Raw Vision 75

RAWVISION OUTSIDER • BRUT • FOLK • NAIVE • INTUITIVE • VISIONARY

A U G U S T WA L L A ADOLF WÖLFLI ANTONI GAUDI TIM WEHRLE F R A N K WA LT E R ART AS THERAPY

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RAWVISION75 SPRING 2012

CONTENTS 4

RAW NEWS Outsider events and exhibitions around the world

WORLD’S BEST ART MAGAZINE

MEDAILLE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS

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AUGUST WALLA Johann Feilacher reaffirms the importance of one of Gugging’s great stars

UTNE INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM VISIONARY AWARD

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FOUND IN TRANSLATION Randy Vick asseses the role of therapy at disability workshops

Editor John Maizels Directors Henry Boxer, Sam Farber, Robert Greenberg, Audrey Heckler, Rebecca Hoffberger, Phyllis Kind, Frank Maresca, Richard Rosenthal, Bob Roth Art Editor Maggie Jones Maizels Senior Editor Julia Elmore Features Editor Nuala Ernest Publishing Assistant Alex Romain Managing Editor Carla Goldby Solomon 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, Edward Madrid Gomez, Jo Farb Hernandez, Tom Patterson, Charles Russell Advertising Manager Charlie Payne tel 717 666 3200 fax 717 689 4566 cell 717 572 2175 adsalespro@comcast.net

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ADOLF WÖLFLI John Turner interviews Terry Riley about Wölfli’s musical creations

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FRANK WALTER Barbara Paca presents the work of an Antiguan folk artist

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 US Office 163 Amsterdam Ave, #203, New York, NY 10023–5001 (standard envelopes only)

ANTONI GAUDI Nuala Ernest introduces an early work of Gaudi built by hospital patients

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JIM BLOOM Ron Scira explains the singular work of American self-taught artist

Bureau Français 37 Rue de Gergovie, 75014 Paris tel +33 (0) 1 40 44 96 46

ISSN 0955-1182 cover image Henry Darger, The Vivian Princesses Raw Vision published quarterly by Raw Vision Ltd #75 Spring 2012. Printed in EU. Subscription Price $49 USPS No. 017-057 Periodicals Postage Paid at Emigsville, PA Distributed by Priority Post, 95 Aberdeen Road, Emigsville, PA 17318–0437 Subscription office: 163 Amsterdam Ave. #203, New York, NY 10028. (Standard envelopes only) Postmaster send address corrections to: Raw Vision, c/o Mercury Airfreight International Ltd, 365 Blair Road, Avenel, NJ 07001

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TIM WHERLE Lesley Umberger discusses the detailed expressions of a selftaught contemporary artist

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WHOSE AFRAID OF OUTSIDER ART? Colin Rhodes looks at some compelling issues of today

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RAW REVIEWS Exhibitions and books

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GALLERY AND MUSEUM GUIDE

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Australia. Austria. Belgium.

SEXI-BLATT

until October 28, 2012 Walla produced graffiti on roads, walls and trees all over his home town of Klosterneuburg. He took pictures of his work and had his mother photograph him posing next to his artwork. Galerie Gugging are celebrating this magnificent artist with a retrospective show titled August Walla.!

Universe-end.

GALERIE GUGGING, Am Campus 2, 3400 Maria Gugging, AUSTRIA tel: +43 (0)676 84 118 1200 www.gugging.org

until October 7, 2012 Also showing at Gugging is an exhibition with sexuality as its central theme, showing the way in which fantasies, wishes, dreams or fears around the subject of eroticism are expressed.

august walla

johann garber

AUGUST WALLA RETROSPECTIVE

lee godie

RUMOURS at MAD MUSÉE

CALLAN PARK

THE DAX CENTRE

until July 23, 2012 Exhibitions at the University of Sydney’s outsider art gallery include Australian Jungle Phillips.

2 May-1 June, Jungle Phillips: Home from Home; 6-29 June, Studio Artists; 4-24 July, Gina Sinovich.

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY NSW 2006, AUSTRALIA tel: +61 (0)2 9351 2222 http://sydney.edu.au/sca/research/projects/stoarc.shtml

until June 23, 2012 The Dax Centre, formerly known as the Cunningham Dax Collection, houses over 15,000 artworks at the University of Melbourne and shows Selected Works and Hide and Seek: self-portraits from the Cunningham Dax Collection.

THE DAX CENTRE, Kenneth Myer Building, The University of Melbourne, Genetics Lane, Melbourne, VIC, 3010, AUSTRALIA tel: +61 (0)3 9035 6442 www.daxcentre.org

milo dias

until May 6, 2012 Mad Musée presents Rumours, an exhibition showing the works of Morton Bartlett, Lee Godie, Loulou and Miroslav Tichy.

Although, these photographers have led colourful lives the collection is not about their stories, but a collection of their images.

MAD MUSÉE Parc d'Avroy, s/n, B-4000, Liège , BELGIUM tel:+ 32 (0)4 222 32 95 www.madmusee.be

DIAS at SPONTANÉ May 4 – 26 2012 Milo Dias confronts his assemblage bestiary with the work of the stylist Rocio Pasalodos and her group Divers’ Gentes in the show Les humains se pâment et se plument.

MUSÉE D’ART SPONTANÉ 27 Rue de la Constitution, 1030 Brussels, BELGIUM tel: +32 (0)2 426 84 04 www.musee-art-spontane.be jungle philips

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dax centre

anna zemankova

Japan. Netherlands. Norway. Portugal

ANATOMIA METAMORPHOSIS

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HERMANN BOSSERT

NORWAY EVENT

until June 17, 2012 Herman Bossert (b.1940, Amsterdam) spent his whole adult life on creating art, alongside his work in education. When he took early retirement in 1991, he made painting his main occupation. His early work has been regarded as ‘art singulier’, a French stylistic category situated between outsider art and art brut.

