Folklore

Who knows that Wassily Kandinsky started his career as an ethnographer in Russia? That Constantin Brancusi's great grandfather was a traditional wood churches builder in Romania? That Natalia Gontcharova developed an abstract painting inspired by Spanish costumes? That Joseph Beuys declared seeing in folklore a tool for the comprehension for the future, or that Marcel Broodthaers intended adding a « folklore section » to his Modern art museum - Département des Aigles ?

Associated with tradition, and therefore in appearance opposed to the notion of avant-garde, the world of folklore, subject to multiple controversies, infiltrates in different ways large areas of modernity and of contemporary creation. Far from the clichés of being backward-looking and artificial, artists have been able to find in it a source of inspiration, a regenerative power; as well as an object of critical analysis or of contention.