A publication of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art
Volume 24 | Winter 2020
2
THE OUTSIDER
INDEX 05
Letter from the president
06
Evolution of a complex field: A short rumination
by debra kerr
by randall morris
14
Digital engagement as a means of connection by paula santos
20
why a visionary artist is necessary during these times
Reflections on Lonnie Holley and Intuit by alison amick
30
book review
Photo / Brut's vast trove of images leaves open a big trove of questions by william swislow
35
book review
Gatecrashers: How the art world nearly embraced self-taught art by william swislow
ABOUT INTUIT: Founded in 1991, Intuit is a premier museum of outsider and self-taught art, works created by artists who didn’t, or sometimes couldn’t, follow a traditional path of art making, using materials at hand to realize their artistic vision.
41
leadership current exhibitions
42
donors contributors
Cover Lonnie Holley (American, b. 1950). Busted Without Arms, 2017. Courtesy of The Arnett Collection. Left Lonnie Holley (American, b. 1950). Changing My Walk (Honoring Andrew Young), 2003. Wooden chair and shoes. Courtesy of The Arnett Collection. All works by Lonnie Holley © [2020] Lonnie Holley / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
ISBN 978-0-9990010-3-5 The Outsider is published once a year by Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, located at 756 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL 60642. Prior to Fall 1996, Volume 1, Issue 1, The Outsider was published as In'tuit.
OUTSIDER ART: THE COLLECTION OF VICTOR F. KEEN FEBRUARY 6, 2020 – APRIL 25, 2021 This exhibition is organized by Victor F. Keen and Bethany Mission Gallery (Philadelphia) in partnership with Sangre de Cristo Arts Center (Pueblo, Colo.) and Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. Further support was provided by Janet and Craig Duchossois.
Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art 756 N Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL 60642 www.art.org | (312) 624-9487
4
THE OUTSIDER
Martín Ramírez (Mexican, active in America, 1895–1963). Untitled (Trains and Tunnels) A, B (detail), c. 1960–63. Graphite, gouache, crayon and colored pencil on pieced paper, 17 x 78 in. (43.2 x 198.1 cm). Collection of Victor F. Keen. Copyright Estate of Martín Ramírez
As this extraordinary year comes to an end, let’s acknowledge there has been loss in our lives, whether due to the ravages of systemic racism in our society or the COVID-19 pandemic. With a focus on art and artists from often-marginalized circumstances, Intuit is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in the arts, and currently part of a national museum initiative on board diversity. As a cultural institution, Intuit must help facilitate and champion crucial change-making. Moving forward with intention, we are examining every aspect of our strategic plan and every activity through an antiracism lens. I came to Intuit because of my belief that museums, especially Intuit, have a role to play in social justice. Intuit is a safe space for all and will move forward as a beacon for change in our community. Black lives matter.
Strategic Advisory Council member Victor Keen, who generously allowed Intuit to continue to exhibit his beautiful collection into 2021. Intuit staff pivoted from our successful model of intimate, in-person experiences to intimate, online programs. Through virtual monthly programs like Art After Work and One Night Stand and special events featuring contemporary artists George Widener and Arkee Chaney, Intuit celebrated the power of outsider art with national and international audiences. Intuit transitioned its annual fall gala, the Visionary Ball, to a virtual setting — and with great success! I thank the Board of Directors, led this year by Tracy Holmes, for its enthusiastic nomination of artist, art educator and musician Lonnie Holley for the 2020 Visionary Award. A resilient, visionary artist, his body of work continues to positively impact the art world. Thank you, Lonnie, for sharing your talents with us.
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
Dear friends of Intuit,
As many challenges as 2020 presented so, Intuit marks its 30th anniversary on June too, did this year present opportunities 10, 2021. Please stay tuned to Get Intuit for growth. When the museum first newsletters and programming channels closed in March, our dedicated Board, to stay engaged with upcoming Vivian Society, Strategic Advisory Council programming. I fervently wish you and many other donors ensured Intuit a happy and healthy 2021. had the capacity to keep staff employed— — Debra Kerr, President and CEO thank you. I extend my gratitude to
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
5
6
THE OUTSIDER
by Randall Morris
This essay marks the first in a series in wh ich Intuit marks its 30th anniversary by asking experts on outsider art how the field has changed during that time. —Lindsey Wurz, Editor
Henry Darger (American, 1892 – 1973). Book Two of the Cartoons, “There ought to be a law” and “They’ll do it every time,” n.d. Scrapbook, DIMS, 11 × 9¼ × 1½ in (closed). Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, The Henry Darger Room Collection, gift of Kiyoko Lerner. Photo © John Faier All works by Henry Darger © [2020] Kiyoko Lerner / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
EVOLUTION OF A COMPLEX FIELD
7
s a h d l ie f r u o f o d l r o w e Th t a h t r e d n u y l b a r o x e changed in . d l r o w t r a e h t f o a umbrell The world has changed many tim es between 1991 and today. The art world has changed with it. And the world of our field has changed inexorabl y under that umbrella of the art world. In that time, the re was a sea change in the way people looked at the art made by self-taught artists in this country.
Henry Darger (American, 1892 –1973). Paintpots and paintpots with handwritten descriptions, n.d. Various dimensions. Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, The Henry Darger Room Collection, gift of Kiyoko Lerner. Photo © John Faier
8
THE OUTSIDER
Prior to the ’90s, fewer artists, bo th known and unknown, were represented by galleries. Ma ny collectors went to see the artists at their homes, purchasing work from them directly in an unregulated bartering system. Tours were organized to visit artists dir ectly, but, with some exceptions, there was very little interest from museums that did not already include the works by self-taught artists as part of their folk art ho ldings. This unregulated and, thus, under-documented com merce meant that, unless the collection published or became famous, a lot of important work disappear ed into private holdings. Very few artists were individually represented by galleries. Many iconic catalogs were, in rea lity, not scholastic but, rather, vanity publications for the collections of the owners. Some even later used the ir own catalogs to sell the work to the public. Intuit ’s exhibitions in those times were a welcome way of dig ging into some of those collections and making them kno wn to the public.
