RAWVISION89 SPRING 2016
EDITOR John Maizels DIRECTORS Henry Boxer, Robert Greenberg, Audrey Heckler, Rebecca Hoffberger, Phyllis Kind, Frank Maresca, Richard Rosenthal, Bob Roth ART EDITOR Maggie Jones Maizels SENIOR EDITOR Edward M. Gómez FEATURES EDITOR Nuala Ernest ASSOCIATE EDITOR Nick Petty ACCOUNTS MANAGER Judith Edwards SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER Suzy Daniels US ASSISTANT Ari Huff FRENCH EDITOR Laurent Danchin CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Michael Bonesteel, Jenifer P. Borum, Roger Cardinal, Ted Degener, Jo Farb Hernandez, Tom Patterson, Colin Rhodes, Charles Russell PUBLISHED by Raw Vision Ltd PO Box 44, Watford WD25 8LN, UK tel +44 (0)1923 853175 email info@rawvision.com website www.rawvision.com USA 119 West 72nd Street, #414, New York, NY 10023 (Standard envelopes only)
ISSN 0955-1182
Raw Vision (ISSN 0955-1182) March 2016 is published quarterly (March, June, September, December) by Raw Vision Ltd, PO Box 44, Watford WD25 8LN, UK, and distributed in the USA by Mail Right Inc., 1637 Stelton Road 84, Piscataway, NJ 08854. Periodical Postage Paid at Piscataway, NJ, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address corrections to Raw Vision c/o Mail Right International Inc., 1637 Stelton Road 84, Piscataway, NJ 08854. USA subscription office: 119 72nd Street, #414, New York, NY 10023. (Standard envelopes only). Raw Vision cannot be held responsible for the return of unsolicited material. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Raw Vision.
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RAW NEWS Outsider events and exhibitions around the world.
OBITUARIES Thornton Dial, Nigel Kingsbury and Ian Partridge.
RAW COLLECTOR Hannah Rieger on living with art brut.
40 YEARS OF THE COLLECTION de L’ART BRUT A milestone as the Collection reaches its fortieth year.
SARAH LOMBARDI An interview with the director of the Collection de l’Art Brut.
GIL BATLE After years in prison, Batle carves his experiences on ostrich eggs.
LARRY JOHN PALSSON Secret art discovered, four years after the artist’s death.
MR TRAIN New Yorker James Chandler’s detailed obsession with trains.
SCOTTIE WILSON in CANADA Wilson’s little-reported 13 years in Canada.
LOIC LUCAS Microscopically detailed drawings by self-taught artist from France.
RAW STUDIOS Arts Project Australia in Melbourne.
RAW REVIEWS Exhibitions and events.
GALLERY & MUSEUM GUIDE A round-up of notable venues around the world.
COVER IMAGE: Auguste Forestier, Untitled Assemblage, mixed media, between 1935 and 1949, 9.8 x 9.8 x 7.8 ins. / 25 x 25 x 20 cm, photo by Claude Bornand, Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne
AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM VISIONARY AWARD
WORLD’S BEST ART MAGAZINE
UTNE INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD
MEDAILLE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS
R AW N E W S CASTLEFIELD GALLERY
MUSEUM DR. GUISLAIN Jozef Guislainstraat 43, 9000 Gent, BELGIUM www.museumdrguislain.be
MUSEUM GUGGING
ARTS PROJECT AUSTRALIA
REDWING GALLERY
Mar 19 – Apr 30 Signature Style is a group exhibition that presents large-scale paintings by artists at Arts Project Australia, who are becoming increasingly well known in Australia.
until Sep 2016 A changing exhibition of paintings by Chris Neate, John Sheehy, Piers Lockwood and others is on display until September. The not-forprofit social enterprise's empty-shop project has recently expanded to include two floors of gallery space.
ARTS PROJECT AUSTRALIA 24 High Street. Northcote. Victoria 3070, AUSTRALIA www.artsproject.org.au
REDWING GALLERY 36A Market Jew Street Penzance, Cornwall TR18 2HT, UK redwinggallery.co.uk
Miroslav Tichý
Aloïse Corbaz
Philip Hammial RAW VISION 89
PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY 9 North Pallant, Chichester PO19 1TJ, UK www.outsidein.org.uk, www.pallant.org.uk
until May 22 Museum Gugging has brought the exhibition art brut: japan – switzerland.! to Austria, initiating a dialogue by comparing the Japanese and Western European Outsider worlds. Japanese artists such as Shinichi Sawada, Yuki Fujioka, drawings by Yu Fujita, Shinichi Kusunoki, as well as Alfred Leuzinger, Anna Kahmann, Josef Wyler and Aloïse Corbaz from Switzerland.
Jul 7–30 For Philip Hammial’s 30th exhibition, Mr Odongo Okono & others of his ilk features a range of figurative sculptures made from found objects.
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until May 29 Shame features works by Josef Hofer, Miroslav Tichý, Kaziemierz Cycon, Mohammed Targa and others.
Piers Lockwood
CALLAN PARK GALLERY
CALLAN PARK GALLERY Sydney College of the Arts, Callan Park, Kirkbride Way, Lilyfield, NSW 2040, AUSTRALIA www.sydney.edu/sca
MUSEUM DR. GUISLAIN
until Jun 12 Radical Craft: Alternative Ways of Making will take place at Pallant House Gallery before touring around the UK. Outside In’s fourth triennial open art exhibition is a collaboration with Craftspace and will showcase craft focused work by historically renowned and invited contemporary artists associated with Outsider Art, alongside UK artists who see themselves as facing barriers to the art world for reasons including health, disability, social circumstance or isolation.