GALERIE HAMER Leliegracht 38*1015 DH Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS t: +31 (0)20-6267394 www.galeriehamer.nl

June 24, 2012 The Arts Festival of North Norway is an annual summer event in Harstad town in June. This year’s programme includes a special focus on outsider art with an exhibition called The World of Outsider Art. In connection with the exhibition, an open Outsider Art Symposium will be held.

TRONDENES HISTORIC CENTRE Harstad, NORWAY t: 77 01 83 80 e: rikkegurgen@hih.no

The exhibition of work by Lubos Plny and Anna Zemankova from the abcd Collection continue with through Kobe, Hiroshima, Berlin, Paris, Istanbul and Prague. From May at Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. It will come back to Europe to be shown in Berlin in September. www.artm.pref.hyogo.jp/eng/exhibition/index.html 1-1 Hijiyama koen Minami-ku, Hiroshima-city Japan 732-0815 t: +81.(0)82-264-1121

IN MY WORLD until October 7, 2012 Welcome in My World, presents works from the collections of the Dr Guislain Museum and the de Stadshof including Willen Van Genk, Madge Gill, Jaber, Truus Kardol and Tobias Jessberger VENRAYS MUSEUM Eindstraat 8, 5801 CR Venray, NETHERLANDS t: +32 (0)478 583880 www.venraysmuseum.nl truus kardol

adolf wölfli

ǁĞ ůŬŽ ŵ ŝŶ ŵ ŝ ũ Ŷ ǁĞ ƌĞ ůĚ

hermann bossert

LISBON SCULPTOR

ART=PARTY2

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until August 26, 2012 Florian Baltus operates as curator and s E Z z ^ D h ^ hD participant. He added artwork by his colleagues; Mies van der Perk, Edward Teeuw, Maarten Wendrich and Ronald Schriel to this show..

GALERIE HERENPLAATS Atelier Herenplaats Schiedamse Vest 56-58 3011 BD Rotterdam, NETHERLANDS tel: + 31 (0)10 - 2 14 11 08 www.herenplaats.nl gallery herenplaats

until May 31, 2012 The exhibition Xico Nico, sculptor , at Organized by the Portuguese Association of Outsider Art, shows 80 powerful works in iron and stone by that recently discovered outsider artist.

PALACIO GALVEIAS, Campo Pequeno Square, Lisbon, PORTUGAL www.aparteoutsider.org

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ARTE BRUTA - TERRA INCOGNITA until September 23, 2012 The Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva Fondation in Lisbon, shows the works from the art brut and outsider art collection of Richard Treger and Antonio Saint-Silvestre. No less than seventy artists including Henry Darger, Adolf Wölfli and Scottie Wilson, will be displayed for the first time in Portugal. The Parisian gallerist and art brut scholar Christian Berst curates the exhibition.

FONDACAO ARPAD SZENES-VIEIRA da SILVA, Praça das Amoreiras, 56/58, 1250-020 Lisbon, PORTUGAL tel : +351 213 880 044/53 http://fasvs.pt/ robin aherne

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USA.

INTUIT FRENCH TOUR

until June 30, 2012 Heaven and Hell, is a collaboration between two creative, practical and very different organizations: Intuit and the Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA).

The two museums will represent both Hell and Heaven respectively and include seven paintings by visionary artist Norbert Kox INTUIT: THE CENTER FOR INTUITIVE AND OUTSIDER ART 756 N Milwaukee Avenue Chicago, IL 60642 tel: 312 243 9088 www.art.org

May 16 – 24, 2012 Paris will serve as the base for Intuit's 9-day tour with day-trips to other cities in the region.

Travellers will gain a greater appreciation for art environments, how they have shaped and continue to influence the world's appreciation of art by artists working outside the cultural mainstream. The tour features visits to several world famous art environments including the Palais Idéal, Maison Picassiette, Musée Tatin and museums such as La Fabuloserie and Halle Saint Pierre as well as guided tours of lesser known treasures. details from INTUIT

laura craig mcnellis

HEAVEN AND HELL

CLOTHES STORY until May 12, 2012 Laura Craig McNellis new exhibition Out of the Closet features life-size paper and paint cut-outs of clothing, which the artist creates using bold forms, expressive colours and pattern.

RICCO MARESCA 529 West 20th Street New York, 10011 tel: 212 627 4819 www.riccomaresca.com

AROUND BACK AT ROCKY’S PLACE

EAST AFRICA

until May 12, 2012 Bound: Hans Bellmer & Unica Zürn shows over fifty works created during the nearly two decades Bellmer and Zürn were lovers, from their meeting at Galerie Rudolph Springer, Berlin in 1953 until Zürn's suicide in 1970.

UBU GALLERY 416 East 59 Street New York, NY 10022 tel: 212 753 4444 www.ubugallery.com

May 10 – September 1, 2012 An introduction to the varied contemporary artwork of East Africa.

The exhibition includes paintings and sculpture by Kenyan artists including Kamau ‘Cartoon’ Joseph, Dickson Kaloki, Shade Kamau, John Kamicha, Kevin Kariuki, and Tanzanian artists Omary Amonde, Mohamed Charinda, George Lilanga and George Thairu.

INDIGO ARTS Crane Arts Building, Suite #104, 1400 North American St., Philadelphia, PA 19122. tel: 215 765 104 www.indigoarts.com

unica zürn

kamau ‘cartoon’ joseph

woody long

May 3 – July 20, 2012 ABRP will showcase their exhibition Give Me That Old-Time Religion, curated by Robin Blan and Tracey Burnette, at the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art. It will feature folk artists Howard Finster, Ned Cartledge, Cornbread and Woodie Long among others AROUND BACK AT ROCKY'S PLACE 3631 Highway 53 East, Dawsonville, GA 30534 tel: 706 265 6030 www.aroundbackatrockysplace.com

UNICA ZÜRN

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MARY WHITFIELD until May 26, 2012 The show God bless our home consists of eleven paintings that capture the artist’s ancestors through scenes of America’s history of slavery.