Below: Joseph E. Yoakum ar –1972). Mounds on Sug 0 189 (American, ped sha nd Isla ley Val ui plantation of Ma National Park by Hawaii Island in Hawaii 24 1970, 1970. APR kum Yoa E. Joseph d chalks and ore col , Black ballpoint pen er, 123/16 × 19 pap ve wo on cils pen colored er Brown Study in. Collection of the Rog Art Institute the of Collection, the School Folk Art in ck Bla in ed lud Inc of Chicago. Black Folk t Pos and America, 1930 –1989, 0 –2016. Art in America, 1930 –198
d on to calling it 20th Prior to the ’90s, people still hel s poor or started making Century Folk Art. If the artist wa ., it was Folk Art. Calling work late in life or was Black, etc Folk Art in America the Corcoran show in 1980 Black American field, and the didn’t help. It was an essentially s theorized about it first rank of dealers and collector ter’s opinion) it being in terms of (mistakenly in this wri version of traditional presented as the contemporary y little interest in its American folk art. There was ver t, despite the visionary, relationship with European art bru rk by some dealers, intuitive understanding of the wo am artists in Chicago, collectors and visionary mainstre eph Yoakum, Martín most notably with the work of Jos have since become icons Ramírez and Henry Darger, who ft, particularly as the of the field. The field began to shi nd and the word first Outsider Art Fair captured the bra er and the Haywood used by Roger Cardinal ’s publish Gallery in London: OUTSIDER.
EVOLUTION OF A COMPLEX FIELD
9
Detail: Wesley Willis (American, 1963 –2003). Downtown City Scapes, c. 1984 . Ballpoint pen and felt tip pen on board, 20 × 30 in. Collection of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, gift of Paul T. Young and Fox Young, 2004.9
Europe was no more interactive with the United States than we were with Europe. We did n’t have the massive body of scholarship and curatorial exploration Europe had had since the Prinzhorn Collectio n came into being in the early 20th century. The Hayward had, indeed, shown the work of Yoakum, Ramírez and Da rger, still evincing some skepticism at allowing Ramírez and Yoakum through the carefully guarded gates with the ir supposedly vernacular roots. The term Outsider was use d by the Europeans more at that time, until it becam e the hot mess it is now, with almost everything not easily categorizable in the art world thrown into the mix. Th e 1993 exhibit Parallel Visions also gave more cache to the rubric of Outsider, though it did present the work, less on its own art historical terms than as a sort of Primitivism, as a source of inspiration and appropriation for mainstream artists. Fortunately, most of them are ver y positive. We are slowly seeing Art Brut and self-ta ught art as a global phenomenon without losing ou r American flavor. Our literature is slowly growing. More museums are opening up to filling in the missing pieces of art history.
10
THE OUTSIDER
re knowledgeable We have more curators and mo rk. Artists more often museum directors open to the wo by dealers. More people now are responsibly represented s and art fairs now who come into the galleries, exhibition We seem to be slowly know what they are looking at. hole the work with labels moving past the need to pigeon the work speak for and are able to let the artists and curators of Art Brut are themselves. The museums and eptance. None of this widening the parameters of acc pioneering exhibits of could have happened without the seum, the High Museum Intuit, the American Folk Art Mu ent major Bill Traylor and others. Between Worlds, a rec American Art Museum, retrospective at the Smithsonian scholarship. This is a great kicked the doors wide open on time to be in this field. • r. He nt scholar, collector and curato Randall Morris is an independe 0. lery in New York, open since 198 is co-owner of Cavin-Morris Gal to ion g and writing for an exhibit He is currently working on curatin of on the Pan-African vernacular art be held at Halle St Pierre in Paris the Americas.
We are slowly seeing Art Brut and self-taught art as a global phenomenon without losing our American flavor. EVOLUTION OF A COMPLEX FIELD
11
12
THE OUTSIDER
er Room Installation view of The Henry Darg Intuitive Collection at Intuit: The Center for er. and Outsider Art, gift of Kiyoko Lern Photo © John Faier
13
14
THE OUTSIDER
DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT AS A MEANS OF CONNECTION by Paula Santos
Take your mind back to that time— March 2020. Suddenly, unthinkable things happened.
The NBA shut down suddenly. Tom Hanks and his wife had COVID. Intuit closed on March 15. There was a sense of anxiety here in Chicago. Intuit was scheduled to have its monthly third Thursday After After Work event, a drop-in program where people joined with their own art projects and were invited to socialize with each other as they worked. But we couldn’t open our doors to our regular crowd. Should we allow people to process what’s happening on their own, or should we even go online? Is this the right first step for us? We had never done online public programs before, we had no infrastructure to do this, and we anticipated the learning curve to be steep. As an educator who relishes connecting with people in front of works of art, for me Skylar Pauel. Untitled (digital artwork for the IntuiTeens Quaranzine), 2020.
DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT AS A MEANS OF CONNECTION
15
to try it at home. The program was more successful than I could have imagined. People were happy to connect with others around the country. They were looking for a moment of respite among so much change, and Intuit’s staff warmth was felt among participants even through the computer screen.