Warren O’Brien
CASTLEFIELD GALLERY 2 Hewitt Street, Manchester, M15 4GB, UK castlefieldgallery.co.uk
PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY
Joanna Simpson
Joel x
until Apr 24 New and existing works by artists from the UK, South Africa, France, Iran and the USA will be presented at Inside Out, curated by Castlefield Gallery in collaboration with David Maclagan.
AUSTRALIA, AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, BRITAIN
MUSEUM GUGGING Am Campus 2, A-3400, Maria Gugging, AUSTRIA www.gugging.at
R AW N E W S
FRANCE, GERMANY, NETHERLANDS
MUSÉE D’ORSAY
until May 22 The Museum of Everything has travelled to Holland, where it is showing sculptures, paintings, drawings and installations at the Kunsthal Rotterdam. Artists include Willem van Genk, Sam Doyle, Henry Darger, Josef Karl Radler and Anna Zemankova.
Mar 22 – Jul 17 The Douanier Rousseau. Archaic Candour will compare Henri (Le Douanier) Rousseau’s paintings with several of his sources of inspiration, including both academic and new painting. The exhibition will present a critical investigation of his art based on the notion of archaism, looking at his inspirations and interconnections with Picasso, Delaunauy, Kandinsky and Seurat.
KUNSTHAL ROTTERDAM Museumpark, Westzeedijk 341, 3015 AA, Rotterdam, NETHERLANDS www.musevery.com www.kunsthal.nl
ARMAND SCHULTHESS AT MASI
PRINZHORN COLLECTION
Mar 19 – Jun 19 Lucienne Peiry will inaugurate a show devoted to the Swiss art brut artist Armand Schulthess, creator of Der Garten des Wissens (The Garden of Knowledge), a poetic labyrinth reflecting his artistic obsessions. Visitors will be able to see creations and photographs visualising his unique art work, as well as a documentary movie.
MUSÉE D’ORSAY 1 Rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris, FRANCE www.musee-orsay.fr
HALLE SAINT PIERRE Mar 30 – Aug 26 L’Esprit Singulier [Single Mind] will be presenting over 2500 working, including featured works by Josée Francisco Abello Vives, Philippe Dereux and self taught artists Louis Pons, Michel Macréau and others.
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PRINZHORN COLLECTION Klinik für Allgemeine Psychiatrie, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg, GERMANY www.sammlungprinzhorn.de
Robert Combas
Paul Goesch
Armand Schulthess
MUSEO D’ARTE DELLA SVIZZERA ITALIANA, LUGANO LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura, Piazza Bernardino Luini 6, 6901 Lugano, SWITZERLAND www.masilugano.ch 6
May 12 – Sep 18 Paul Goesch will be showing at the Prinzhorn Collection in Heidelberg. Goesch was a German expressionist painter and architect who spent 20 years in psychiatric institutions.
Henri Rousseau
MÉDIATHÈQUE GASTON MASSAT, Saint Girons, Ariège, FRANCE mediathequemunicipalegastonmassat.net
Henry Darger
THE MUSEUM OF EVERYTHING
Apr 6–30 Geneviève Seillé will be showing some of her latest work in L'Arbre a Palabres.
Geneviève Seillé
GENEVIÈVE SEILLÉ
HALLE SAINT PIERRE 2, rue Ronsard, 75018 Paris, FRANCE www.hallesaintpierre.org
R AW N E W S THE GALERIE DU MARCHÉ
Mar 22 – Jul 10 Museum im Lagerhaus will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the artist Hedi Zuber in the exhibition Hedi Zuber and her Friends.
Apr 13 – Jul 4 The Galerie du Marché, Lausanne, will be showing the exhibition C’est du Belge featuring works from Belgian artists including Eric Derkenne, Paul Duhem, Irène Gerard, Yves Jules, Pascal Leyder and Stephane Stephenson.
NEW ART BRUT MUSEUM IN SOUTH KOREA from Nov 2015 The Versi Art Museum, a new museum of art brut, opened in Yong-In, South Korea in November 2015 with an exhibition of selected Gugging artists including Heinrich Reisenbauer, Franz Kamlander, August Walla, Jürgen Tauscher, Helmut Hladisch and Birdman Hans Langner.
from Mar 4 Featuring over 150 pieces exclusively from the Collection De l’Art Brut holdings, the exhibition will celebrate the origin of the art brut concept, as invented by French artist Jean Dubuffet. It will also celebrate the museum’s existence, instigated by Dubuffet’s donation of his collection to the City of Lausanne on February 26, 1976. The exhibition will feature many important works collected by Dubuffet between 1945, when art brut was first conceived, and 1949. Artists include Wölfli, Aloïse, Walla and Forestier.
GALERIE DU MARCHÉ Escaliers du Marché 3, 1003 Lausanne, SWITZERLAND galeriedumarche.ch
GALERIE HAMER
THE VERSI ART MUSEUM 940 Jungbu-daero, Giheung-gu 444-769 Yonin-si Gyeonggi-do, SOUTH KOREA
COLLECTION DE L’ART BRUT Av. des Bergières 11, 1004 Lausanne, SWITZERLAND www.artbrut.ch
MUSÉE VISIONNAIRE
NEW OUTSIDER ART MUSEUM OPENS IN THE NETHERLANDS
until May 8 Einfach Tierisch! has been extended to May 8. Featured artists include Paul Amar, Ilija Bosilj, Vittorio Carlesi, Gregory Blackstock, Ivan Rabuzin and André Robillard. An accompanying exhibition until June 18, Willy J.C. Free, will celebrate the 100th year of the Dada movement.
from Mar 17 The Netherlands will open its first Outsider Art Museum, with world-class works of art by national and international outsider artists. The museum will make its home in a new space in the Hermitage Amsterdam and will open March 17. Focusing on contemporary outsider art from the growing Dolhuys collection, featuring artists from Britain, France, Iran, Japan and the Netherlands.
