RAWVISION105 SPRING 2020
EDITOR John Maizels DIRECTORS Henry Boxer, Robert Greenberg, Audrey Heckler, Rebecca Hoffberger, Frank Maresca, Marilyn Oshman, Richard Rosenthal, Bob Roth ART EDITOR Maggie Jones Maizels SENIOR EDITOR Edward M. Gómez FEATURES EDITOR Nuala Ernest ASSOCIATE EDITOR Natasha Jaeger ASSISTANT EDITOR Mariella Landolfi DESIGN Jack Eden PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Aoife Dunphy ACCOUNTS MANAGER Judith Edwards SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER Suzy Daniels CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Michael Bonesteel, Jenifer P. Borum, Ted Degener, Jo Farb Hernandez, Tom Patterson, Colin Rhodes, Charles Russell, Daniel Wojcik PUBLISHED by Raw Vision Ltd Letchmore Heath WD25 8LN, UK tel +44 (0)1923 853175 email info@rawvision.com website www.rawvision.com
ISSN 0955-1182
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RAW NEWS Outsider events and exhibitions around the world
ELIJAH PIERCE The story of one of America’s foremost folk carvers
CHARLES WILLIAMS Atlanta exhibition of this late artist’s mixed media creations
TED DEGENER PORTRAITS Self-taught artists across the US caught on camera
MODEL VILLAGE John Usher’s recreation of his Lake District birthplace
MT LIGGETT Metal sculptures with an irreverent edge in a Kansas town
BABAHOUM Simple Moroccan images, rich in atmosphere and feeling
TONY “BRIGHT” DAVIS Vivid scenes of a previous life in Chicago’s underworld
THE CAVES OF SPHAEROS Inside a crypt beneath the streets of Paris
DR CHARLES SMITH The sculptures of a Vietnam veteran, activist and minister
SAMANEH ATEF Iranian artist depicts the many guises of persecuted women
RAW REVIEWS Worldwide exhibitions and events
GALLERY & MUSEUM GUIDE Details of notable international venues
COVER IMAGE: Elijah Pierce, Crucifixion, mid 1930s Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
Raw Vision (ISSN 0955-1182) March 2020 is published quarterly (March, June, September, December) by Raw Vision Ltd, PO Box 44, Watford WD25 8LN, UK, and distributed in the USA by UKP Worldwide, 3390 Rand Road, South Plainfield, NJ 07080. Periodicals postage paid at South Plainfield, NJ. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Raw Vision c/o 3390 Rand Road, South Plainfield, NJ 07080, and additional mailing offices.
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.
MEDAILLE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS
BEST DESIGN MEDIA AWARD
AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM VISIONARY AWARD
WORLD’S BEST ART MAGAZINE
UTNE INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD
R AW N E W S
AUSTRALIA, AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, BRITAIN
DR GUISLAIN
ARTS PROJECT AUSTRALIA
MEDIUMISTIC ART
THE GALLERY OF EVERYTHING
Mar 26 – Jun 14
Mar 22 – Apr 26
until Dec 31
Drawing Room, in collaboration with Hayward Gallery Touring, presents Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist as Medium, a major exhibition exploring drawings produced or influenced by the mediumistic channelling of external forces. Featured artists include Madge Gill, Georgiana Houghton and Augustin Lesage. DRAWING ROOM 1–27 Rodney Place, London, SE17 1PP, UK www.drawingroom.org.uk
GUGGING
OUTSIDE IN CALL OUT
until Apr 9
by Apr 13
Ian Bruin
Misleidys Castillo Pedroso
galerie gugging presents powerful female – delicate male, with works by Misleidys Castillo Pedroso and Oswald Tschirtner. Then, at museum gugging until September 27, oswald tschirtner.! it’s all about balance marks what would have been Tschirtner’s 100th birthday. GALERIE AND MUSEUM GUGGING Am Campus 2, A-3400 Maria Gugging, AUSTRIA galeriegugging.com, museumgugging.at 4
PROJECT ABILITY
Joanna Simpson
Mar 12 – May 29 and until Sep 27
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Project Ability presents the work of five artists with a disability living in Scotland. PROJECT ABILITY GALLERY, First Floor, Trongate 103, Glasgow, G1 5HD, UK project-ability.co.uk
Two Outside In artists will be awarded $1000 and the chance to have their work exhibited at Fabrica, Brighton, in July 2020. The theme is large and miniature artworks. Outside In artists are invited to submit works that fit into either of these two categories by the deadline of April 13. outsidein.org.uk