16
all this was an incredible challenge. What first drew me to Intuit was the possibility to create meaningful and intimate experiences for the public by sharing artworks that resonated with people’s lived experiences. When the museum closed its doors, the staff decided fairly quickly that we wanted Intuit to continue to be a place where people could gather and connect with works of art and each other. While I had only joined the staff a couple of months before, I immediately knew that Intuit’s greatest strength was its highly collaborative culture and willingness to take risks.
I’m so glad we took that risk. That first online session of Art After Work gave me the inkling that real personto-person connection was possible online, and Intuit would do well to begin exploring how to do that in a meaningful way. While at the time we didn’t know we’d end the year still in isolation, there was already a sense during that first program that living life almost exclusively at home could lead to feelings of anxiety, loneliness and uncertainty. My role and Intuit’s role during the pandemic then remained largely the same: to create experiences in which people come together through art to create connections with art and each other.
We moved forward with our first online session: Art After Work. Debra Kerr, our president, welcomed the group from her home and shared one of her favorite collaging techniques (packing tape stickers), in case anyone wanted
As our ambitions for public programs and digital offerings grew, we became more intentional with the ways we worked together, especially as we grew accustomed to working
THE OUTSIDER
remotely. After that initial program, it became clear we needed to be strategic with digital engagement. It required a different skill set than in-person programs. The strengths that drew me to Intuit — the highly collaborative environment and its organizational agility — were our biggest assets in the paradigm shift. I formed a team with our chief curator and marketing manager, and, together, we created Intuit’s Digital Engagement Strategy:
Social media: Daily engagement across 1 Twitter, Instagram and Facebook that was relevant and sensitive to current events. resources blog: Highlight, 2 Learning repurpose and create new content by Intuit teachers, teens and collabrators for families and educators looking for online learning content. public programs: Focus on serving 3 Online Intuit’s core audiences with new programs especially designed for online engagement and using platforms those audiences are already using such as Instagram Live and Zoom.
Art After Work is a free series of facilitated artmaking workshops inspired by art and artists from the museum’s collection and exhibitions. Intuit hosts Art After Work on the third Thursday of each month. One Night Stand is a free series of art talks led by Intuit staff or an outsider art scholar on the last Wednesday of the month. By focusing each program on one artwork, program facilitators engage audiences in conversation about the artist and how the selected work of art embodies their style. In dialogue with an Intuit staff member, a contemporary artist discusses their background, their art-making and inspiration, and the evolution of their career at an Artist Talk, which concludes with an audience Q&A.
Due to the collaboration between education, exhibitions and communications, Intuit’s online impact grew to have a more reliable presence in a time of crisis. In particular, our online public programs have been an area of major growth and success. We have been able to feature artists, educators and scholars from around the country and welcome an international audience to our workshops and events. The ease with which the public has adapted to online public
DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT AS A MEANS OF CONNECTION
17
to be well attended. As we move forward, it is important for us to continue to examine what stories and whose expertise we call on in order to deepen the connections we make with our audiences.
programs has meant that we have been able to attract large audiences Connecting with people through for programs that may have had works of art seems like such a simple a more limited reach on-site. thing amid so many difficulties. Over Furthermore, the ability to record the months, our contributions to artist talks or special programs, such people’s lives through art experiences as One Night Stand, means we are feel dwarfed amid the weight of the able to create an archive of how Intuit fight for racial justice or the sheer presents, interprets and engages with revelation of how equity is at the self-taught and outsider art. core of every issue the pandemic The biggest success has been that has wrought. Yet, every single time Intuit’s digital engagement is here we begin another workshop or sit to stay, regardless of what happens down to look at one work of art in the future. Even when we are together, it is a reminder that seeking welcoming visitors at the museum, connection is natural and necessary, we will continue the suite of online and, therefore, digital engagement public programs, which continue is integral to Intuit. •
18
THE OUTSIDER
Design Museum of Chicago
20 19
Why a Visionary Artist is necessary during these times. by Alison Amick
20
THE OUTSIDER
REFLECTIONS ON LONNIE HOLLEY AND INTUIT
21
Since its founding in 1991, Intuit has asked its visitors to consider the possibility that creativity can be found in the most unexpected of places. From its early pop-up exhibitions (prior to gaining a permanent site) to exhibitions traveling the globe (think Chicago Calling: Art Against the Flow), the museum has pondered the role of the artist, the importance of place, the circumstances which led an individual to begin creating, and how we, as a society, have come to know work that was made sometimes in secret and, certainly, outside the bounds of the traditional art world and market. Each year, Intuit honors an individual who has made a contribution to the field of outsider art with its Visionary Award. This year, and for only the second time, the award was given to an artist—Lonnie Bradley Holley. Born in Birmingham, Ala., in 1950, Holley was the seventh of 27 children. His early childhood was spent away from his family in a series of homes and, eventually, the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children at Mt. Meigs, before he was ultimately reconnected with his family. He settled back in Birmingham after spending time working in Florida and Ohio.
22
THE OUTSIDER
Though not trained as an artist, tragic necessity moved Holley toward this path. When his sister lost two children in a house fire, Holley carved headstones for them out of sandstone. This call to creativity did not go unanswered. His lived experiences provided fuel for his art making: his explorations of creek beds and the discarded items he found at the local drive-in theatre as a youth must have taught him to observe: what do we throw away, or no longer consider of worth? How, as a society, do we measure value? Since 1979, Holley has continued to make and gain international recognition for his artwork: sculptures, paintings, prints, photography, music and, now, film. Holley’s property was turned into a large art environment, which was subsequently destroyed in 1997 due to runway expansion plans for the Birmingham Airport.