GALERIE HAMER Leliegracht 38, 1015 DH Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS www.galeriehamer.nl RAW VISION 89
MUSÉE VISIONNAIRE Predigerplatz 10, 8001 Zürich, SWITZERLAND museevisionnaire.ch
Derk Wessels
Vittorio Carlesi
Damian Valdes Dilla
March 3 – April 30 Cities in my Mind is a new exhibition featuring the works of Damian Valdes Dilla. As a child he loved to draw, and as an adolescent he decorated bus stops and other public places with graffiti. At the age of 17 he was forced to leave school due to serious mental disorders. He draws quickly, creating detailed imaginary cities, often the stage for armed conflict or tranquil scenery, depending on his mood.
Auguste Forestier
Hedi Zuber
MUSEUM IM LAGERHAUS Davidstrasse 44, CH-9000 St. Gallen, SWITZERLAND www.museumimlagerha us.ch
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40TH ANNIVERSARY OF COLLECTION DE L’ART BRUT
Eric Derkenn
MUSEUM IM LAGERHAUS
NETHERLANDS, SOUTH KOREA, SWITZERLAND
HERMITAGE AMSTERDAM Amstel 51, Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS www.hermitage.nl
RAW COLLECTING
LIVING IN ART BRUT IN VIENNA Hannah Rieger immerses herself in her collection JOHN MAIZELS
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s she describes it, Hannah Rieger now lives in the art she has been collecting for 25 years. For her, living in art brut means more than just living with art brut. She quotes Goethe’s famous 1772 letter about his preoccupation with the Greek poet Pindar: “I now live in Pindar.” Similarly, she now lives in art brut, amidst a total of around 370 works. Art from Gugging makes up around two thirds of her collection. The rest comprises international art brut works. Recently, she has developed a focus on female artists. Living in art brut means that Rieger increasingly orients her own life and work around it, allowing her whole identity to be influenced by this special field, and deliberately dedicating more and more of her time to art brut. Naturally, this approach means she applies the concept of “outsider” to her own existence. And therein also lies the deeper reason for her collecting art brut. It is essentially related to her family’s experience of the Holocaust. This is presumably why she has such great respect for the element of fate surrounding every art brut artist. Although she only collects art brut, contemporary art is also important to her and she has been a member of the University Council of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna for the past eight years. Trained as an economist, Rieger’s knowledge of
the art world is self-taught. She sees one of the roles of collectors in designing creative spaces. This means, on the one hand, creating art compositions, and on the other hand, (symbolically) creating gathering spaces to facilitate emotional experiences. She also runs a consultancy for professional development from her apartment in Vienna. Now that she is no longer a bank director, having worked for 27 years at corporate financing bank, her approach to art brut has improved in quality. Today, she views her collection as a professional project. This entails giving lectures, moderating workshops, taking part in discussions and recently publishing a book, entitled United in Art. Living through collecting in this way means pursuing strategies, networking and travelling for art brut. Hannah Rieger’s passion began in 1980, with an exhibition of Johann Hauser and Oswald Tschirtner in what was then the Museum of the 20th Century in Vienna. She took further inspiration from the exhibition “Primitivism in 20th Century Art” at MoMA in New York in 1984, which featured a whole section on surrealism influenced by art from psychiatric institutions. It was another 7 years before she bought her first works from Gugging in 1991. She has been collecting ever since. And the rest is history.
On the left and right walls, Johann Hauser drawings, on facing wall, a triptych by Oswald Tschirtner. Interior photos: Maurizio Maier
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A wall of paintings by Martha Grunenwaldt
Two paintings by Arnold Schmidt
A series by Franz Kamlander
Painting by Oswald Tschirtner
Hannah Rieger, with drawings by Guo Fengyi and Madge Gill; photo: Petra Spiola RAW VISION 89
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CELEBRATING ART BRUT’S VENERABLE HOME As it marks its fortieth anniversary, the Collection de l’Art Brut looks back – and ahead – at its special role in a unique field EDWARD M. GÓMEZ
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The Château de Beaulieu in Lausanne, home to the Collection de l’Art Brut. Sculptures by Nek Chand
his year, the Collection de l’Art Brut, the world’s first and most important museum devoted to the examination and presentation of the kind of unique, unusual artistic creations that are recognised by its name, marks the fortieth anniversary of its opening to the public at the Château de Beaulieu, in Lausanne, Switzerland. This milestone comes at a time when interest in the most original self-taught works appears to be greater than ever. At the same time, gaining a clear understanding of just what “art brut” signifies – as a particular slice of art history, a way of evaluating and classifying artworks, and an aesthetic sensibility that has become associated with them – has never seemed more urgent. As the keepers of the vision of its founder, the French modern artist Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985), who invented the term “art brut” and articulated the critical–aesthetic concerns that identify the works to which it refers, the Collection de l’Art Brut acknowledges the challenges it is facing at a time when art-category labels appear to be more fluid than ever. Its plans for this year’s fortieth-anniversary commemoration and for the museum’s future programming reflect a commitment to honouring its history while moving forward as a cultural– educational institution with a