PHYLLIS STIGLIANO GALLERY 62 Eighth Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11217 tel: 718 638.0659 www.phyllisstigliano.com mary whitfield

norbert kox

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ARTIST OF THE UNIVERSE Johann Feilacher discusses the versitility of Gugging artist August Walla and the lasting impression of his prolific art-making

above August Walla in the old casern. Photographed by his mother, Aloisia Walla, undated (early 1980s), Vintage C-Print.

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ugust Walla was born in Klosterneuburg in 1936, Austria. While his mother Aloisia, a single 40-year-old woman, worked to support Walla, her own mother cared for him until her death when he was six years old. During the Nazi era Walla’s mother raised him as a girl, hoping to spare her son from being drafted into war. Later, Walla became aware of his male identity and, looking back on his childhood, he decided that the Russian occupants must have operated on him and turned him into a ‘Russian boy’.

He therefore used the swastika as a symbol of being female and the hammer and sickle, representing communism or Russianness, as a symbol of being male. Walla never met his father and did not know his identity, but for a long time he believed that his father was Hitler because he heard his voice on the radio and so he sometimes called himself ‘Adolfe’.

Within the middle-class society of Klosterneuburg, mother-and-son Walla were notorious outsiders. Although he was of normal intelligence, Walla was sent to a school for children with learning

difficulties where he did not socialise well or like to learn. His education ended with primary school.

Around this time, at the age of ten, Walla made his first drawings. For many years, Walla lived in a small apartment with his mother when he was not hospitalised: he first spent time in a psychiatric institution when he was 17 years old and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. Also at the age of 17, Walla started writing, and making objects and graffiti.

During the summers, Walla and his mother shared a cottage on the Danube’s floodplain and, after they lost their apartment, in a dilapidated casern (a small apartment in an old military barracks). In 1983, Leo Navratil and I offered them both a room at the Centre for Art Psychotherapy, later the Haus der Kunstler (House of Artists), in Gugging, where they stayed together until her death in 1991. He enjoyed staying there because there were nice bathrooms and he loved bathing; in the summer he bathed in the Danube, but in the winter there were no opportunities for bathing in the casern.

Images courtesy of Art Brut KG unless otherwise stated.

Walla lived and worked in the House of Artists in Gugging until his death in 2001, enjoying a growing reputation as an artist. However, Walla was not just one of the Art Brut artists: he was a multitalented genius.

‘First there was the written word’ is an appropriate phrase for Walla’s world. He rarely spoke other than with his mother. Instead, he communicated by writing on his personal objects, on the streets and on walls. His art works overflow with words, emblems and symbols. They often centred on his self-made polytheistic philosophy: a mysterious world populated with spirits, with the prospect of a far-away ‘UniverseEnd-Land’ that may be the realm of the dead, paradise, limbo or the great nothingness. The Universe-End-Land marks the transition to that successive cosmos. The gods residing there have names such as Kappar (god of ghosts), Seiril, Sararill and Satttus, and are akin to the gods venerated by humans. Walla considered himself a Christian. He invented symbols for the gods and frequently used them in both his drawings and writing.

Throughout his life Walla was continuously writing or drawing. Wherever he went, he always carried coloured pencils and paint (as well as salt, pepper, vinegar and oil). He created around 3,000 drawings and 100 large canvases, and also produced etchings that show his precise, prominent stroke most pronouncedly. It is not known how many graffitis he made on streets, walls, trees and any standing object in his surroundings. He tried to leave his marks everywhere, from the dome in Pisa to high mountain pass in Switzerland.

Walla also wrote innumerable letters: to people he knew personally, as well as to various authorities (such as the mayor and the head of the monastery of Klosterneuburg, and the director of the hospital) as well as to neighbours. His communication with the ’outside’ world was mostly in writing as long as his mother was alive. He lived just three rooms away from my office, but when he wanted to contact me he wrote a letter and sent it to my private address in the next city.

above Reverse of LAND AM, PLANET MERKURIUS (see overleaf ), 1991, mixed media on canvas, 78.7 x 63 ins., 200 x 160 cm.

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FOUND IN TRANSLATION Randy M. Vick recognises the therapeutic role of disability studios above James Hall

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hat are these studios, workshops, centres, and ateliers qualified with some genteel euphemism such as ‘special’ or ‘creative’, or (less often) a more straight-forward ‘disability’ or ‘therapeutic’? This journal frequently features work by artists from such places, yet there has been little investigation within these pages of the fundamental nature and purpose of these studios. Previously in Raw Vision , Sue Steward (1) gave a brief history of the development of what she labelled ‘progressive studios and workshops’, sharing examples found in and out of clinical settings. For over a decade now I have paid visits to various studios in the United States and Europe where artists with disabilities work, and have become a great admirer of their missions and artworks.

I have seen community studios run by both art therapists and artists, and have observed some important differences as well as clearly shared values

and approaches. Almost without exception, I have been politely yet firmly told by the artist facilitators that what was being done was not art therapy.

In 2008, I co-authored a study (2) designed to discern the differences and similarities among the studios I had visited in Europe and a sample of community-based art therapy programs in the United States. This research was based on a 108-item survey addressing program description, services, funding, participant involvement, staff functions and mission. Data from twelve European programs and ten in the United States were compared, and they reflected far more similarities than differences.

Since 2006 I have served as a consultant to a Chicago-based studio for artists with special needs called Project Onward, (3) and in this capacity I experience an ethos demonstrated by the facilitators that would easily be recognised by many of my art therapy colleagues. How can these parallels be explained?

It is interesting to note that while Jean Dubuffet was forming his concept of Art Brut and travelling to psychiatric hospitals collecting art, other artists and teachers were working on the other side of the asylum wall developing a new discipline that came to be called ‘art therapy’. Much of the early thinking in art therapy was shaped by the dominant psychoanalytic theories of the day, including a disease model orientation and emphasis on the interpretation of unconscious material – be it in dreams or drawings.