Terry Williams
Unhinged: On Jitterbugs, Melancholics and Mad-Doctors stresses the importance of mental wellbeing in an increasingly complex society. MUSEUM DR GUISLAIN Jozef Guislainstraat 43, 9000 Ghent, BELGIUM museumdrguislain.be
Available for sale for the first time in the UK, The Deep presents the still-life drawings and pastels of Julian Martin, together with the figurative and objective soft sculptures of Terry Williams. Both artists are from the Arts Project Australia studio in Melbourne. THE GALLERY OF EVERYTHING 4 Chiltern St, Marylebone, London W1U 7PS, UK www.gallevery.com
OTHER TRANSMISSIONS until Jun 14
Madge Gill
3×3 presents three solo shows by Arts Project Australia studio emerging artists: James MacSporran, Samraing Chea and Rebecca Scibilia. ARTS PROJECT AUSTRALIA 24 High St, Northcote VIC 3070, AUSTRALIA artsproject.org.au
Georgiana Houghton
Samraing Chea
Wolfgang Hueber
Mar 21 – Apr 24
Other Transmissions: Conversations with Outsider Art brings together the work of six artists responding to the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection at the Whitworth. The residency project was led by Venture Arts, in collaboration with the Whitworth and Castlefield Gallery. The artists have selected works from the MKOAC to display alongside their own work. Featured outsider artists include Madge Gill, Valerie Potter, Scottie Wilson, Michel Nedjar and Ben Wilson. THE WHITWORTH, The University of Manchester Oxford Road, Manchester, M15 6ER, UK www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk
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NETHERLANDS, SLOVENIA, SPAIN, SWITZERLAND
MUSEUM IM LAGERHAUS
Mar 14 – May 16
Mar 23 – Jul 5
Seth Prime
Willem van Genk: WOEST at the Outsider Art Museum has been extended until May 3. The show will then travel to the Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne, and the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. OUTSIDER ART MUSEUM, Hermitage Amsterdam Amstel 51, 1018 DR Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS www.outsiderartmuseum.nl
Museum im Lagerhaus presents parallel exhibitions Linda Naeff – Matricule II, with works by the French self-taught artist, and ÜberMütter, which features works by Swiss selftaught artist Maria Rolly. MUSEUM IM LAGERHAUS Davidstrasse 44, 9000 St. Gallen, SWITZERLAND www.museumimlagerhaus.ch
COLLECTION DE L’ART BRUT
until May 31
Mar 13 – Aug 30
Josefa Tolrà
Lee Godie
TOLRA AND BROSSA
until May 3
Marc Bourlier
MARC BOURLIER
Fifty driftwood sculptures by Marc Bourlier will be shown through May 3. TREBNJE GALLERY OF NAIVE ARTISTS, Goliev trg 1, 8210 Trebnje, SLOVENIA 8
Dutch Surrealist painter Paul Klemann joins two outsider artists of his choice: Dutch artist Karhang Mui and Australian artist Seth Prime. GALERIE HAMER, Leliegracht 38 – NL 1015 DH Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS. galeriehamer.nl
Linda Naeff
GALERIE HAMER
until May 3
Willem van Genk
WILLEM VAN GENK: WOEST
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La Mèdium i el Poeta explores the works and the creative processes of Josefa Tolrà and Joan Brossa. FUNDACIÓ JOAN BROSSA C/ La Seca, 2, baixos, 08003 Barcelona, SPAIN www.fundaciojoanbrossa.cat
Organised by Intuit, The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago Calling is a chance to rediscover the work of Henry Darger alongside five other self-taught Chicagoans working in the same naive vein: Lee Godie, Mr. Imagination, Pauline Simon, Wesley Willis and Joseph E Yoakum. COLLECTION DE L'ART BRUT Avenue des Bergières 11 CH – 1004 Lausanne, SWITZERLAND www.artbrut.ch
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USA
ART OF SOUTHERN WOMEN
ERIC WRIGHT
until May 24
INTUIT until Sep 7
From Her Innermost Self: Visionary Art of Southern Women showcases more than 30 mixed-media pieces by self-taught artists, including Minnie Evans, Bessie Harvey, Clementine Hunter, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Mary Proctor and Mary Frances Whitfield. JULE COLLINS SMITH MUSEUM OF FINE ART Auburn University, 901 South College Street, Auburn, AL 36849. www.jcsm.auburn.edu
