Julia Ardery provides here a warts-and-all account of the life of Kentucky woodcarver Edgar Tolson. Her unvarnished treatment reveals the anguish, achievement, and triumph of a type of art that is most often cloaked in a garment of sweet innocence. Ardery probes the inner workings of American folk art, a cultural 'site' marked by endless squabbles over labels, market values, and ethical shortcomings.--John Michael Vlach, author of Plain Painters: Making Sense of American Folk Art
Ardery's other professional strengths as a poet and a journalist . . . infuse Tolson, Hall and the myriad characters and issues with life and resonance. A careful blend of archival research and oral history, this well-seasoned study is scholarly and readable.--Lexington Herald-Leader
With the astounding growth of a market for folk art over the past thirty years, a need has existed for a careful analysis. Julia Ardery has now provided such insight. In her fascinating, lively, and well-researched discussion of the career and the marketing of Kentucky carver Edgar Tolson she has shed light on the rapid development of this entire field of art. It is not only Edgar Tolson who has been tempted by the development of interest in folk art, but collectors and dealers as well. Art lovers will find Julie Ardery's work a unique insight into how art and value are created. The cast of characters alone makes the book great reading.--Gary Alan Fine, Northwestern University
The Temptation is a detailed, sharp-elbowed analysis . . . [that] tells the story of a generation of antipoverty workers and other educated young people who descended on Appalachia in the late 1960s and later sold out their political principles.--Lingua Franca
Absorbing. . . . Ardery compellingly demonstrates that the true temptation in understanding the folk art genre lies in our own willlingness to construct a belief in the folk art myth.--Appalachian Journal
A welcome addition to the still all-too-slim library of thoughtful studies on key contemporary folk artists, among whom Tolson looms. Juggling as Ardery does the complexities of time, place, events, and personalities that affected Tolson and the folk art world is no small feat.--Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Julia Ardery brings a rare balance of personal enthusiasm and healthy skepticism to her study of 'folk' art's reception by the 'fine' art world. Her exhaustively researched, insightful, and readable book is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the emerging field of contemporary self-taught art and its underlying sociopolitical dynamics.--Tom Patterson, independent curator and author of Reclamation and Transformation: Three Self-Taught Chicago Artists
An engaging sociological tale that approaches parable. . . . This ambitious, provocative book is at once biography, cultural criticism, and sociohistorical account.--Winterthur Portfolio
Julia Ardery, writing with a true storyteller's skill and the objectives of a journalist and activist, offers the story of Edgar Tolson as a case study of the role tradition has played (or not played) in the development of the notion of 'folk art' in the twentieth century.--American Quarterly
More than a biography of folk art master Edgar Tolson, this well-researched and informative tome traces the rise of contemporary folk and outsider art since the late 1960s, and is a welcome addition to the small but growing library of scholarly studies on the subject.--Outsider Magazine
[The book's] thoroughness and completeness of documentation are masterful. . . A major study, indispensable for anyone interested in art in Kentucky, the nature of folk art or the wider uses and misuses of the genius of Appalachian peoples.--Louisville Courier-Journal
Contributes significantly to the growing literature on the intricate social and economic relationships between artists and their collectors and dealers. It also introduces Edgar Tolson, a colorful figure in the development of a new genre, twentieth-century folk art.--American Historical Review
A tour de force. . . . A must read for anyone involved with folk art.--Choice
An important book, the first to meticulously document the sociological, political, and economic issues that helped to bring about 20th century folk art. . . . Her extensive investigation of the social side of the field is a solid piece of research, something that will be of interest to any folk art enthusiast or cultural historian.--Folk Art Finder
The Temptation is a detailed, sharp-elbowed analysis of how academic artists-turned-collectors helped, from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, to create the commercial and critical context in which contemporary American folk art and . . . outsider art could be perceived.--Lingua Franca
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