REFLECTIONS ON LONNIE HOLLEY AND INTUIT
23
In 2007, Holley completed a two-week residency at Intuit—the museum’s first (followed by Kevin Blythe Sampson’s residency in 2013). Holley sent materials in advance and, after his arrival, joined Chicago artist Lucy Slivinski, who also utilizes found materials in her art work, on quests to abandoned lots and a junk yard in search of materials for use. Guests, including schoolchildren, were able to watch and participate as Holley’s site-specific installation took form in the museum’s main gallery. In an October 2020 interview with Matt Arnett at Intuit, Holley noted the impact of his Chicago residency. “That allowed me to really, really learn and grow to appreciate the streets, the sounds, the traffic, the transportation for humans here, the amount of steel that had been used by the city to build such a city, and also it allowed me to do some research on materials up and down the alleys, the ditches and the creeks and think hard about their flotation and how the water could carry them to another plain of the land. So it was a lot of study during the period that I was here.” Lonnie Holley, an artist who selects and assembles found objects as part of his practice, challenges the viewer to make connections through his juxtaposition of materials which may, at first glance, seem unexpected or unrelated. New meanings emerge, poetic reflections and powerful statements
24
THE OUTSIDER
of past and present, the personal and historical, social observation and commentary, completed with the improvisational spirit found also in his music. What does it mean to create, to have a vision, and how can Intuit serve as a place of creative work, to show art as living and breathing and as relevant to our times? At this moment, our society grieves—for the loss of Black lives, loss due to COVID-19, and loss of a way of life with opportunities to connect in person. Many among us have experienced feelings of tension, anxiet y and frustration. Lonnie Holley is an artist who has recognized the power of the broken and discarded and the possibilities of transformation. This freshness of vision and ability to see beyond what is—to what is possible— are lessons that never lose their value.
Lonnie Holley. You Alley Thing, 2007, Mixed media, 52 × 61 × 16 in., Collection of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, gift of Lonnie Holley, 2007.7.1
REFLECTIONS ON LONNIE HOLLEY AND INTUIT
25
Holley’s work is in the collection of major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, American Folk Art Museum and Museum of Fine Arts Houston. He has been the recipient of prestigious fellowships, including from Joan Mitchell Foundation (2005) and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (2014). Since his first exhibition at Intuit, Holley has returned, performing and exhibiting here during Post-Black Folk Art in America, 1930 – 1980 – 2016.
26
THE OUTSIDER
Installation view of Lonnie Holley: Artist in Residence at Intuit, 2007. Intuit hosted Holley over a two-week period as he installed site-specific works created during his residency. Courtesy of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art.
Special thanks to Jan Petry, Cleo Wilson and Lucy Slivinski for discussing the exhibition at Intuit. For more on Lonnie Holley, see the following sources, which were consulted in this writing: “Lonnie Holley: The Best that Almost Happened,” in Paul Arnett and William Arnett, eds. Souls Grown Deep, vol. 2, Once That River Starts to Flow (Atlanta: Tinwood Books, 2001), 538 – 573. Do we think too much? I don’t think we can ever stop. Lonnie Holley, A Twenty-Five Year Survey (Birmingham, UK: Ikon Gallery, 2004). Mark Sloan, ed. With essays by Bernard L. Herman, Theodore Rosengarten, Mark Sloan, and Leslie Umberger. Something to Take My Place: The Art of Lonnie Holley. Charleston, South Carolina: Halsey Institute
of Contemporary Art, College of Charleston, School of the Arts, 2015. Matt Arnett interview with Lonnie Bradley Holley, with an introduction by Martha Henry. October 12, 2020. Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art (youtu.be/ H0AHXEYRse8) www.soulsgrowndeep.org/artist/lonnieholley www.lonnieholley.com www.bittersoutherner.com/lonnie-holleyone-mans-trash-is-anothers-salvation
REFLECTIONS ON LONNIE HOLLEY AND INTUIT
27
Lonnie Holley is an artist who has recognized the power of the Broken and discarded and the Possibilities of transformation.
Lonnie Holley. Untitled (slag sculpture), n.d. Sculpture on slag, 10½ × 15 × 8¼ in. Collection of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, gift of Robbe and Larry Beuscher, 2019.5. Photo by John Faier
28
THE OUTSIDER
29
BOOK REVIEWS
PHOTO / BRUT’S VAST TROVE OF IMAGES LEAVES OPEN A BIG TROVE OF QUESTIONS Among the varieties of art brut creation, photography has historically received limited attention. A newly extensive, if not definitive, exploration built around the great ABCD art brut collection of Bruno Decharme takes some steps to remedy that situation. Photo / Brut, the exhibit and catalog, boasts impressive scale, and Decharme’s deep art brut experience gives him standing to help define what art brut photography might mean. That’s not exactly what this project seems to be about, however, with the connection to photography a bit loose at times. It encompasses not only actual photographers but also artists like Charles Dellschau and Henry Darger, who incorporated printed images into their work. Even
30
THE OUTSIDER
more of a stretch are those who simply used photographs as source material. Together, these kinds of artists constitute about half of Photo / Brut’s roster. As a result, this is less a survey of self-taught photography than a story about how art brut creators respond to and use mechanically reproduced images. As such it can illuminate the relationship between art brut and the surrounding culture, even if it sheds less light on photography per se than one might have hoped. (The curators, of course, have every right to tell the tale that most interests them.) So, if an artist like Adolf Wölfli with his collaged-in printed images is clearly in the art brut canon, where on the
continuum do these other artists Camille Paulhan in her essay lie, given the cultural engagement struggles with the brutness of the implied by the use of printed images? work but concludes, in part, that the Is there a difference between being “freedom” with which these artists use fully raw versus just somewhat on the photos — “without obsequiousness” — margins of the surrounding culture? moves their work beyond the cultural conventions around photography. And what of the artists who take their That could seem to be a brutish own pictures? Besides the fact that direction, though it’s easy enough they are working with a sophisticated to remark that plenty of non-brut type of cultural technology, what artists also use photography (and makes their practice more akin to art other source materials) without brut than to the work of vernacular obsequiousness and without much picture takers, who are engaged in regard to cultural conventions. something more like a folk craft? The leap from merely vernacular to Introducing a chapter devoted to art brut is in the content, it seems, works that interrogate identity, Brian and in the “cleverness” with which Wallis writes, “These outsider artists the leap is made (and perhaps using photography were less deviants the obsessiveness). But how truly and social outcasts than amateurs, liberated from cultural norms can the cleverly adapting various forms of art be under these conditions? After vernacular photography and mass so many years of photography being media collage to express their private ubiquitous, cultural sophistication ideas about gender and sexuality.” about the power of its images is also ubiquitous, even among art brut creators.