CAVIN MORRIS
Eric Wright’s exhibition Ohio Lands will explore biblical ideas and landscapes mixed with memories of landscapes from his childhood. RIVER HOUSE ARTS 425 Jefferson, Toledo, OH 43604 riverhousearts.com
Adolf Wölfli
Mary Frances Whitfield
Eric Wright
May 15 – Jun 20
With more than 50 artworks from artists including Martín Ramírez, George Widener, Lee Godie, James Castle and more, Outsider Art: The Collection of Victor F Keen spans both gallery spaces at Intuit. INTUIT: THE CENTER FOR INTUITIVE AND OUTSIDER ART, 756 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL 60642. www.art.org
RICCO/MARESCA GALLERY
FOUNTAIN HOUSE GALLERY
Apr – Jul 3
Apr 16 – May 27
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CT McClusky
Spiritual Abstraction is a group exhibition that will explore the idea of abstraction in spiritual and mediumistic works. CAVIN-MORRIS GALLERY, 210 Eleventh Avenue, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001 cavinmorris.com
Sasha P.W. and Don’aë Tate
Solange Knopf
Apr 30 – Jun 6
From April 9 through May 23, Rosie Camanga: Flash! features Camanga’s tattoo flash art. From May 28 through July 3, CT McClusky: Circus Surreal presents nostalgic and surreal vignettes from McClusky’s circus life. RICCO/MARESCA GALLERY 529 W. 20th St, New York, NY 10011 www.riccomaresca.com
Sasha PW and Don’aë Tate present works of “organised chaos”, incorporating language and shapes, and conveying the power of transcendence over their mental illness. FOUNTAIN HOUSE GALLERY 702 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY 10019 www.fountainhousegallery.org
OBEYING AND LIVING Barber, preacher, husband, artist – Elijah Pierce led a full life built on faith, love and a prodigious talent for woodcarving MARGARET DAY ALLEN
Obey God and Live, 1956, paint, glitter and marker pen on wood, 29 x 13 in. / 74 x 33 cm, Columbus Museum of Art
When Elijah Pierce was “discovered” by the art world in the 1970s, he was already well known as a woodcarver, preacher and barber in his African-American community in Columbus, Ohio. He had a barbershop only three blocks away from the Columbus Museum of Art (the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, at the time). He cut hair in the main part of the shop, and in the back was a room in which he worked on his woodcarvings while waiting for customers. This room became an art gallery where his creations were displayed and sometimes sold. Those who showed an interest in his work were invited into the gallery where Pierce would describe the meaning of each religious carving. As associate pastor at the Gay (Street) Tabernacle Baptist Church (now the Tabernacle Baptist Church), he often gave sermons that he illustrated with his woodcarvings and, at the end, he would present someone in the congregation with a small carving that he had made especially for them. Pierce was content with his status as an artist within his own segregated community. However, the wider world was changing. In the 1960s and 1970s, the civil rights movement was breaking down cultural barriers, and many Americans were searching for a new kind of art, one that spoke directly to them about the American experience. Many collectors and trained artists saw that authenticity in folk art. In 1970, Boris Gruenwald, a Yugoslavian graduate art student from The Ohio State
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University (OSU) – which was near to the barbershop – met Pierce and saw his woodcarvings. Convinced that they deserved a wider audience, Gruenwald began bringing other OSU students and faculty members to see the work. In 1971, Gruenwald arranged for Pierce’s art to be displayed at the university’s art gallery, then, in 1972, for it to be shown in New York City. He also entered the work into “Navi ’73”, an exhibition of the International Meeting of Naïve Art in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. That same year, Carolyn Jones Allport, a graduate student doing educational outreach at the Columbus Museum of Art, organised an exhibition of Pierce’s work. She had been introduced to the artist by Gruenwald. “On that first visit, I, too, fell