About the same time, Roger Cardinal’s book coined the term ‘outsider art’, an early compendium of articles was published (4) opening with the essay ‘Art Therapy: Problems of Definition’, which lays out a continuum of art therapy practice that continues to describe the range of approaches in the field. At one end is the art psychotherapy model, which reflects what most members of the general public (including, it seems,

studio facilitators) think of as art therapy. As with verbal psychotherapy, this approach employs an exploratory give-and-take between client and therapist with the goal of achieving psychological insight and beneficial change. At the other end of the continuum is the art as therapy model, which places the benefit in the process of making and de-emphasises verbal exploration of the psychological meaning of the product. This approach, while also originally rooted in psychoanalysis, has expanded to incorporate more humanistic models, which can as readily explain the pioneering efforts in therapeutic studios in hospitals and schools as it can summarise the methods demonstrated in these contemporary communal studios. It is in this historic conjunction of ideas – born of art, ‘madness’, and modernism – that I find clear connections between the worlds of contemporary art therapy and art from the outside.

above left David Jarmon above right Tony Davis below left David Holt below right David Blaisdell

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IN THE GARDEN OF ANTONI GAUDÍ Raw Vision’s Nuala Ernest takes us on a trip to the Catalan capital to uncover precursors of the work of ‘God’s architect’

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n the grounds of an old convent-turned-psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Barcelona, flashes of colour from ceramic-studded, curved benches and the organic-shaped grotto of the Waterfall Cave undulate over the gardens. The makers of these works have been unknown and, until recently, they had been thought to be poorly-made imitations of Antoni Gaudí’s (1852–1926) benches and structures in the Parc Güell. In 2011, an article was published in Sapiens , the Spanish history magazine, by architect David Agulló Galilee and geologist Daniel Barbé Farré which has solved the mystery of the origins of the benches and structures in the hospital grounds. (1) The hospital was founded when, in August 1853, doctor and psychiatrist Antoni Pujadas i Mayans (1812–1881) moved sixteen patients from his established therapeutic steam baths in another part of Barcelona to an abandoned convent, Sant Boi de Llobregat, west of the city. (2) Pujadas’ goal was to change the way that people with mental health problems were treated by providing a house of healing, by way of occupational therapy.

This was extremely progressive at the time, when people with mental health problems were frequently believed to be possessed by evil spirits and were incarcerated, like criminals, with no care or rehabilitation.

By February 1854, Pujadas had acquired both the old convent grounds and garden annex properties, and the psychiatric hospital Sant Boi de

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Llobregat officially opened in August that year. (2) Six years later, in 1860, Pujadas travelled to various countries in Europe as well as Russia, visiting asylums to learn about their treatment methods and establishing relationships with professionals in each country.

His journal, La razón de la sinrazón [The reason of unreason], was printed by the residents at the Sant Boi Hospital as part of their treatment (2,3) and was the first psychiatric journal in Spain, with French psychiatrist August Marie a regular contributor.

In 1903, by which time Frederic Pujadas Estolt had inherited the running of the hospital from the late Antoni Pujadas i Mayans, (1) an English-style garden covered the Parc Sanitari de Sant Joan de Déu in the grounds of the Sant Boi hospital. Later, from 1908, Gaudí was working on land next to the Sant Boi hospital, constructing the crypt of his patron family, the Colònia Güell. Gaudí’s patron, Eusebi Güell (1846–1914), had been linked with the Sant Boi hospital’s management and had temporarily provided housing for cholera patients from the hospital following an outbreak. (3) Through carbon dating, David Agulló Galilee and Daniel Barbé Farré have verified that the benches with their trencadís decoration (a method that Gaudí and Josel Maria Jujol Gibert [1879–1949], his collaborator, are credited with being the first to use) were finished in 1912. The works in the hospital grounds look like scale models of those in the Gaudí-designed Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, Bank Park Güell and Colonia

Notes 1) David Agulló Galilee and Daniel Barbé Farré (2011) El banc de proves de Gaudí [The test bench of Gaudí’], Sapiens, no. 106 (August).

2) Wikipedia, ‘Antoni Pujadas i Mayans’, updated 3rd August 2011.

3) Burgen, Stephen (2011) ‘Gaudí may have used psychiatric hospital to test designs’, The Guardian, 12 August.

4) Kyle Chayka (2011) Did mystical Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi enlist mental patients in an early form of art therapy?, Art Info International Edition, 16 August.

Güell crypt, and it now appears that they were experimental prototypes.

Gaudí is known to have explored the viability of his designs before embarking on their construction and he made an inverted model of the Sagrada Família at the Colònia Güell, saying ‘Without that first trial, I would never have dared adopt the design for the temple’. (1) Agulló and Barbé noted the ambivalence of the architecture in Sant Boi hospital, which demonstrated impressive quality and artistic composition in terms of the complexity and geometry while also appearing to be constructed in a rudimentary and unpolished way. (3) The relative crudeness of the benches and structures in the Sant Boi hospital grounds is because the people who built them were patients of the hospital, encouraged by the resident doctors to improve their physical and emotional health through this creative physical work.

Soon after the benches and Waterfall Cave were completed in the Sant Boi hospital, benches and other structures that are strikingly similar were built in the Parc Güell, in 1914.

The twentieth century was well underway when the self-expression and creativity of people with psychiatric problems were recognised as having psychological, cultural and artistic value and were taken into account. Any such expression or communication, through writing, drawing and other art-making, by patients in

psychiatric institutions were unceremoniously disposed of until around a decade after the construction of the Sant Boi gardens. Then, interest in such output began to gain recognition via Walter Morgenthaler’s Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (A Psychiatric Patient as Artist) in 1921 and Hans Prinzhorn’s influential book Bildnerei der Geisteskranken [Artistry of the Mentally Ill] in 1922.

However, Agulló and Barbé’s new evidence from the Sant Boi hospital grounds demonstrates the early utilisation of the skills of psychiatric patients by ‘God’s architect’, as Gaudí is also known. Gaudí’s actions here show part of the development of a wider awareness of the creativity of marginalised people.

