with South Carolina ETV and South Carolina State Museum. The film premiered at the State Museum on Feb. 26, 2011.

TFAO does not maintain a lending library of videos or sell videos. Click here for information on how to borrow or purchase copies of VHS videos and DVDs listed in TFAO's Videos -DVD/VHS, an authoritative guide to videos in VHS and DVD format

TFAO extends appreciation to Daniel Alpaca Gold for suggesting information for this topic.

Return to Folk Art

Return to Topics in American Representational Art

See our Museums Explained to learn about the "inner workings" of art museums and the functions of staff members. In the exhibitions section find out how to get the most out of a museum visit. See definitions for a glossary of museum-related words used in articles.

To help you plan visits to institutions exhibiting American art when traveling see Sources of Articles Indexed by State within the United States.

Unless otherwise noted, all text and image materials relating to the above institutional source were provided by that source. Before reproducing or transmitting text or images please read Resource Library's user agreement.

Our catalogues provide many more useful resources.

American Representational Art has links to dozens of topics.

Distinguished Artists is a national registry of historic artists.

About Resource Library

Resource Library is a free online publication of nonprofit Traditional Fine Arts Organization (TFAO). Since 1997, Resource Library and its predecessor Resource Library Magazine have cumulatively published online 1,300+ articles and essays written by hundreds of identified authors, thousands of other texts not attributable to named authors, plus 24,000+ images, all providing educational and informational content related to American representational art. Texts and related images are provided almost exclusively by nonprofit art museum, gallery and art center sources.

All published materials provide educational and informational content to students, scholars, teachers and others. Most published materials relate to exhibitions. Materials may include whole exhibition gallery guides, brochures or catalogues or texts from them, perviously published magazine or journal articles, wall panels and object labels, audio tour scripts, play scripts, interviews, blogs, checklists and news releases, plus related images.

What you won't find:

User-tracking cookies are not installed on our website. Privacy of users is very important to us. You won't find annoying banners and pop-ups either. Our pages are loaded blazingly fast. Resource Library contains no advertising and is 100% non-commercial. .

Links to sources of information outside our website are provided only as referrals for your further consideration. Please use due diligence in judging the quality of information contained in these and all other websites. Information from linked sources may be inaccurate or out of date. We neither recommend or endorses these referenced organizations. Although we include links to other websites, we take no responsibility for the content or information contained on other sites, nor exert any editorial or other control over them. For more information on evaluating web pages see our General Resources section in Online Resources for Collectors and Students of Art History.

*Tag for expired US copyright of object image:

Search Resource Library