The Thomas Kincade thread got me thinking of what sort of art I saw in people’s houses. I did not see much Kinkade growing up but I did see paintings of Martin Luther King, Kennedy and Jesus grouped together. All the people who had these pictures were black.
Also seen in many, many households was Jesus, his heart outside his chest with thorns around it, holding up a hand with a big hole in it. This was a completely different type of Jesus than in the civil rights trinity. These thorny crowned Jesus paintings were all in the homes Latino families.
Another Latino favorite painting looked very much like blown up photographs painted in. These were almost always portraits of old family members when they were young.
Also, if you were Catholic-- especially Italian-- if you had a front yard, chances are Mary-an-a-half-shell was there.
One type of painting that crossed racial and cultural barriers were those big eyed waif children. Everybody had those when I was little.
I don’t remember art being specifically ethnic. I never even heard of Kinkade until I was an adult. We had a lot of art by one semi-famous artist at home (white if it matters), especially because he was a friend of a family member.
I’ve seen St. Francis in gardens like that. Also (St.) Joseph, who was supposed to help you sell your home.
Precious Moments? Those things are near the bottom of the Uncanny Valley for me.
We (black/Catholic) had one of those. Several black people we knew had thispicture of Jesus in their living room. People of all races had those silhouettes in their yard; you know the plywood people shaped cutouts. And several whites we knew had lawn jockeys. It was a tacky time.
Well of course the hillbilly art form of choice was taxidermy.
Also, somewhat weirdly, a lot of western Indian motifs. (I think my hill country peeps are trying to get in touch with perceived Cherokee roots, but don’t quite see the difference between Cherokee artistic traditions and, say, Navajo or Sioux artwork.)
Growing up we had a lot of African art on the walls and shelves. Like pencil sketches of African women (ethnicity, I have no idea) with children strapped on their backs, looking strong and powerful. We also had some Chinese art that my mother had gotten from her trip there. But mostly African stuff.
My parents are very devout, but strangely we didn’t have any Christian artwork. No black Jesus or anything like. Christmasy stuff was just that–Santa Claus and all that jazz. But there was one Christmas when my mother broke down in joyous tears because I, at the request of my father, had taken the angel off the top of the Christmas tree and applied brown acrylic paint so it would be black. “Black Angel” is a family shibboleth. We still have that crazy-looking thing and put it up every year.
I’ve come to associate any patriotic art to working class white people. This includes American flags hanging in the yard. Out of all the people in my family, the only person that I can kinda-sorta seeing having a flag in her yard would be my aunt in Indianapolis, who’s married to a white guy and has children who are phenotypically and culturally white. She’s beloved by all, but my mother–who loves her to death–once took her to task about all the angels on her Christmas tree. All eleventy-billion of them were white. Not even a token in the bunch. Except for Michael Jackson, I’ve never seen another black person who has had that kind of fixation.
Growing up in a Mexican-American family in the Northwest, about the only art we did have was religious. The only exception was the black velvet(!) paintings of pirates and ships my grandfather owned. Otherwise it was a cornucopia of Catholic imagery; multiple statues of Jesus and Mary, paintings and pictures of both in the style of Omega Glory’s picture, handdrawn pictures made by family members.
One odd thing I’ve noticed; on both sides of my family it was common to put statues of Buddha in their garden. There was no religious content implied, more as a decoration. Was this some cultural thing or just my family?
My art wasn’t racially/culturally divided, simply because I grew up in an area where the predominant minority were the Finns. In other words, this town was (and more or less still is) so white that the biggest division was between Norwegian and Lutheran, or French-Canadian and Catholic.
That said, we had a lot of the pics described in this thread. The Jesus pic Omega Glory linked to was really common. The Jesus-with-his-heart-torn-out was also in a lot of people’s houses. Mary-in-a-bathtub adorned many people’s yards. In fact, I have a Mary here in my house that a friend of mine hauled back from Mexico as a joke for me because we used to giggle so much about it. I need to get a bathtub; until then, she sits on my landing.
But the one pic I really remember was hanging in my Grandparent’s house - Giant Jesus Knocking on a Skyscraper. That thing always freaked me out.
Everyone I knew seemed to have stuff like THAT. And paintings on velvet. I really don’t remember anything else.
My own parents did not have that stuff, though–our house ran to Japanese prints and other cultural stuff on account of my mom. Also my folks were more hippie-esque than our neighbors.
Mexican Americans in Los Angeles almost all seemed to have statues of Mary, and a copy of the classic Virgin de Guadalupe with Juan Diego painting, as well as the suffering Jesus- crowned with thorns- art motif going on in most of the rooms.
Also, usually a big ass crucifix on the front room wall.
Our family was way cool, and had alters with lots of saints, skulls, and candles in the back room, and in Abuela’s bedroom.
Now you’ve got me wondering about the tall glass candles with pictures of Jesus/Mary/the popular saints on the side. Do they have a specific name or are they just called religious candles?
Wow, that is freaky. I think it’s supposed to be the UN. I’d love to know why it was painted.
From my own experience, we have several professional artists in our family, so almost all of our art was from them and did not feature any people (lots of WASPy Cape Cod stuff).
My grandmother had a sacred heart painting, and I also remember it being scarier than the ones I’m getting on Google. Upon reflection it’s probably just that I was a kid, and thus more easily scared and less gore-fatigued. That painting’s either been gone or has to a part of the house I never go into for many years, but she’s still got not one but TWO Marys on the half-shell, front yard and back. She also had lots of knick-knackery that I would frankly describe as fairly guidoish.
My other grandmother is very artsy-crafty, so her house was mostly stuff she made. I don’t know that it counts for the purposes of this thread, but looking at any of her work you’d have no doubt it was made by a white woman.
My parents mostly stuck to family photos, although my mom did go through a Trading Spaces phase of paining ivy-covered lattice onto walls and old furniture. I think that’s pretty white.
In my mom’s house, there’s a Guardian Angel painting, a charcoal drawing of a distant ancestor, and several landscapes painted by one of my aunts. There are also a few hundred assorted pictures of me and my sister, her children, and assorted godchildren, honorary grandchildren, and other family members, though most of those date from after I moved out.
That’s far from the only art we had exposure to, though. We went to the Cleveland Museum of Art enough times that either of us, by age eight, could have acted as tour guides.
