Bending art history.

THIS ISN'T AN abstract expressionist canvas. It's a quilt. It comes from Gee's Bend, Alabama, where an isolated black community long ago developed its own vision based on necessity (drafty cabins), availability (castoff fabrics), and creative originality.

The now-famous quilts of Gee's Bend were "discovered" in the 1990s by William Arnett, a collector of "vernacular art" and have since become a phenomenon: as museum exhibits, as a source of study (see, most recently, Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt, from Tinwood Books), as a line of stamps from the U.S. Postal Service, and of course as a collectors' market.

While some writers have ridiculed treating quilts as art, others have celebrated Gee's Bend as "a villageful of Paul Klees." Critics like Arnett object to any comparison with "white Western painters" as elitist, but in the case of Klee, the Swiss artist known for his joyously colorful abstract work, the comparison may be apt for unexpected reasons.

Klee was awakened to color not in Europe's art schools but in North Africa. He had worked mostly in black and white until he encountered the vernacular art of Tunisia, which was to transform his career. Klee's work may be the wrong context for approaching Gee's Bend, but Gee's Bend may be an instructive context for approaching artists like Klee.