distinctive mission. Throughout 2016, the Collection, which now holds more than 60,000 works, will present special events to celebrate its big birthday. The centrepiece of this programming is its newest exhibition, “Jean Dubuffet’s Art Brut, from the Collection’s Origins”, which offers a vivid recreation of the one Dubuffet mounted in 1949 at the René Drouin Gallery in Paris. Leading up to that historic presentation, in 1945 Dubuffet had made an exploratory trip to Switzerland with his friend, the French literary critic and writer Jean Paulhan. Dubuffet and Paulhan went prospecting for works that had been produced by art-makers outside the mainstream of academically trained, “professional” artists. Sarah Lombardi, the museum's director, writes in the current exhibition's catalogue that during their trip they sought “works on the margins of elite and official culture.”Already in 1942, Dubuffet had expressed his intention, as he recalled in an interview many years later, “to call into question the rites of culture and to seek out an art less constrained by preestablished norms.” Dubuffet gave the French name “art brut” (literally, “raw art”) to the remarkable creations he encountered and gathered up; they had been made by people living and working on what he viewed as the margins of mainstream culture and society. Among them: psychiatric-hospital patients, prisoners and other individuals who produced objects of aesthetic merit primarily for themselves and who felt driven to do so. Dubuffet regarded their works as unique and unclassifiable according to conventional art-historical criteria or art-category labels. RAW VISION 89
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SARAH LOMBARDI The director of the Collection de l’Art Brut speaks with Raw Vision’s John Maizels John Maizels: How did you first become involved with the Collection de l’Art Brut? Sarah Lombardi: Michel Thévoz was one of my university lecturers and I obtained an internship for three months working on an exhibition at the Collection. I then worked with a disability studio in Montreal, Fondation Les Impatients, organising exhibitions before returning to Lausanne and being appointed as an exhibitions coordinator in 2004. I became curator in 2007 and Director in 2013. JM: Were you working directly with artists at Les Impatients? SL: Yes, what was interesting for me was being in close contact with the creators because we were seeing them every day, and this experience helped me to be very sensitive with the artists –
the creators themselves – because sometimes we tend to talk and show the works, and say how incredible they are, but forget about the creators. JM: I’d like to ask you about the Collection itself. Dubuffet didn’t like to think of it as a museum, more as a sort of anti-museum – is it even possible to have such a concept? SL: I would say that first, Dubuffet was a very paradoxical figure. He was opposed to academic culture, and he went to find, through art brut, an “anti” way of creating culture and art outside the system. He really believed in these creators and their productions and he put them in the rank of “art”. But through art brut he also wanted to shake the official system of art, and to question it completely and question the notion of art itself. What is a piece of art? Do you need to be trained to be an artist? Does it need to come from
Sarah Lombardi at work at the Collection de l’Art Brut and with Michel Thévoz, photos by Edward M. Gómez
schools? Does the work have to be shown in museums and galleries to be considered as art, or not? These creators were all self-taught artists and what they do is art. JM: I don’t think nowadays we realise how aggressive Dubuffet was towards established culture. And he needed to be, because the art he was showing was often attacked, denigrated, and that situation continued for many years. SL: That’s why he was so radical about art, about art brut, about the academic system of art... and that’s why also he was very radical in his speeches. When he wrote the text L’Art Brut Perefere Aux Art Culturels, he was moving the cursor very, very far. He had to. He had to say, “This is not art; this is art.” Official culture is not art. All the artists are intellectuals. JM: He had to be more extreme than necessary, to push the point through. SL: Yes, and to make this field recognised as real art. At the beginning, the collection that he was building was still in the shadows, little known, in a kind of clandestinity ... but to show the paradoxes, in 1949 he made the first exhibition outside the Foyer de l’Art Brut, which was his
storage space, at the Galerie René Drouin a gallery in the core of bourgeois Paris. Originally he said that he had no wish to make a museum, but the works had to be seen by as many people as possible. But finally he decided to donate his collection because he wanted it to be in a public museum, and now we function as a normal museum of course but then you know he just wanted to have the name of the museum as Collection de l’Art Brut and not Museum d’Art Brut. It’s again a kind of paradox. JM: When it first opened, I think Michel Thévoz didn’t want titles or explanations by the works. SL: We have a biographic panel for each artist so you can read about their life, and also about the work itself – how it was made, the techniques. So we give some information but we don’t have captions. And I would say that what is also interesting with all artworks is the first encounter. What happens when you look at a work. In the case of art brut, we see a real dialogue between the works and the visitors, from children to specialists. And the fact that there are no captions is not a problem at all. I mean, you can understand the works and something happens. JM: The art brut definition has been protected
Interior view of the Collection de l’Art Brut showing the display within the black interior. Works shown include those by Adolf Wölfli, Aloise Corbaz and Vojislav Jakic.