under Mr Pierce’s spell,” she later wrote. To promote the exhibition, she enlisted the help of a local television station which broadcast a special programme about Pierce and his art. The exhibition was one of the most popular in the museum’s history. From that point, Pierce’s fame grew quickly, with numerous museums collecting and exhibiting his creations. Meanwhile, many of the collectors, students and artists who visited him during this time described him as a mentor and spiritual guide. He often told visitors, “Your life is a book... every day, you write a page”. Pierce’s early years did not foretell a future as a renowned artist. He was born on March 5, 1892, on a plantation in Baldwyn, Mississippi, the second youngest
Untitled (God is Our Refuge), 1960, paint and glitter on wood, 18 x 14.5 in. / 45.5 x 37 cm, The Museum of Everything
child of Richard Pierce, a former slave, and Nellie Wallace Pierce, both devout Baptists. Pierce entered the world with a “veil” or membrane over his face which, according to local folk tradition, signified that the child would have psychic powers. His mother named him Elijah after the Old Testament prophet. When he was six or seven years old, his father gave him a pocket knife, and young Pierce began carving small animals and walking canes under the supervision of an uncle. Pierce knew from a young age that he did not want to work on the plantation alongside his family; but, at that time and in that place, there were few options for a young, black man. As a teenager, he began working for a local barber, one of the few jobs open to him, as white barbers would not cut the hair of black people. It was also an occupation that suited Pierce as it gave him
the freedom to take time off when he wanted to. He was a talented, sought-after baseball player and would often travel to African-American games in the surrounding communities. On one occasion, in about 1912, he went to play in Tupelo, Mississippi, and while there had a shocking and deeply affecting experience. That day – July 4 – a white man had been murdered and Pierce was mistaken for the killer. The sheriff intervened as a lynch mob gathered and, determining that Pierce was innocent, he released him and advised him to leave town quickly. Pierce did so, literally fleeing for his life. He would later depict that terrifying encounter in his carving Elijah Escapes the Mob. In 1914, Pierce married Zettie Palm, and the following year the couple had a son, Willie. But tragedy was around the corner; Zettie soon fell ill and died, and
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"Your life is a book...
Elijah Escapes the Mob, 1950s, paint on wood, 28.5 x 27.5 x 1 in. / 72 x 70 x 2.5 cm, Columbus Museum of Art
two years after that Pierce’s father also passed away. Pierce and his mother found comfort in reading The Bible together every night. It was during one of these sessions, in 1919, that Pierce had what he felt was a religious conversion experience. That particular evening, he was more interested in looking through the latest Sears Roebuck shopping catalogue than he was in studying the Scriptures. When he picked up the catalogue, he immediately fell from his chair, conscious but unable to move or speak. He was laid on a bed, with relatives and neighbours gathered around, all thinking he was dead. Pierce later said that, while in this state, he heard God saying to him, “Obey and live”. He frequently
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described this experience as being touched by God’s hand in a rebuke for his secular desires and maintained that, as soon as he submitted to God’s will, he was restored to good health. It was this sequence of events that later provided Pierce with the inspiration for his carving Obey God and Live. Soon after this incident, Pierce left home to look for opportunities in the north of the US, a widespread practice among African-Americans in the twentieth century that came to be known as the Great Migration. From 1919 to 1923, he moved from one town to another, finding short-term work with railroad construction crews, and occasionally going home to
...every day, you write a page."