Some embraced photography as part of a project of obsessive documentation....
This is a case where it doesn’t much help to look for guidance to art brut’s definer, Jean Dubuffet. “During Dubuffet’s period collecting from 1945 to the late 1960s, photography was still seeking legitimacy as fine art; therefore, the inventor of art brut’s ‘anti-academic’ offensive did not target it,” Decharme points out. BOOK REVIEWS | PHOTO / BRUT
31
BOOK REVIEWS
That is, since it wasn’t relevant to his war on the establishment art world, it didn’t much inform his thinking. It seems inevitable, though, that photography would capture the attention of art brut creators, if not Dubuffet, and, thus, eventually enter the canon. Some embraced photography as part of a project of obsessive documentation, whether Eugene Von Bruenchenhein with his thousands of pictures of Marie, “Type 42” and his or her images photographed from a TV set, or Miroslav Tichý and his voyeuristic recording of his community. In some cases, the individual photos are prosaic; it’s in obsessive quantity that a compelling vision coalesces. That might include Horst Ademeit’s thousands of annotated Polaroids demonstrating the deleterious presence of “cold rays” and Elisabeth Van Vyve’s account of her lived environment. Her pictures are fascinating mostly because of the details she exhaustively documented for 30 years. Sometimes other things besides vision coalesce, however—obsessions that are more unhealthy than interesting or ideas that are just plain unpleasant. The Ademeit Polaroids seem to cry out mental illness, with
32
THE OUTSIDER
photography making art brut’s sometimes-discomfiting embrace of that particular pain seem more tangible than it might be in a painting or drawing. What considerations of ethics and taste apply for Marian Henel’s amateurish photos of dolls in apparently sexual poses and his cross-dressing self-portraits in similarly suggestive positions? “He was very short, obese, and afflicted with grimaces that he could not control,” says the catalog. Although his body of work might be seen as constituting performance, and, thus, deserving of artistic recognition, some performances might be better unseen. It is admirable that the curators are not afraid to show challenging work but being challenging doesn’t inevitably mean good. By bringing the viewer face to face with a creator’s pain, some of this work can surface misgivings about collection and curation practices that valorize mental illness. Yet, even if there can be discomfort with some of this work, in only a few cases does the art seem overshadowed by the pain. Even where the artist’s pain is evident, we needn’t dismiss the art because the
artist was in pain, though we also shouldn’t dismiss its relevance to our response. In any case, the best of the work on display here is stunning. Among the less familiar material in Photo / Brut (to me anyway), Elke Tangeten’s embroideries on printed images were a revelation. Pepe Gaitán’s work is very strange but also very cool. He photocopies printed pages then inks over most of the letters so they look like abstract symbols, and he collages in images. Leopold Strobl starts with printed images but then draws over them, so that little of the original photo remains visible. The results are evocative and haunting. Besides the already-mentioned Von Bruenchenhein, Darger and Dellschau, Photo / Brut includes a number of other well-known artists who created or used photos and printed images in their work, including Morton Bartlett, Steve Ashby and Lee Godie, among others.
It is admirable that the curators are not afraid to show challenging work but being challenging doesn’t inevitably mean good. 2004’s Create and Be Recognized, curated by John Turner and Deborah Klockho, toured after originating at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (and to which, full disclosure, I was a lender). Both shows investigated what art brut or outsider photography might actually be. No less an authority than the late Roger Cardinal wrestled with that question in a Create and Be Recognized catalog essay.
The Intuit show is unmentioned in the Photo / Brut catalog, and, although Decharme takes note of Create and Be Recognized, he more or less dismisses it as concerning mostly As is happened, those same artists “folk and vernacular photographs.” figured in at least two previous That’s a bit odd given Cardinal’s essay exhibits devoted to “outsider and the fact that more than half its photography.” The first was a 2002 18 artists are also featured among show at Intuit, Identity and Desire, Photo / Brut’s 50-plus creators (and curated by David Syrek and Jessica the rest might as well have been). In Moss, which featured Godie, Bartlett and Von Bruenchenhein. The second, other words, it’s a stretch to claim that BOOK REVIEWS | PHOTO / BRUT
33
BOOK REVIEWS
“this international-scale exhibition [is] the first on the subject of art brut photography…” as the Photo / Brut curators do in the foreword. For his part, Cardinal worked hard to distinguish art brut from vernacular photography, though not with total success. Exploration of that frontier remains a task to be completed. If “taking photographs represents one of the main cultural skills of this century,” as Cardinal quotes Joachim Schmid in his Create and Be Recognized essay, then it should be no surprise that self-taught artists would avail themselves of its creative possibilities. For Cardinal, the key question was how a given artist pushed the medium beyond its vernacular language to something particular and highly personal.