Images of the park grounds all courtesy of Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu.

The park is open to visitors.

Small group tours can be arranged by appointment with David Agulló Galilee.

Parc Sanitari Sant Joan De Déu, C/ Doctor Antoni Pujadas 42, 08830 Sant Boi de Llobregat, España. t: 936 406 50/936 615 208 e: pssjd@pssjd.org www.pssjd.org.

Nuala Ernest is Features Editor at Raw Vision and Assistant Editor at the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, London.

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WÖLFLI’S ‘SOUND PIECES’ John Turner talks to minimalist composer Terry Riley about performing the music of Adolf Wölfli

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dolf Wölfli, a Swiss peasant who suffered from rage and depression, was incarcerated at the Waldau hospital in 1895 until his death in 1930.

While there, he began work on his imaginary autobiography, which consisted of over 25,000 pages of prose text, interwoven with poems, musical compositions, illustrations and collages. Many of the illustrations in the 45 volumes he completed incorporated musical notations in their designs and patterns. Wölfli, it is said, thought of his drawings as musical compositions, or ‘sound pieces’, and signed some of them as ‘composer’. Walter Morgenthaler, a psychiatrist and Wölfi’s primary physician at Waldau, wrote that Wölfli would often make music for hours at a time, alone in his cell. He would roll up a piece of cardboard and use it as a trumpet, rehearsing passages and playing variations on a certain theme in different keys.

While Wölfli is recognised primarily as an artist rather than a composer, at least seven musicians have attempted to translate a few of his indecipherable scores. In 1976, parts of his manuscripts were analysed and performed by Kjell Keller and Peter Streiff, which was later recored by a musical trio and two speakers as the album ‘Adolf Wölfli: Gelesen Und Vertont’. In 1992, Terry Riley formed a small theatre company to play his opera theatre piece titled The Saint Adolf Ring. It was four movements scored for flute, clarinets and saxophone, violin, cello, piano, two percussions and a narrator.

Riley, born in California in 1935, launched what is now known as the Minimalist movement with his groundbreaking classic In C , composed in 1964.

This seminal work provided the conception for a form comprising interlocking repetitive patterns that was to change the course of twentieth-century music and strongly influence the works of Steve Reich, Phillip Glass and John Adams, as well as rock groups such as The Who, Soft Machine, Curved Air, Tangerine Dream and Robert Fripp. His best known album is ‘A Rainbow In Curved Air’, which incorporated multilayer, polymeric, brightlyorchestrated eastern-flavoured improvisation that later set the stage for the New Age Movement.

Before he performed his homage to Wölfli at the San Francisco War Memorial in 1992, I had the opportunity to ask him a few questions about the piece.

‘RILEY’S MINIMALIST MOVEMENT CHANGED THE COURSE OF 20TH CENTURY MUSIC’

opposite page Die Meer und Insel Ringe.

Staab Riisen Fontaine in Skt. Adolf Kuss Riisen Meer, 1914, pencil and coloured pencil on paper, 39.6 x 28.3/28.5 ins, 100.7 x 71.8/72.4 cm. above In einer Pariser Kunst Ausstellung, 1915, pencil, coloured pencil and collage on newspaper, 28.3 x 39.4 ins., 72.0 x 100.0 cm. overleaf Santta Maria Burg Riesen Traube: 100 Unitif Zohrn Tonnen schwer, 1915, pencil and coloured pencil on newspaper, 28.3/28.7 x 39.6 ins., 72.0/72.8 x 100.5 cm.

When did you first see the drawings of Adolf Wölfli?

It was at the Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland, in 1986 or 1987. They were having a show of Paul Klee’s work and Wölfli’s, comparing the two [both the Klee and the Wölfli collections reside there]. About 60 or 70 drawings were on the wall. The work had such a visual impact on me that I never forgot it.

What was it about his work that interested you?

It was the kind of physical energy that it generated. It just came off the page at you. It’s a curious assault on your imagination. I was really struck by just the beauty of the organisation and the beautiful musical

Images of Adolf Wölfli’s works courtesy of the Adolf Wölfli Foundation, Museum of Fine Art, Bern, Switzerland.

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LAST UNIVERSAL MAN Barbara Paca spent seven years interviewing an ‘eccentric’ artist who travelled from rags to riches and back again above Changing Man, ca. 1985, oil, 9 x 10 ins., 22.7 x 25.4 cm.

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orking in isolation as an artist and writer, Francis (‘Frank’) Archibald Wentworth Walter (1926–2009) is one of Antigua’s unrecognised creative talents. As an unmedicated schizophrenic, Walter was misunderstood by many and regarded by fellow islanders as either a prophet or a fool. According to Brooke Anderson, former AFAM Curator and current Deputy Director for Curatorial Planning at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Walter’s artistic contribution marks the third point on a bizarre geographic triangle of international outsider

artists: Swiss Adolf Wölfli, American Henry Darger and Caribbean Frank Walter.

Descending from prominent plantation owners and their slaves created a deep divide and was part of Walter’s ironic fate. Recognised as one of Antigua’s founding families, the Walters had powerful plantation-owning roots extending into the eighteenth century. Appropriately, his work deals largely with race, class and social identity (during the seven-year period in which I interviewed Walter, he believed he was white).

above left Frank Walter, 2008. above right Frank Walter (photographic self-portrait), ca. 1962, 5 x 8 ins., 12.7 x 20.3 cm. below left Detail from Antiguan Fisherman Confronted by the Grand Tourist Yacht (from Self-portrait series), ca. 1985, acrylic, 9 x 4 ins., 22.7 x 10.2 cm. below right Detail from Carnival in Antigua (from Social Commentary series), ca. 1985, oils, 18 x 10 ins., 45.7 x 25.4 cm.