RE-BORN FREE An artist has developed the Chinese tradition of carving eggshells by depicting his experiences in American prisons NORMAN BROSTERMAN
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culptures are three dimensional. Drawings, generally speaking, are flat. Bas-reliefs may be both: thickened drawings with edges and shadows. An exhibit label years ago at the American Museum of Natural History, for prehistoric drawings surface-carved onto antlers by the slight removal of surrounding background material, described relief sculptures as probably the first sculptures. A suspect proposition never forgotten. As if the genesis of three-dimensional art stemmed from drawings that stood up like the ink blots reconstituted into dancing characters in early Max Fleischer cartoons. While this theoretical pre-history ignores shaped and molded icons, including the Venus of Willendorf and Cycladic figures, there certainly are a lot of relief carvings that have lasted since antiquity, despite their number having been recently reduced by imbecilic destruction at the hands of religious psychopaths. One feature of relief art from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and others of more recent vintage, like wall sculpture in 1930s American post offices, Rockefeller Center, and bronze war memorials throughout Europe, is the narrative arc of so many. Like very
sturdy comic books or graphic novels, carved and cast reliefs were frequently utilised for telling stories and are often sequential artworks that unfold in time. Small surprise, then, that the foundation for the narrative art of Gil Batle was enriched by the comic book drawings of Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Frank Frazetta and Robert Crumb. Dreaming of comic stardom like millions of American boys, Batle, now aged 54, was born and raised in San Francisco by Filipino parents exactly when Zap Comix were coming hot off the local presses, but he took a decidedly different artistic path. Drawing for the other kids in a California Youth Authority lockup; hand-pricking initiation tattoos on teen gang members and decorating their iconographic jackets; air-brushing Chevy low-riders and painting murals for restaurants around the Bay area; illustrating a weekly newsletter with caricatures of fellow inmates in the San Mateo County Jail; and drawing his own traveller’s checks and doctoring money orders, which led inevitably to successive incarcerations in five different California prisons over a 20-year period for fraud and forgery. Batle left that world behind in 2008 to move to Marinduque, a small
opposite: Sanctuary, 2014
All works are carved ostrich eggshells, average 6.5 x 5.1 ins. / 16.5 x 13 cm, photos courtesy of Ricco/Maresca Gallery New York
below: A selection of works by Gil Batle
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AN UNEXPECTED MODERNIST Pensive and reclusive, the Seattle-based painter Larry John Palsson created sophisticated compositions that reflected the spirit of his times EDWARD M. GÓMEZ
Untitled, n.d., acrylic on paper, 8.5 x 11 ins. / 21.6 x 27.9 cm
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he world of art brut and outsider art tends to love its enigmas. Given the central role the presentation of artists’ life stories has played both in the reception (in the media, by the art world and by the public) and the promotion of the work of many self-taught artists, what is known about a particular art-maker’s background often helps establish an alluring air of myth and mystery surrounding whatever 32
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paintings, drawings, sculptures or other creations he or she may have produced. This has been true even when some of the “facts” about an artist’s biography have been sketchy at best. Then there are the many anonymous artists whose works have appeared as compelling as anything any known art-maker with a welldocumented history might have made. In some cases, like those of the American autodidact
Untitled, n.d., acrylic on cardboard from Cheerios cereal box, 12.5 x 8.5 ins. / 31.7 x 21.6 cm
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RAIN
We look at a retired New York messenger’s lifelong devotion to model railways, real stations and drawing train carriages ALEJANDRA RUSSI
“I
have so much imagination”, said James Chandler, slouching to turn the power dial on a rusty Throttlepack train controller. “I have trains going to Chicago, Pennsylvania, Altoona, Boston...”. A line of coupled model freight trains began to move along the little railway; the sound of its tiny machinery competed with an old radio spitting out broken bluegrass country songs. As Chandler stood back up, a light bulb perched from the bleak cement ceiling spread its glare from behind his balding head like an asymmetrical halo. Now retired from his job as a messenger, 68year-old Chandler spends most mornings playing with model trains in the weathered cellar of the house where he was born. The sprawling track layout he has assembled over many years surrounds a threadbare industrial landscape of 38
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manufacturing shops, water towers, a church, gas stations, pine trees of various degrees of verisimilitude, soap ad banners, tiny Coca-Cola trucks, replicas of Kentucky Fried Chicken and KMart buildings, trolleys, a colorful array of vintage cars and buses, and only a few non-proportional plastic human toys and figurines placed gratuitously or fallen amid barrels and pebbles. Chandler’s lifelong fixation with railroad imagery and paraphernalia is most aggressively expressed in a swelling mass of ballpoint pen drawings, made with a ruler on scratch paper, that he’s been sketching consistently since he was a teenager. Each drawing represents a schematic, two-dimensional side view of an individual train car with its specificities according to model, use and company. Chandler’s reference materials are photocopied images from the Pennsylvania
All photos by Alejandra Russi, 2015, unless otherwise stated Individual works are approximately 2.75 x 10.5 ins. / 7 x 26.7 cm
Chandler's ballpoint pen drawings (amassed over more than four decades), each representing a side view of an individual train car with its specificities according to model, use and company
Railroad Heavyweight Passenger Equipment Plan and Photo Book, historical photos in The Keystone magazines, and model train cars themselves. When he finishes a drawing, Chandler cuts it from the page and often pins it with other drawings to play out imagined scenarios: “Pennsy” trains running on the Long Island Railroad, or rail car roadside diners with tiny Cadillacs parked in front. Afterwards, he stores them in boxes, piles them up in drawers, sticks them in books, or leaves them scattered between tools, motor parts and model train shells. Chandler’s daily life is structured around the railroad system; his psyche attuned to its patterns and always engaged in a detailed, lengthy, and somewhat erratic catalogue of facts covering
everything from mechanics, designs, horsepower, renovations, infrastructure, materials, routes, stations, types of cars and engines, to the history of the PRR (Pennsylvania Railroad), the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road), the BMT (Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation), the IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit Company) and all the things that used to be but no longer are. He wood-pecks his sentences and often jumps from one to the next without finishing them. There’s no more time than a minute to talk about himself as a separate entity from the subject of trains (which is inexhaustible because it’s cyclical, perpetually looping in Chandler’s mind) much less to deal with fickle human relationships. RAW VISION 89