With a few exceptions, most of the artists in Photo / Brut do so, which means it fulfills, to some extent, Cardinal’s hope that what he called a scarcity of “authentic representations of outsider photography” might just have been a temporary condition. “We have not yet scanned the field with a proper idea of what it is we are looking for,” he wrote. Although Photo / Brut has neither exhausted the hunt nor answered the biggest questions, it certainly extends our knowledge. •
—William Swislow
Photo / Brut by Bruno Decharme and others. Published by Flammarion in collaboration with the American Folk Art Museum, New York, and abcd, Paris, 320 pages, 2020. ISBN: 978-2080204325. Hardcover, $55.
34
THE OUTSIDER
GATECRASHERS: HOW THE ART WORLD NEARLY EMBRACED SELFTAUGHT ART Gatecrashers might best be described in terms more typical of a pageturner novel than an art book — it’s a story of tragedy and triumph, of drama and historic happenings.
to be gaining momentum until it was precipitously halted in the early 1940s. It only restarted in earnest decades later, and it’s still far from complete.
The overarching tragedy is the opportunity lost in the 1930s to open up the definition of art to myriad forms of creativity beyond the academy. That process seemed
Lest anyone think “tragedy” is too grand a term, consider what was lost by the artists who were marginalized. It’s not just a handful of artists who didn’t get their due. It’s hundreds, thousands of them, and, for the rest of us, it was massive cultural impoverishment.
There was also in the early 20th century a wish to assert an authentically American creative tradition.
In telling this tale, Katherine Jentleson, curator of folk and selftaught art at Atlanta’s High Museum, expands on a major theme of Lynne Cooke’s 2018 exhibit and catalog, Outliers and American Vanguard Art. But where this story was one BOOK REVIEWS | GATECRASHERS
35
BOOK REVIEWS
of several themes for Cooke, it is the primary subject of this volume (and projected exhibit), told via three artists in particular: John Kane, Horace Pippin and Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses. It’s poignant how close their kind of self-taught creativity came to being an intrinsic part of artistic modernism rather than an outlier. “Most people are surprised to learn that…self-taught artists first gained their cultural capital almost a century ago, and many are initially shocked that places like MoMA [Museum of Modern Art] were once their major supporters,” Jentleson writes. Indeed, in the 1930s, self-taught artists found their way through the gates not only of the Museum of Modern Art but, also, other institutions across the country, from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia to the Detroit Institute of Art and the Arts Club of Chicago in the Midwest to the San Francisco Museum of Art. This might feel natural as we live through another
Skill has a relative meaning. 36
THE OUTSIDER
cycle of mainstream art institutions embracing work formerly relegated to their margins. But then, as now, there also was resistance. Artistic muscle is the necessary, if not sufficient, condition for crashing those gates. Edward Hopper made a somewhat backhanded but still largely true case for self-taught art, when he supported Kane’s recognition in a 1933 exhibition: “In the vast sea of technically competent mediocrity that makes up the work to be selected in most exhibitions, one grabs at anything with a sign of life and this is often found in the most unskillful things.” Skill has a relative meaning. Selftaught artists by definition are not likely to demonstrate the exact skills taught in the academy, but that doesn’t mean they are not competent. Their skills are just different. You can call their realism idiosyncratic or hampered or feel, as their advocate Holger Cahill did, that “with them realism becomes passion and not mere technique…. Their art is a response to the outside world of fact and they have very definite methods for zits pictorial reconstruction.” For Cahill and other early-to-mid20th century advocates, the case
Our art history might have been very different—and richer— had the self-taught not been expelled from a modernist canon....
representativeness—as opposed to opposition—distinguishes the U.S. self-taught artists who rose to fame during the interwar period from the self-taught European artists that Jean Dubuffet began to include in his canon of art brut during roughly the same time.”
for the self-taught was bolstered by a politically-inflected program of celebrating “the art of the common man.” That agenda, connected to the leftist popular-front strategy of the era, resonates with our current period’s concern with diversity and the opening up of cultural institutions beyond their traditional elite boundaries.
Compare an anti-social art brut figure like Adolph Wölfli to John Kane, a native Scotsman whose immigration story and workingman’s status were presented as archetypally American. Where Dubuffet was looking to creators from the margins to replace what he viewed as an exhausted academic tradition, in the United States the goal, for some anyway, was to integrate this erstwhile marginal folk tradition into the mainstream of American art, energizing rather than eclipsing it.