Frank Walter attended the Antiguan Grammar School as part of an experiment in which black children mixed and studied as equals with wealthy white WWII British refugees. Curiously regarded as a wunderkind by his white headmaster, Walter’s talents in foreign language, history and science were a source of fascination, and his eccentricities, notable even in childhood, were largely ignored. Walter’s early years were idyllic and spent making toys, writing poems, and memorising the Latin names of flora and fauna. He also learned the Classics and old Antiguan folktales from his elders, with whom he shared a strong bond. Most of his peers found him intimidating or dismissed him for his strongly non-conformist tendencies; however, other black and white elites, most of whom were related to him, enjoyed his unique wit and arresting paternal kindness.

Frank Walter was the first person of colour to break through the race barrier in Antigua in 1948. At the tender age of 22 he was promoted to the title of manager, leading the way for other Caribbean men by working as an equal at the Antiguan Sugar Syndicate.

Racial tensions were beginning to arise between the white owners and black labourers, and Walter was praised as the answer to all labour problems by giving hope to the underclass, being equally celebrated by

Antiguan captains of industry as the only person who could garner enthusiasm among the field workers. For five years, Walter ran massive sugar plantations and, rallying support from the staff, he broke all previous sugar production records between 1948 and 1953.

After the harvest of 1953, Walter was offered a lucrative position to manage the entire Antiguan Syndicate. He rejected the opportunity, opting for an industrial Grand Tour of Europe and Britain in an attempt to study new technology abroad and bring it back to his island. Traveling from Antigua to London with his glamourous relation, Eileen Gallewey, who was on her way to receive a degree in law from London’s prestigious Grey’s Inn, he was paralysed by his unrequited love for her. Upon arriving with Eileen in London, Walter was rejected by his ‘posh’ Uncle Carl Walter, who escorted his beautiful passing-for-white relation, Eileen, to his home, leaving Frank standing in Tottenham Court Road. Carl Walter ran the chic Caribbean Club in the heart of Piccadilly; a discreet meeting place for badly behaved aristocrats and artists.

He was elegant, highly superficial and void of appreciation for the intricacies of Frank’s complex mind.

While Gallewey was celebrated as one of the first women barristers and eventually judge of colour from Antigua, Walter’s future prospects sharply declined. Treated as a gentleman of great intellect in

‘WALTER’S PAINTINGS ALONE COMPRISE 11 CATEGORIES’

Images courtesy of Sean Donnola and the Francis Walter Archive.

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STORIES OF WIT AND IRONY Ron Schira introduces the singular paintings of Jim Bloom

above Jim Bloom, Change Your Own Toner Laura, 2008, mixed media on cardboard, 24 x 18 ins., 61 x 45.7 cm, courtesy of Diane Hill.

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‘C

hange your own toner, Laura’, snaps an imperious woman to her co-worker as the other woman, eyes wide, recoils from the outburst. For this combination collage-painting by self-taught Jim Bloom, two women are in work attire, obviously for an office setting, but one woman’s attitude is less than civilised and terribly rivalrous over who changes the copier ink, suggesting that either some history exists between the two or somebody is just having a bad day. In any circumstance, why is this

emotional flare up a topic for art? It seems more fitting for a soap opera or a made-for-television movie than it is here, on a pristine gallery wall.

Yet this is but one example of any number of artworks by Jim Bloom, a 44-year-old Allentown, PA-born artist who currently lives in San Francisco.

Bloom is a storyteller. He sports a spontaneous expressionist language and documents an all too common sense of personal and occasionally not so pleasant interaction among people that work, live or

above Momma had a Baby and its Head Popped Off, 2010, mixed media on cardboard box, 31 x 43 x 9 ins., 79 x 109 x 23 cm, courtesy Outsider Folk Art Gallery, Reading, PA. left Untitled (Man on a Bicycle), 2010, mixed media on canvas, 53 x 85 ins., 135 x 216 cm., Private Collection, Wyomissing, PA.

Ron Schira is an independent artist, arts writer and curator with numerous exhibits of both his own artwork and others.

Since 1995 he has been the leading art critic for the Reading Eagle newspaper with over 750 articles published.

deal with each other under normal circumstances. Utilising somewhat impoverished materials, his paintings and collages are choice admixtures of cardboard, house paint, discarded movie posters, crayons and charcoal. He prefers the roughened corrugated texture of cardboard and the lacy fragility of newspaper to the more durable surface of canvas or linen, but is not averse to using them if they are available or affordable.

His style and method is unplanned, yet altogether intuitive, gutsy and urgent. The work begs correlations and incurs influences from contemporary icons such as Jean-Michel Basquiat

for his raw approach and use of text and, then also to Red Grooms for cut-out forms and raised surfaces. In later works one may recognise similarities or affinities to the colouration and all-over style of an early Willem de Kooning because Bloom evenly distributes his sweeping line about the surface while placing colours in just the right spots. Looking at a work like People in Motion, for instance, a single upright pole suggests that it takes place in a subway train, but compositionally the passengers coalesce into one mass of suggested form and colour. The artist is an agoraphobic with an innate fear of crowds. Consequently he

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left Melody for the Pugs, coloured pencil and graphite on paper, 2009, 9 x 6.5 ins., 22.8 x 16.5 cm, courtesy Evelyn S. Meyer. opposite Believable Households, 2010, coloured pencil and graphite on paper, 18 x 15 ins., 45.7 x 38.1 cm, courtesy John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection.

A NEST FOR DREAMING, A SHELTER FOR IMAGINING Leslie Umberger introduces a rare talent, whose creative work is a reflection on a life less than ordinary

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he scenes of Iowa artist Timothy Wehrle teem, their colour and patterning evoking illuminated manuscripts, Persian miniatures, comic books, sacred mandalas, crazy quilts, psychedelic album covers and the kaleidoscopic drawings of Adolph Wölfli: yet his style and subjects remain uniquely his own. Wehrle eschewed artistic training, believing that it would quash a pure and bountiful vision.