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SCOTTIE WILSON’S CANADIAN LEGACY Following the life journey of one of the most revered artistes brut MARY MARGARET JOHNSTON-MILLER and JAMES DAVID MILLER
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n May 23, 1945, an ill and annoyed Douglas Duncan, leading Canadian art collector and patron, wrote to an artist whose work he championed. “I had assured you that I would see that you had the necessary money to go if you would wait until it was more convenient”, he complained. “It could hardly be less convenient for both of us than it is now”, he continued, “but I guess we might as well get it over with, seeing that patience is not one of your virtues.” Duncan’s exasperation reflected his dismay that a yearslong association with an artist he had admired and
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promoted was coming to an abrupt end. But the “impatient” Robert “Scottie” Wilson was not for waiting, and soon sailed for Britain after 13 years in Canada. (1) Wilson’s career is familiar to devotees of art brut. He was born Louis Freeman in 1891, Glasgow, Scotland, to poor Lithuanian parents. At the age of nine, Louis left school and took up various jobs before joining the British Army in 1907. He served with the Cameronians in India and South Africa. In 1910 he bought himself out of the army for £18, nine of which he got back when he reenlisted in 1916. He served on the Western Front in World War I with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. After the war it seems he returned to trading in junk, before eventually moving to Canada in 1932. It was there that he became an artist. And it was there he became a “Scottie”, as he began to go by Robert “Scottie” Wilson. By the time of his death in 1972, he was a well-known artist – Britain’s greatest “primitive” – admired by Pablo Picasso and Jean Dubuffet, commissioned to bring his designer’s imagination to Royal Worcester pottery and UNICEF Christmas cards. Few articles and obituaries failed to contrast the humble Kilburn digs of Wilson's final years with the far grander places, such as Tate Britain and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, that were now home to his art. 1932 was not Wilson’s first visit to Canada. He had traveled there in 1920, motivated by what he described as a “kick in the pants”. It is more likely that he was motivated by a desire to avoid the British Army. In February 1918, Wilson went on a fortnight’s leave and never returned. He was recorded as a deserter in September. After the war, the records show the Army’s efforts to find him. The local police in Scotland visited his mother and brother, in 1918 and again in March of 1920, only to report that both Curiosity, c.1940, ink and crayon, 14.6 x 11.4 ins. / 37 x 29 cm, denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. courtesy of Henry Boxer Gallery, London, UK
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A Vision of Mrs. Barwick in Scottie Jewelry, 1972, ink and coloured pencil on paper, 15.2 x 10.6 ins. / 38.7 x 27.6 cm, courtesy of Collection of Carleton University, Art Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
FINELY-TUNED FREQUENCIES French artist Loïc Lucas is compelled by audio frequencies, heard only by him, to create intricate drawings of the human body ROGER THOMPSON
I
n a small village in France, Loïc Lucas works ten hours a day on his drawings. Governed by an obsessive preoccupation with organic bodies, he works with intense focus, listening intently to an inner drive that he has difficulty explaining. He works alongside his wife, artist Stephanie Lucas. She paints other-worldly landscapes rich in colour and detail. They hearken to Hieronymus Bosch and were discovered barely five years ago when she premiered at an exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum. An article here in Raw Vision followed shortly after, and Loïc, having encouraged her creative expression, was her muse – his passion helped foster her selfassurance. Lucas’s art captivated her, and a magnetism between the two developed quickly. He saw in her a native talent; she saw in him the possibility of a life in art. Together, they find higher purpose. Lucas’s art first drove that connection. Loïc Lucas, born in Troyes in north-central France, has been drawing since childhood, but he did not pursue his compulsion to draw full-time until the early 2000s. For over a decade, he crisscrossed France in search of a way to make a living, working as an itinerant labourer in too many places and jobs to count. In about 2006, he finally secured steady work as a postman in the village of Valbonne, in the hills above Cannes near the south-east coast. The work promised steady income and some stability, and it seemed to Lucas’s family that he had finally found his footing. When he left that work to pursue his art, however, his parents were dismayed, unable to reconcile an adult son’s decision to cast aside future stability with their own visions of the world. Except for a brother, his family still doesn’t fully understand his decision to leave behind steady work to spend his time drawing. A life in art, painting day in and day out and pursuing 50
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what must seem to them to be a glorified hobby, remains as foreign to them as choosing to spend a life surfing or peddling trinkets. Lucas, however, feels compelled. He describes his life in art not so much as a choice, but as a need to gather and convey some distant but insistent sound that resonates in his world. He hears, he believes, frequencies that most cannot imagine, even seeing them in the colours he uses when he draws and paints. His job, he believes, is to make them heard – by making them visible, in the same way that a private whisper might be converted into a printed note. He is explicit in using the analogy of frequencies when describing his work, and it provides a critical lens through which to view his art. He links his first moment of recognising the power of art to his own musical history. As a young man, he saw artwork on the back of one of his brother’s LP records. The record was playing, but it was an American album and he could not understand the words. Today, he cannot identify which record it was, but the instruments sung to him. Something inside him began to vibrate and his life was changed. The music became wedded to the visual art of the album, and his life began to revolve around ways of expressing that inner vibration of sound and colour. It was years before he fully recognised that drawing offered him an outlet for those inner frequencies. As a child he drew a lot. He sometimes sketched on comic book covers, but the first thing he remembers creating was a drawing of a fly. He lost that image while still young, but years later, while moving some items at his parents home, he rediscovered it just as he was preparing for a show in which, by odd coincidence, he was including an image of a fly. The rediscovery struck him as providential, and he committed himself more fully to his work.