There was also in the early 20th century a wish to assert an authentically American creative tradition. The United States was still viewed, here as well as in Europe, as an artistic backwater, its academic art a second-rate imitation of the European variety. Embracing early American pottery, painted furniture and itinerant portraiture staked a claim for art that was fully and uniquely American, and adding contemporary self-taught artists to the mix made it a living tradition. Jentleson makes the interesting point that “this sense of cultural
Unfortunately, they wound up on the losing side of the mid-century argument about what art should matter. Our art history might have been very different—and richer—had the self-taught not been expelled from a modernist canon built narrowly around the dominance of abstract expressionism and its offspring. The cost of that expulsion was especially high, because there was nothing like today’s alternative BOOK REVIEWS | GATECRASHERS
37
BOOK REVIEWS
field of outsider art to provide sustained institutional support and a marketplace for artists working outside the canon and for people interested in their work. The poisonous segregation of the selftaught from other kinds of artists also contributed to the vast waste of energy devoted to contending over labels. Separating the self-taught and the trained and the folk was hard work, and fruitless. Jentleson isn’t much distracted by the question of labels, perhaps best put to rest by the apropos statement she shares from Alain Locke, philosopher, art patron and advocate for Pippin: “Art doesn’t die of labels, but only of neglect, for nobody’s art is nobody’s business.” Neglect may kill the art, but it doesn’t necessarily stop the artist. It is an article of faith that these kinds of self-taught artists create without regard to whether there exists an art world to appreciate and support them. The existence of supporters and appreciators still makes a difference, however. The creative path of the three artists who are the focus of Gatecrashers may have initially taken shape independent of the art world, but all were influenced and energized by the
38
THE OUTSIDER
artists, curators, dealers and collectors who welcomed them. Their eventual interactions with the art world gave them agency in developing their visions and their careers. “At the heart of Gatecrashers is a sense that John Kane, Horace Pippin and Anna Mary Robertson Moses were more than just taken along for a ride by various constituents of the art world….” writes Jentleson. “Their ascents may have begun with sensational stories of discovery, but part of what distinguishes them from their less-successful self-taught peers was how they exploited their respective waves of interest as bold individuals with confidence in both their art making and their identity as Americans.” Pippin was widely exhibited and accepted in conventional art venues, more so than his African American near-contemporary William Edmondson. Even though Edmondson famously was the first African American to have a one-person show at the Museum of Modern Art, that event did not provide him a sufficient art-world foothold to avoid fading mostly into obscurity until the 1980s revival of interest in self-taught artists. Pippin had a high degree of direct personal engagement with the art
world, as opposed to being mostly represented by sponsors, as was the case with Edmondson and Bill Traylor. (Living in the Northeast rather than the South might have helped.) As a result, it seems, “Pippin was the first American self-taught artist—black or white—to embody Henri Rousseau’s degree of participation in his own success, not only entering his works in competitions but also attending his openings and engaging with other artists,” writes Jentleson. “Pippin did not see himself as existing in the shadows of modern masters. And he was right.” Even more than Kane, who she believes ramped up production of urban scenes in response to their popularity, Pippin had a “powerful consciousness of what it took to succeed as an artist…especially one who was doubly marginalized by his lack of formal training and the color of his skin.”
It is an article of faith that these kinds of self-taught artists create without regard to whether there exists an art world to appreciate and support them.
Perhaps as a result, Pippin, like Rousseau, maintained his foothold in mainstream museum collections even as those institutions turned away from self-taught artists generally. Pippin and Kane both attained reputations as serious artists, but Grandma Moses remains a kind of outlier. Her enormous popular success at the start of her art career in the 1940s, combined with the upbeat affect of her art, are not a recipe for credibility among cognoscenti, then or now. Moses was drawn —p erhaps willingly — into a bit of a culture war around modern art. “What’s the sense of making something to hang up on the wall if it isn’t pretty?” Moses told Life Magazine in 1948. That attitude didn’t play well for an art world placing its bets on abstract expressionism and its highly intellectualized successors. That world preferred, and still prefers, artists who embrace anxiety and dislocation rather than offering salves—though one might think there ought to be room for both. Moses hasn’t fared that much better in the field of self-taught art, where she is still something of an outsider, especially in the art brut wing. That’s despite heavyweight support, including representation by the prestigious Galerie St. Etienne. Her BOOK REVIEWS | GATECRASHERS
39
BOOK REVIEWS
paintings also found appreciation in Europe. The peaceful life and warm interiors were “presented and received as a form of spiritual refuge in European cities ravaged by World War II,” Jentleson notes. (Salves have value for the wounded.) Even if the favorable European reception was at least partly due to “certain European prejudices about unsophisticated Americans,” that did not exclude nuanced appreciation of the art, as more recently embodied in the writing and advocacy of St. Etienne gallerist and author Jane Kallir. There have always been compelling reasons to include all these artists under the big tent of modernism, as their advocates tried to do in the 1930s and early 1940s. Technically precise naturalism, after all, was no
longer the standard for quality art. “So far as realistic effect is concerned [these artists] are in harmony with the best contemporary practice,” Cahill wrote in 1938. “They are devoted to fact, as a thing to be known and respected, not necessarily as a thing to be imitated.” But what these artists perhaps most shared with other pioneering modernists — more important than technical skills or shared aesthetic and cultural influences — was the freedom to paint what they wanted the way they saw it, without regard to the burden of art history. •
—William Swislow
Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America, by Katherine Jentleson, 2020, $50, University of California Press, 53 color photographs, 18 b/w illustrations, 264 pages. ISBN: 9780520303423
40
THE OUTSIDER
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Tracy Holmes, President Patrick Blackburn Rich Bowen Tim Bruce Robert Burnier Cheri Eisenberg Marjorie Freed Rob Grossett Scott Lang Rob Lentz Deiken Maloney Bonnie McGrath Elizabeth Nelson Benedicta Badia Nordenstahl
Jan Petry Tynnetta Qaiyim Phyllis Rabineau Twisha Shah-Brandenburg Jerry Stefl Michael Sullivan William Swislow David Syrek David Walega Stacy Wells Cleo Wilson Zachary Wirsum Michelle Woods
VIVIAN SOCIETY (LIFE TRUSTEES)
STRATEGIC ADVISORY COUNCIL
Kevin Cole Ralph Concepcion Susann Craig Harriet Finkelstein Carl Hammer Eugenie Johnson Ann Nathan Bob Roth Judy Saslow Lisa Stone
Scott Lang, Chair Susan Baerwald Michelle Boone Russell Bowman Janet Duchossois John Jerit Victor Keen Ashley Smither Langley John Maizels Frank Maresca Douglas Robson Leslie Umberger
Outsider Art: The Collection of Victor F. Keen February 6, 2020–April 25, 2021 Chicago Calling: Art Against the Flow January 21–April 25, 2021 Touring to the Outsider Art Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
STAFF Debra Kerr, President and CEO Alison Amick, Senior Manager of Exhibitions and Development, Chief Curator Julie Blake, Special Projects and Merchandising Coordinator Christophe Delaunay, Gallery Associate and Preparator Claire Fassnacht, Development Manager
Devoni Guise, Administrative Coordinator Colin Jesse, Gallery Associate Paula Santos, Senior Manager of Learning and Engagement Christina Stavros, Registrar and Facilities Coordinator Lindsey Wurz, Marketing and Communications Coordinator
LEADERSHIP AND CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
41
DONORS
Thank you, donors, for providing access to powerful exhibitions and programs inspired by outsider art to people of all backgrounds.