Exploring the dynamics and pitfalls of contemporary culture, Wehrle’s imagery deftly fuses an aura of charm with an undercurrent of admonition; it conveys a complex vision of humanity and poses some tough questions about civilised existence. Writer and gallerist Randall Morris has observed, ‘[Wehrle’s] drawings poetically unwrap the concept of a Cold War of the soul in a new world where the artist-citizen is

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WHO’S AFRAID OF OUTSIDER ART? Colin Rhodes examines some recent issues in the field of outsider art

‘A song bawled out by a girl scrubbing the stairs knocks me over much more than an erudite cantata.

To each his own. I like the little. I also like the embryonic, the ill-fashioned, the imperfect, the mixed. I prefer raw diamonds, in their gangue. And with all their defects’. (1) Jean Dubuffet (1945)

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hen I was very small I used to get told off for staring at people. The truth is I was staring at everything. I still do. It’s just not so obvious now.

By the time we’re not very old, most of us, though, look away more than we actually look. We stop pointing.

We stop asking questions.

Avoidance becomes a function of etiquette, of socialisation.

Previously insatiable curiosity is tempered and the sense of wonder is domesticated.

Naïveté gives way to knowing.

The same goes for

left José dos Santos, detail from Woman in Red Coat (detail), n.d., mixed media.

STOARC, University of Sydney. opposite above Mary T. Smith, detail from four untitled paintings, n.d., paint on plywood. Paul Hoban, Adelaide. opposite below Jungle Phillips, Klickee Tuck, 2007, oil and varnish on found wood, 12.2 x 23.6 ins., 31 x 60 cm. Private Collection.

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attending to art. On the whole, we come into the gallery armed with our received opinions and learned cultural baggage. Too often exhibition visitors spend more time huddled around explanatory wall texts and peering at labels than they do with the art itself.

They are looking, of course, for context. For guidance on how to look. And they are looking for reassurance that the artists who created the work have a right to be shown in such spaces especially when the art is difficult.

The art I am concerned with here is, in its most important ways, no different to any other. Drawings by Dan Miller and Joseph Yoakum, sculpture by José dos Santos, paintings

by Jungle Phillips and Mary T. Smith, and prints

by Anthony Mannix, for example, clearly belong to the family of visual art. Yet their work, and that of the others included in the pages of Raw Vision , has on the whole been fenced off, redefined, and contained in discourses of collecting and criticism that presume its essential difference to ‘mainstream’ art. In the USA the term ‘self-taught’ has long been in general use as an umbrella descriptor, (2) whilst in Paris in the 1940s, the French artist Jean Dubuffet invented a new category that he called Art Brut, to separate certain types of art emphatically from the art mainstream. This set a trend in Europe for a flurry of naming attempts and internal debates that at times have threatened to obscure the art itself.

One of the terms that has stuck in spite of being contentious, or perhaps because it is contentious, is ‘Outsider Art’.

Much Outsider Art reveals experience of the world that is often radically different to that of the broader audience for the work – and especially for artworld sophisticates who form its most vocal audience.

Aesthetics helps to muddy the waters here, because it is often the strange or singular look of works like those of Dos Santos or Henry Darger that attracts our attention in the first place. And it is not just the unusual ways in which artists deal with form, but often also their unexpected use of materials and idiosyncratic construction that draws the eye, as in Dos Santos’ mixture of branches, trash, house-paint and reclaimed clothing. It is also, almost inevitably, the evidence that a singularly visionary perception is at work, as in Darger’s construction of a complex alternative reality, or Yoakum’s visionary unveiling of a more fundamental nature. In sociological terms people are often marginalised through difference. And in cultures that are fundamentally materialist and privilege rationality, ‘special insight’ and even naïveté, after a certain age, tend to be regarded not only as questionable, but also as essentially threatening qualities.

There are artists – like Mannix, Yoakum and Phillips – who in different ways seemingly have access to ‘other’ places, enjoying or enduring the experience of realities that are markedly different to the one

that’s commonly acknowledged by social consensus. And because the consensus is held together as much by what is excluded as included, such people can find themselves ostracised by what I’ll call the ‘visionary’ nature of their perception. However, anyone interested in the possibility of descriptions of consciousness as being more than just a by-product of mechanistic processes will be open to the possibility of seeing types of vision that are not merely practical as both legitimate and potentially insightful. Rather than categorising, we should attend to the particularities of an artist’s vision.

In ‘visionary’ works I don’t think we are ever asked, as viewers, to mistake the representation for the ‘reality’, for however realistic the artist’s intent might be, none except perhaps the most deluded would regard their works as more than representation; as interpretative, communicating vessels. When Yoakum presents an image of a landscape, or George Widener one of a city, the question is partly about what it is that is being represented. Both are, in a very real way, reporting back from another place – in Widener’s case, the future, and in Yoakum’s, a more profound manifestation of the real. In addition, simply by being self-taught, as are all the artists mentioned here, individuals are less likely to reflect the prevailing ‘mainstream’ conventions their day (which is not a judgement call, but merely an observation). Add to this further issues that can add to the effect of distancing self-taught artists from the conventional artworld – which might variously include a lack of formal education, poverty, incarceration in jail or psychiatric hospital, and trauma – and the marvel is not so much the idiosyncrasy or eccentricity of style in Outsider Art, but the sheer inventiveness that has been brought into play over time to communicate so strongly in spite of everything.

Outsider Art is a field that has grown, usually in fits and starts, over the last hundred years or so, giving it the appearance nowadays of a transnational and transhistorical tendency descriptor (like romanticism or expressionism), rather than of a movement shaped by self-conscious practices and philosophies, as in the case of things like Cubism, Surrealism, Fluxus, or Pop. Outsider Art’s scope has been defined largely by collectors, dealers, mainstream artists like Dubuffet and Arnulf Rainer and, occasionally, psychiatrists, all of whom were interested in creative production that lay beyond even the ‘bohemian’ or ‘underground’ scenes so familiar in late modernist counterculture.

Art historians and critics came late and only sporadically to the field. Curators likewise. This was largely a result of the anti-academic and antiinstitutional views of many of Outsider Art’s foundational supporters and current apologists.

