THE AGUILAR SISTERS AND THE FOLK ART LABEL QUEENS

            In my 15 years in business and my even more years of collecting, hundreds of thousands of pieces of arts and crafts have passed through my hands.  These pieces are made from every material conceivable and come from all the corners of Latin America:  from the frigid south of Chile to the windswept llanos of Venezuela to the humid jungles of Belize.  I have pretty much seen everything.  Most of these items – upwards of 90% - have no signatures and bear no mark of the person, village or co-operative responsible for their creation.  They come to the customers as anonymous ambassadors of culture, time and place.

            In one of my first paid speaking gigs back in 2008 I was called to talk on the nature of folk art, with a specific emphasis on Mexico.  When I was asked to give this lecture I had no idea what the level of interest in the subject would be and was happy to walk in to 50 attentive people greeting me.  The nature of folk art is based in the “commonness” of the items, I explained, and that the forces that create the art come up from the traditions and folkways of the people.  Unlike fine art, for the most part folk art is ephemeral and not made to last, physically or otherwise.  The pieces and styles may or may not endure while the traditions and cultures behind them continue.

            In American culture we’ve grown up with the idea that a signed creation is a better creation and that if it’s a “name brand” the quality of whatever we are buying is superior.  I haven’t understood how this branding can been applied to folk art, and the thinking seems as contradictory as having a yoga competition, but I guess our culture will take ways of thinking towards one thing and apply it to another.  In the past 20-30 years there has been a growing movement of collecting “masters of folk art” and pieces with signatures and marks on them.  A clay market figure sold by a street vendor in Oaxaca might not be of better quality than another, but we know that anything made by the Aguilar sisters is superior.  Where does that come from?

            Some of this excitement or “demand” has been created artificially by importers or stores that carry the work.  With the exclusivity of “the masters” they can jack up prices and have more sales.   I started to figure this out on a trip to Peru when I arrived at a town that was supposedly dominated by a crafter family (with a common last name) that has been pumped up by a large importer in Texas.   The craftspeople in the town had not even heard of this family.  One of my customers who claimed to collect pieces from these great Peruvian folk artists was somewhat disappointed to hear this story (and was even more disappointed when I did not return home laden with signed pieces).    

To this day I have customers asking for name brands and I do carry some pieces from well-known crafters and workshops partly because they are appealing to me but mostly to cater to the wishes of the customers.  I have had many “label queens” walk through my doors and I myself even fell under the spell of one of the Aguilar sisters, the bright-eyed Guillermina, who was gracious enough to visit my store and conduct full-house workshops in my back room back in 2003.  So, maybe I’m not even immune to being star struck, to some degree (or dropping names?).

My own law of collecting has always been “collect what you like.”  I always say that my business came out of a “hobby that went berserk,” but as a businessman I do have to cater to the desires and needs of the customers, which change over time.  There has always been room for the label queens but I am glad to say that my warehouse space is dominated by the unsung heroes who busy themselves happily in their faraway workshops anonymously.

I Will Never Forget You:  The Day I Received a Cease-and-Desist Letter from the Frida Kahlo Attorneys

 

            Those who are into Mexican art or Mexican culture, even those who have a vague familiarity with Mexico, know something about Frida Kahlo.  She painted scores of pictures of herself – her autoretratos - and her face is unmistakable.  People are divided on what to think of her look with no middle ground:  she was either one of the most beautiful women who ever lived, or, well, the opposite of that.  Over the years Frida has become an icon, and like so many famous people others have ascribed things to her that weren’t really true or have co-opted her likeness for their own purposes.  I have to smile when I think about, for example, when I was down in Brazil in 2009 and I saw a large colorful banner of a unibrowed Frida staked out on the beach at Buzios to mark the place where a Frida admiration society was supposed to have a meet-up (yes, I did go up to them and ask).  Frida’s image appears everywhere, and as a dealer of arts and crafts I have trafficked in Frida merchandise for 15 years, selling objects with her likeness on them pretty much every day.  Today, for instance, I sold a jewelry box with a decoupage of Frida on the lid of the box (being shipped to Illinois, I believe) made by an anonymous crafter from Mexico.  I don’t know who makes a lot of the stuff that I get in or purchase on my buying trips.  From the small villages to the folk art galleries in the larger cities of Mexico, you can always find Frida’s familiar gaze staring right at you in one form or another.

            In the summer of 2010 I checked my eBay listings, which usually number to about 2,000, and I saw that a number of them were missing.  I thought it was strange and was a little concerned because eBay almost never gets hacked.  I didn’t think too much of this until I pulled up my Juno inbox and saw several emails that explained everything.  There were a few emails from eBay saying that the missing items were pulled because of copyright violations and that I would not have my fees refunded for these listings.  There were some other vague threats that eBay made and I was hit with a three month “probationary period” that didn’t amount to much.  I was a little concerned that all of this was happening to me without first having an explanation or without someone asking me to elaborate on whatever issue they had with me.  Then I opened an email from an attorney which explained everything.

            I was selling items that had copyrighted images of Frida Kahlo on them, and even though I wasn’t actually creating these items I would be sued if I did not stop selling them.  The attorney was representing the elderly daughter of Nikolas Muray, a man who had taken volumes of rich color photographs of Frida during the time he knew her in the 1930s and 1940s.  A huge chunk of his work comes from the time when Frida had her first solo show in New York in 1938.  The images from that shoot are iconic and easily recognizable.  They are everywhere.  I sent an apologetic letter to the attorneys and told them that I would comply with what they asked.  I further explained that I was not making any of these crafts myself and that if they were going to try to crack down on copyright infringement they would have a long haul ahead of them, as so many people slap Frida’s face on everything from crosses to flower pots.  I also went a step further and told them that since I do actually do a lot of the buying for my business myself and interact with legions of crafters from around the hemisphere that I would be happy to help out Muray’s estate and let people know they should stop using these images.  What happened after this was quite unexpected.

            The next email I received was from the photographer’s daughter who wanted to thank me personally for doing the right thing and to spread the word.  She lives in a small town in Utah and besides Social Security she makes her living off of the royalties of her father’s work.  I told her that I would do everything I could do to help her.  We sent a few volleys of friendly emails back and forth and she eventually sent me a signed copy of a collection of her father’s photos and letters from Frida titled I Will Never Forget You:  Frida Kahlo and Nikolas Muray.  I treasure the book not only because it was a gift but because it represents to me how a potentially adversarial situation can be turned around and changed to a win-win. 

            I will end this post by keeping my promise and by asking people who are using these images in their work to please refrain from doing so.  There are many Frida Kahlo images and paintings that are in the public domain and can be used in crafts without violating copyright.  There is a woman in Utah who will really appreciate your honoring the legacy of her father.