NOVEMBER 2019 – OCTOBER 2020 $50,000+ Terra Foundation for American Art The MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince $25,000-$49,999 Alphawood Foundation City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Janet and Craig Duchossois Debra Kerr and Steven D. Thompson Jan Petry Polk Bros. Foundation Robert A. Roth $10,000-$24,999 Illinois Arts Council Agency Crown Family Philanthropies Anonymous Robert T. Grossett and Christopher LaMorte Ashley and Mike Joyce Victor Keen and Jeanne Ruddy Scott H. Lang and JoAnn Seagren Angie Mills $5,000-$9,999 Blackbaud Janet Williams and Ralph Concepcion Harriet Finkelstein Ellen M. Glassmeyer Tracy Holmes Michael McCluggage and Stella Lee Phyllis G. Rabineau and John Alderson Ruth DeYoung Kohler Foundation Minna and Charles Taylor George Viener David Walega Illinois Humanities Eugenie and Lael Johnson $1,000-$4,999 Katie Adams Paula and Gordon Addington Robert Alter and Sherry Siegel Judith and Patrick Blackburn Daniel and Marty Boone Richard Bowen Barbara and Russell Bowman Dianne Bowman James Brett Solange and Bill Brown Kerry James Marshall and Cheryl Lynn Bruce Leslie Kay Buchbinder John Cain Cindy Coleman Josh Feldstein Marjorie R. Freed Nancy S. Gerrie Charlotte and Jerry Glashagel Moira Collins Griffin and Andrew Griffin M.D. John C. Jerit Kelly Jones Christopher K. and Sara G. Julsrud James Kaufmann Roberta and William Dean Kerr Rob Lentz and MK Victorson
42
THE OUTSIDER
Paul Levy and Mia Park Kathi and Tom Lind Sue and John Lowenberg Deiken Maloney Frank Maresca and Alejandra Russi John P. and Ann K. McAllister Bonnie and Molly McGrath Gary Metzner and Scott Johnson Elizabeth P. Nelson and Adam R. Kallish Katy Niner Benedicta Badia and Martin Nordenstahl David Owsley Anthony Petullo Grace Rappe Leisa Rundquist Sage Brokerage Holdings, LLC Michael Shapiro Susan Manning Silverstein and Rob Silverstein Toni Smith Judy and Jerry Stefl Kimberly and Andy Stephens Michael Sullivan Janet Franz and William D. Swislow David Syrek and David Csicsko Dale E. Taylor and Angela Lustig The Niner Foundation The Robson Family Fund of Horizons Foundation Jessica and Bryan Wain Laura and Bob Watson Stacy Wells and Rick Farrell Mary Williams and Mike Lenehan Cleo F. Wilson Michelle Woods
It’s quick and easy to become an Intuit donor! DONATE ONLINE www.art.org/support/donate/ DONATE BY PHONE (312) 624-8000 MAIL CASH OR CHECK TO: Intuit 756 N Milwaukee Avenue Chicago, IL 60642 Inspire future audiences and champion outsider art for years to come. Join Intuit’s Legacy Society. To learn more, contact Claire Fassnacht, development manager, at claire@art.org.
RANDALL MORRIS PAULA SANTOS
Alison Amick is the senior manager of exhibitions and development at Intuit. In partnership with Victor F. Keen and the Bethany Mission Gallery in Philadelphia, she curated Intuit’s presentation of Outsider Art: The Collection of Victor F. Keen, on view at Intuit until April 25, 2021.
Randall Morris is an independent scholar, collector and curator. He is co-owner of Cavin-Morris Gallery in New York, open since 1980. He is currently working on curating and writing for an exhibition to be held at Halle St. Pierre in Paris on the Pan-African vernacular art of the Americas.
Paula Santos is the senior manager of learning and engagement at Intuit. A museum educator with more than a decade of experience, she was recognized by Blooloop as one of the top 50 Museum Influencers in 2020. Santos is the creator and host of Cultura Conscious, a podcast featuring artists, educators and leaders in arts and culture about how they work with their communities.
WILLIAM SWISLOW
LINDSEY WURZ
SPECIAL THANKS:
Bill Swislow is an Intuit board member and frequent contributor to The Outsider. He is a digital business consultant, a writer and the operator of interestingideas.com, a website dedicated to vernacular culture, outsider art and oddball ideas.
Lindsey Wurz is the marketing and communications coordinator at Intuit as well as managing editor of The Outsider.
Matt Arnett
CONTRIBUTORS
ALISON AMICK
Nura Husseini, Design Elizabeth Nelson, Design Management Skyler Pauel, IntuiTeen Artist
DONORS / CONTRIBUTORS
43
44
THE OUTSIDER
756 N Milwaukee Avenue (312) 624-9487 Chicago, IL 60642 www.art.org intuit@art.org @intuitartcenter