Though it has been around loosely as a concept for almost a century, the term ‘outsider’

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Joe Coleman, Minnie Evans, Seillé, Peploe, Papa, Canadian Environments.

La Cathedral, Hauser, Norbert Kox, Zemankova, Anita Roddick, Laffoley.

Gugging, Art & Psychiatry, Traylor, M-J Gil, De Stadshof, Margaret’s Grocery.

Salvation Mountain, Yoakum, Dos Santos, Scottish Outsiders, Bartlett.

Ossorio, Irish Naïves, Nick Blinko, Ray Materson, Le Carré Galimard.

Adolf Wölfli, Art Cars Zeldis, Albert Louden, Cellblock Visions.

Sudduth Burgess Dulaney, St EOM, Mouly, Dulaney, Mr Eccles, SPACES.

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Rio Museum, Voodoo,Carvers of Poland, Naïves of Taiwan, E. James.

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Ben Wilson, Inner Architecture, Fasanella, Phase 2, Fryar, Gordon’s Patio.

Roger Cardinal Bentivegna, La Tiniaia,Grgich, Collis, Ray Morris.

Alex Grey, Lacemaker, Luna Rossa, Sekulic, Uddin, Mary Nohl.

27 Art & Madness, Lee Godie, Palace Depression, Saban, Benavides.

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William Thomas Thompson, Alfred Wallis, Johnny Meah, Michael Rapanakis.

Dr. Leo Navratil, Ilija Bosilj, Simon Sparrow, Melvin Way, Pradeep Kumar.

Nek Chand, Finster, Valton Tyler, LaraGomez, P.Humphrey, War Rugs, Lonné.

Van Genk, Purvis Young, Marcel Storr, RA Miller, Madge Gill, Makiki

Watts Towers, Bessy Harvey, Marginalia, F. Monchâtre, Tree Circus.

Palais Idéal, J. Scott, Charles Russell Donald Pass, Outsider portraits.

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Toraja Death Figures, Chauvin Sculptures Josef Wittlich, Nigerian Sculpture

65 Speller, Norbert Kox, Haiti street art BF Perkins Damian Michaels

Maura Holden, Clarence Schmidt R.A. Miller, Hans Krüsi, Silvio Barile

66 Philly/K8, Sefolosha, Palmer, Belardinelli, Ludwiczac, Oscar’s sketchbook.

57 Burning Man, Matsumoto, Nicholas Herrera, William Fields

67 Renaldo Kuhler, Sonabai, Outsider Films, Giov Bosco, Finster/Ginsberg

58 Lobonov, Zindato, JB Murray, Anthony Jadunath, Seymour Rosen.

68 Paul Amar, Phyllis Kind, D M Diaz, W Dawson, Joe Minter, Survivors, Martindale

59 Emery Blagdon, ZB Armstrong, Bali, Imppu (Finland), Mari Newman.

69 Colin McKenzie, Eugene Andolsek, Surrealism/Madness, INSITA, Churchill D

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Scottie Wilson, Gavin Bennett, Bispo Do Rosario, Art Behind Bars

von Bruenchenhein, Imagists, Monsiel, McKesson, Mabussa, Vahan Poladian.

Picassiette, Benefiel, Vodou, Dellscahu, Mediumistic, Van Genk.

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Finnish Outsiders, Sylvain Fusco, Roy Ferdinand

Billy Lemming, Huichol, Australian Outsiders, Art of the Homeless.

Mary Proctor, Carlo Zinelli, Dernier Cri, Art Brut, Jersey Shell Garden.

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William Hawkins, Expressionism and Insanity, Giovanni Battista Podesta

Art Brut Dubuffet, Art Cars, Definitions, Lonnie Holley, Abbé Fouré, Ray Morris.

Y5/P5, Chomo, Arning, Leonov, Kaiser, The Tarot Garden, Gene Merritt.

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Theo, Jane-in- Jane Sobel, Lanning Garden

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Thornton Dial, Richard Greaves, Martha Grunenwaldt

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Hung Tung, Photography, Bernard Schatz, Jessie Montes

60 Tom Duncan, Movie Posters, Spanish Sites, Rosa Zharkikh.

70 Electric Pencil, Gugging, JJ Cromer River Plate Voodoo

Darger, R/stone Cowboy, Thévoz: Chiaroscuro, Pearl Blauvelt, Bressse

49 Mammi Wata, Fred Ressler, Mary Whitfield, Isaiah Zagar

61 Sam Doyle, Myrtice West, Lost In Time, Romanenkov

71 Mario Mesa, Tim Lewis, Joel Lorand, Chelo Amezcua, Clayton Bailey

Eli Jah, Singleton, Marie-Rose Lortet, Ross Brodar, Catalan site.

50 Hamtramck Disney, Roger Cardinal, Ken Grimes, Criminal Tattoos

62 S.L. Jones, Kevin Duffy, Frank Jones, Charles Steffen

72 Masao Obata, Takeshi Shuji, Henriette Zéphir, John Toney, Edward Adamson

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Mary T Smith, de Villiers, Matt Lamb, Old Curiosity Shop, Mithila Painters.

Robert Tatin, N-M Rowe, McQuirk, Denise Allen, Freddie Brice.

41 G. Aiken, Junkerhaus, Kurt Haas, P Lancaster, Minnie Evans.

51 August Natterer, New Gugging, George Widener, Paul Hefti

63 Howard Finster, Michel Nedjar, James H Jennings, Rosemarie Koczy

73 Dalton Ghetti, Art & Disability, Danielle Jacqui, Andrei Palmer, Mingering Mike

42 Boix-Vives, Fred Smith, Rosa Zharkikh, Donald Mitchell

52 Ivan Rabuzin, Czech Art Brut, Sunnyslope , Prophet Blackmon

64 Joe Coleman, Harald Stoffers, Elis F. Stenman

74 Dalton Ghetti, Art & Disability, Danielle Jacqui, Andrei Palmer, Mingering Mike