Slavery Time, 1973, paint and glitter on wood, 25.5 x 23.5 in. / 65 x 60 cm, Fleisher / Ollman
visit his family in between jobs. During this time, he enjoyed the pleasures of drinking, dancing and women, but he also felt an obligation to preach. He was issued a preacher’s licence by the Mount Zion Baptist Church in his hometown in 1920, but continued to resist this calling. He later compared himself to the biblical prophet Jonah, who fled from God’s calling only to be swallowed by a giant fish. While working in Danville, Illinois, in 1923, Pierce met his second wife, Cornelia Houeston. They moved to her hometown of Columbus, where he worked in local barbershops. Encouraged by Cornelia, Pierce would take time off from barbering to do some itinerant
preaching. He had always practised his boyhood hobby of carving but by now the activity had become central to his life. As a visual aid for his sermons, he gradually created what would be his most famous work, The Book of Wood, which he finished in the 1930s. It consisted of wooden carvings illustrating the life of Christ, attached with string to cardboard panelling (later replaced by wood). These panels could be viewed in the large wooden book, or taken out and hung on a wall. During their summer holidays, the Pierces preached and displayed the carvings at fairs, and in churches and other venues across many states, as well as in their hometown. Pierce also carved small pieces to give away
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HARD-HITTING HUMOUR In Atlanta, an exhibition surveys the art and ideas of the late Charles Williams, an African American self-taught artist with a prescient view of US society EDWARD M GÓMEZ
Pencil Holder, c. 1997, mixed media, 14 x 12 x 9 in. / 35 x 30 x 23 cm, Kentucky Folk Art Center, Morehead State University
The Kentucky-born self-taught artist Charles Williams (1942–1998) has never received the same kind of attention that other African American autodidacts from the American South, such as Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, or the quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, have enjoyed. Now, though, an exhibition at the Atlanta Contemporary in Atlanta, Georgia, is offering a firstever, comprehensive look at his creations in various media, and the social-political outlook that informed them. Curated by Phillip March Jones, the founder of Institute 193, an arts centre in Lexington, Kentucky, “The Life and Death of Charles Williams” features more than 100 art objects, along with archival photographs.
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It will remain on view until April 19, 2020. Jones recalls that an autobiographical statement by Williams appeared in Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South (Tinwood Books), an encyclopedic, two-volume work produced by the Atlanta-based researcher and art collector William S Arnett and other collaborators that was published in 2000 and 2001. It is still regarded as the definitive reference resource in its field. Beginning in the 1980s, Arnett travelled around the American South, meeting self-taught artists of African or mixed racial and ethnic ancestry, most of whom had grown up in financially underprivileged circumstances.
Fantasy Automobile early 1980s, mixed media, 51.5 x 38 x 43 in. / 130 x 97 x 109 cm, Souls Grown Deep Foundation
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LOOKING THROUGH A LENS Raw Vision’s staff photographer, Ted Degener, continues his quest of photo-documenting self-taught artists across the USA
Darrell Holman from Austin, Texas, transformed his 1971 Toyota into a veritable toyshop on wheels by piling it high with models of animals and cartoon characters. He participated in the Houston Art Car Parade in the 1990s and, for many years, delighted children as a clown who arrived at parties in a magical moving masterpiece.
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Mary Whitfield – born in Birmingham, Alabama – paints images that reference America’s history of slavery, racism and human rights violations. Pictured here in New York in 2019, she holds a piece that depicts the 1923 Rosewood massacre in Florida, when African-Americans had to flee for their lives and hide in the swamps.
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Vanessa German, shown here at her 2019 exhibition at Bates College in Maine, is a sculptor, poet, performer and activist, and has established a community art centre in the Homewood neighbourhood of Pittsburgh.
Pierre Sylvain is a painter, and mosaic and mixed media artist from Les Cayes, Haiti. He was photographed in 2019 in Middletown, Connecticut, working on an exhibition of historical paintings and sculpture on the Middle Passage.
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Originally from New York City, Steve Chase moved to Vermont in the early 1990s seeking a quiet lifestyle. He has worked in oil pastels and acrylics out of the Vision Quest Art Studio in Bradford, Vermont, since 1999.
Tomasso Buldini, from Bologna, Italy, is pictured at the 2020 NYC Outsider Art Fair. Low-brow art, pop surrealism and visionary art come together in his compelling, humorous and entertaining apocalyptic work.
Bernard Gore from Georgia loved drawing and painting as a child, then discovered whittling and carving, and combined the two. Excited by all world art, his influences range from heroic biblical scenes to African art and Egyptology.
