With this theoretical essay, painter and critic Perán Erminy (1929–2018) joins other Venezuelan intellectuals (Alfredo Boulton, Francisco Da Antonio, and Juan Calzadilla) in addressing the concept and valorization of popular art. Erminy maintains that the terms “naive” and “primitive,” and even “natural”—which Manuel Quintana Castillo uses in “Feliciano, los ingenuos y el ingenuismo” (1967)—are not relevant to popular art. The text makes use of concepts taken from the social sciences, specifically anthropology and linguistics. Owing to prints and photographs, popular artists are versed in the models of high art, Erminy argues. The urban marginality experienced by popular artists is, in the author’s view, due to lingering nostalgia for peasant life and culture. Erminy is careful not to mystify popular art, since its value varies from case to case: some is merely commercial, some entails imitation of prestigious models, and some is lacking in any artistic merit whatsoever. Erminy’s primary objection to photographer Godofredo Romero’s selection of illustrations for the book is that it furthers the commercialization of popular art. It is striking that the book’s coauthors disagree to such an extent. Indeed, only seven of the twenty-seven artists in the book are remembered: Apolinar, Alí Bioscán, Cruz Amado Fagúndez, Esteban Mendoza, Víctor Millán, Elsa Morales, and Manasés Rodríguez. Although artist José Arecio Pérez’s work is also of interest, he would never be heard from again. In 1992, the Galería de Arte Nacional and the Fundación Bigott organized the exhibition Imágenes del genio popular, whose catalogue included another text by Erminy that addresses the same topics discussed in these writings from 1976, although now in relation to a more rigorous selection of twelve artists.