RAW STUDIOS
ARTS PROJECT AUSTRALIA NUALA ERNEST
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or over 40 years, Arts Project Australia has provided a gallery and studio for artists with learning disabilities, but its origins go back much further. In 1951, Myra Hilgendorf’s daughter, Johanne, was diagnosed with what is now called intellectual disabilities. Very little social support existed for the Hilgendorfs, and they experienced stigma, isolation and all of the difficulties associated with caring for someone with a long-term progressive disability. In 1974, Johanne needed round-the-clock care and had moved into an institution. She could no longer communicate through speech, but Myra saw that she had started to express herself: through painting. That year, Myra – an artist herself – was asked by STAR (a not-for-profit charitable organisation that provides a volunteer service for people with disabilities) to curate an exhibition of artworks by people with learning disabilities. Moved and impressed by what had been produced with improvised materials, Myra joined forces with friends to found the Art Project for the Mentally Retarded, and a government
Terry Williams, Untitled, 2015, mixed materials (faux fur, woollen thread, stuffing), 29.5 x 25.6 x 5.3 ins. / 75 x 65 x 13.5 cm
Catherine Staughton, Untitled (Virgin Mary), 2013, acrylic on paper, 29.9 x 22 ins. / 76 x 56 cm, private collection
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grant enable them to put on another exhibition, “Minus/Plus”, which toured the state of Victoria to much acclaim. Further exhibitions, grants and acclaim followed, and the studio was established in 1982. Arts Project Australia was the first full-time arts studio in Australia for people with learning disabilities, and describes itself as “an art environment for people with an intellectual disability previously deprived of an opportunity for expression and recognition.” Now, 110 artists with intellectual disabilities use the studio’s facilities to make paintings, drawings, ceramics, prints, 3D sculpture and digital media that go on to be
Julian Martin, Untitled, 2015, pastel on paper, 15 x 11.4 ins. / 38 x 29 cm, represented in the US by Fleisher/Ollman, Philadelphia
Alvaro Alvarez, Untitled, 2012, ink, pen and pencil on paper, 11 x 15 ins. / 28 x 38 cm, private collection
exhibited, usually alongside work by non-disabled, contemporary artists. Myra Hilgendorf’s basic tenet was to present the art produced in the studio professionally, with the same dignity and respect as that of non-disabled artists. In 2015, artists from Arts Project Australia were featured in over 55 curated exhibitions and achieved record sales of artworks at nearly AU$250,000. Earlier that year, Australian sculptor Ricky Swallow curated an exhibition of fabric works by Arts Project artist Terry Williams at White Columns gallery in New York. The distinctive, voluptuous works drew attention from the
Alan Constable, Untitled (SLR), 2015, ceramic, 5.1 x 8.8 x 4.1 ins. / 13 x 22.5 x 10.5 cm
All works are © the artist, represented by Arts Project Australia, Melbourne
public and the media, and the exhibition was a great success; at the same time, Julian Martin’s pastel abstractions (see RV #84) were being exhibited by Fleisher/Ollman gallery at The Armory Show. In the studio, attending artists have the room to work, as well as professional guidance, a range of quality materials, and opportunities to exhibit and sell their artwork. In 2015, 90% of Arts Project artists were exhibited at almost 50 exhibitions, art prizes and awards, and Myra’s original vision of bringing the work to the attention of the art world and general public has been and continues to be realised.
Arts Project Australia, 24 High Street, Northcote, Victoria 3070, Australia. www.artsproject.org.au
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Paul Lafolley
EXHIBITIONS
LANGUAGE OF THE BIRDS: OCCULT AND ART 80WSE, 80 Washington Square East Galleries, New York, NY 10003 until February 13, 2016 An hour into the premiere of “The Language of the Birds: Occult and Art”, the gallery was at capacity and the crowd moving with a trance-like slowness. Someone shouted,“Watch the art work, please!” while laboriously compressing himself away from Astrological Ouroboros (1965) by the late American visionary artist, Paul Lafolley. The exhibition, showing more than 60 esoteric artists, is titled after the mythological, medieval and occult postulation that there exists “a unified language that only the initiated can understand”, says Pam Grossman, the curator. A decade ago, Grossman founded Phantasmaphile, an online 58
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space celebrating the overlap of art and esoteric magic. She adds: “Art is the tool that helps us transcend the trappings of our culture, and allows us to have a metaphysical experience – in many ways, it is the translation of that ultimate, mysterious language.” The show was comprised of 86 paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations by contemporary artists whose work transcends words, such as Aleister Crowley, Kenneth Anger and Leonora Carrington, as well as lesser-known Hermetic, spiritual and cosmological artists who have a sagacious knowledge of the occult. “Xul Solar, for example, was an Argentinian painter and a student of Aleister Crowley”, says Grossman, “He invented two languages and came up with new esoteric systems of correspondence, but a lot of people don’t even know his name.” Occult and outsider arts – terms
that are often incorrectly used synonymously and that “should be irrelevant”, notes Grossman – have gained significant traction in recent years, capturing the collective imagination and lining the pockets of international auction houses like Christie’s in New York, which sold William Edmondson’s iconic boxer sculpture for $785,000, far surpassing the estimate of $150,000–$250,000, at an outsider- and vernacularfocused auction in January. “I think that people are embracing [the term “outsider arts”] because there’s a hunger for art that is sensitive and meaningful, and that has spirit”, says Grossman, “We are getting more disenchanted with societal structures and the material world, and the [symbolism and artistry in these works] help us connect to something that’s greater than ourselves.” Gabriella Angeleti
EXHIBITIONS
Alice Pery
R AW R E V I E W S
CELEBRATING 90 YEARS AT QUEENSBERRY PLACE (1926–2016) College of Psychic Studies, 16 Queensberry Place, London. January 23–24, 2016 For one very special weekend in January the College of Psychic Studies in London opened its doors to the public and displayed, over four floors, an incredible collection of psychic art, ghostly spirit photography, séance records, spirit trumpets, direct writing slates and much more.
Curator Vivienne Roberts had been invited to spend three months researching into the College’s archives to unearth previously unseen ephemera, articles and artwork from 1856 to the present day. This research built on the 2013 work Roberts carried out while co-curating the Madge Gill (1882–1961) exhibition at Orleans House Gallery. At that point, Roberts brought together just a small collection of mediumistic art and objects that put Madge’s work into a wider context within this field of art. The work on display in the College of Psychic Studies was varied
and vast, with well-placed chairs allowing you to sit and absorb the sights. Gill’s works were seen in the College in the 20th Century Spirit Art room, but many other works in this room overshadowed them. This included detailed, anonymous, blackand-white drawings, and pixie-like faces by V.E. Luck from 1955. What was incredible, though, was viewing an actual copy of The Spheres newspaper from 1926, featuring a piece on Gill written by her son. A hard copy of this document had not been found until now, so this was an exciting development. The work of Alice Pery (1833–1906) was the hot topic of the weekend – tiny, honeycomb-like drawings in pencil, best viewed through a magnifying glass, each featuring small, delicate faces surrounded by wispy lines. As a viewer, you were drawn in by their sheer, translucent quality. There was only one original drawing and one oil painting found, the rest being photographs of lost work. Without the College keeping hold of these few works, this artist would have been lost forever. Her work is comparable to the minute drawings of faces by celebrated Outsider Artist Edmund Monsiel (1897–1962). A whole room, and the stairwell, were dedicated to the bright visionary art by the spiritual medium Ethel Le Rossignol (1873–1970). Heavy, royal-blue backgrounds, vivid colours and highlights in gold paint covered each painting, all featuring ladies with bright red hair. Ethel gave a book of her illustrations and paintings entitled A Goodly Company to the College. It was powerful to see so many of these vivid pieces together in one place. There were two other objects that drew my attention: the varying sizes of shiny, silver spirit trumpets, which were used to amplify the sounds of spirit voices; and the instructions for the conduct of sitters in séances – these made for a fascinating read, and made people smile with lines such as, “No materialised form or part thereof or trumpet may be touched by a sitter without permission of the guides”. The exhibition was awe-inspiring, and slightly overwhelming as there was so much to see. It was a shame that people only had one weekend to see it all, as in a very short time it touched many people who were left wanting more. Fortunately, the latest news from the College is that they plan to show the exhibition again in August 2016. Jennifer Gilbert RAW VISION 89
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EXHIBITIONS
Ernst Herbeck, photographed in 1980 by Heinz Bütler
ERNST HERBECK.! Eine Leise Sprache Ist Mir Lieber [I prefer a softer speech] Museum Gugging, Am Campus 2, 3400 Maria Gugging, Austria until 22 May, 2016 Curated by the literary historian Gisela Steinlechner and designed by Peter Karlhuber, this carefully presented retrospective is devoted to the literary achievements of Ernst Herbeck (1920–1991) and reminds us that the Gugging-based House of the Artists encourages writing as well as graphic expression. It’s well known that the early artists of Gugging were monitored by their doctor, Professor Leo Navratil, who developed a technique for setting them on the path of creativity by simply proposing a subject matter and then sitting back to witness the patient’s response. In the case of Herbeck, the inclination was to write, an alternative to drawing which, as it turned out, not only gave rise to a charming spontaneity but also brought about a gradual strengthening of the patient’s selfimage. Herbeck was born with a severe cleft palate and lip, which made speaking difficult for him and affected him socially.
Oswald Tschirtner, Portrait of Ernst Herbeck, 1973, ink on paper, 5.8 x 4.1 ins. / 14.7 x 10.4 cm
Herbeck was brought to the Gugging clinic on the outskirts of Vienna in 1946. Having been diagnosed as mentally ill, he would undergo some of the extreme treatments of his time, such as electroshock. Navratil took charge of him in 1966, when a first batch of writings was published, including Herbeck’s very first concoction, Morning, now his signature piece: “In autumn there threads a fairy wind / as in the snow / the manes join up. / Blackbirds whistle sharply / in the wind and start to eat.” Herbeck’s poetic world flutters into focus for the reader as an environment swept clear of extraneous detail; his tart statements toy idly with the reality of institutional routine, but rarely introduce other people. What redeems Herbeck’s dour factuality is his laconic tone, while his unannounced spurts of lyricism draw upon a dreamer’s rambling. Navratil followed the progress of his protégé over decades and situated him within a theory akin to what we might now call mood swings, allowing that creativity might be tied to specific environmental influences or to awkward internal impulses. Some of the poems seem doggedly to build a trail of hints at some underlying anomaly and consequent panic: “Red.
/ Wine is red and so are carnations. / Red is lovely. Red flowers and red. / Colour added on is lovely. / The colour red is red. / A flag is red, and so is a poppy. / Lips are red and so is a mouth. / Reality is red / as well as autumn / Blue leaves are often red.” A system of echoes and rhymes ensures a certain tautness in Herbeck’s startling aphorisms. Something unspoken sustains the poet’s pleasure in both the reliability and unreliability of his surroundings. We pick up hints as to the writer’s emotional condition. “Black. / Black is the day / Every day I see black. / Black is death. / Black is dark by day as well. / Black is also stupid. / Black is colour’s brightest gold / Black is dark too.” The hint of mental disorder in what might suggest a fear of total darkness may nonetheless nourish the confidence and coherence that a schizophrenic longs for. Between 1966 and his death of a stroke in 1991, Herbeck amassed a total output of some 7,000 daily jottings. The present show exploits texts, drawings, photos, video and sound material to shed light upon Herbeck’s private path through the everyday hubbub of Gugging, where his hearty fellows provoke the touching reproach: “I prefer a softer speech”. text by Roger Cardinal research by Maria Höger, Gugging RAW VISION 89
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