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A MODEL LEGACY John Usher spent three decades creating Riverdale, a miniature village modelled on his birthplace MARIELLA LANDOLFI
The model village at the Ruskin Museum when it reopened in 2001
Members of the Usher family of Coniston have been builders and stonemasons for over four generations, which goes some way to explaining John Usher’s compulsion to create a model village consisting of almost 100 buildings, in his front garden. Usher lived in the village of Coniston in the Lake District, north-west England, from his birth in 1940 until his premature death in 1993. Despite ongoing health issues, he worked throughout his life – first for his builder uncle, then for a slate company. He was in his late teens and still living in the family home when he started to build model houses, taking inspiration from buildings in the area. However, it was when he had built his own house – “Brow Close” – and had more space, that his hobby became a passion. A perfectionist, Usher
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constructed the models – each about 50cm high – from pebbles or tiny pieces of stone cemented together, adding slate roofs with lead detailing, perspex windows with matchstick frames, and tiny wooden doors. As he developed his technique, the miniature constructions became more and more authentic. Gradually, over a 30-year period, Usher created an entire village – “Riverdale”, as he named it – in his sloping front garden. He positioned the buildings, including a chemist, post office and draper, in clusters around the stream that ran through the property, and linked them with paths and bridges. By the time he died and Brow Close was put up for sale, Riverdale consisted of about 90 buildings. Apart from a few immoveable fixtures, such as a large castle and a dam,
The model village in Usher’s garden at Brow Close, c. 1995
Usher with his model buildings in his family home in the 1960s
The model village at the Ruskin Museum
the future of Usher’s life’s work had to be decided. Wanting to benefit the community, Usher had left everything to five or so village organisations, including the Church Council and the Cricket Club, with each receiving £30,000. The general consensus was that Riverdale should be preserved and displayed on a new site in Coniston in memory of Usher and in recognition of his generosity. Whilst a suitable permanent location was sought, some of the models were displayed and others stored in a local barn. Five years on, when the local Ruskin museum underwent major development, it was decided that Usher’s model legacy should be donated to the project and incorporated in the plans. At the reopening of the museum in 1999, Riverdale was finally unveiled in its
entirety in an outside area where it is enjoyed by many of the museum’s 15,000 yearly visitors. At the mercy of the elements, the village’s maintenance over the last 20 years has been a demanding, continuous undertaking, made possible only by a little funding from Usher’s beneficiaries, some donations, and, most importantly, the hands-on efforts of a small group of dedicated friends and relatives of the creator, determined to keep his memory alive and his Riverdale intact.
All photos courtesy of Maureen Fleming For more information about Riverdale, go to: www.ruskinmuseum.com Mariella Landolfi is Assistant Editor at Raw Vision.
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PRAIRIE PROVOCATEUR The routes into and around a tiny Kansas town are littered with the head-turning rural street art of MT Liggett FRED SCRUTON
Driving through the big-sky prairie flatlands of western Kansas, the first sight of Mullinville (population, approximately 250) is a multistorey grain elevator on the distant horizon. Nearer to the town, beside Route 400 as it enters from the west, the main site of the late artist MT Liggett abruptly presents itself: behind the roadside fence, a 400-metre procession of road sign whirligigs, churning in
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the perpetual-motion breezes, and metal sculpture “totems” mounted on steel pipes. The front row includes “AJAX”, “SOCRATES”, and a snake-bearing “CLEOPATRA”, while “ARTEMIS”, “KERMIT” (the frog), ”TED KENNEDY” and dozens more crowd behind. On the eastern outskirts of town is another display of Liggett’s totems and whirligigs – a 250-metre-long line of them, standing tall alongside the railroad tracks that
Liggett’s main site in 2009 all photos: Fred Scruton
are adjacent to Route 54, the other highway that passes through Mullinville. Next to the town’s post office, five cannons made from junked irrigation apparatus and machinery parts are spread over a small grassy area, and a rusted tanker truck, “SEPTIC TANK CLEANING” re-lettered on its red cab, is parked just off the street in front. A thick suction hose connects the truck to a green portable toilet with
two big, hand-painted red hearts on the door. Signs above the tank explain, “SCHITT-CREEK TURD-SUCKTRUCK” and “YOU-HUMP WE-PUMP”. Liggett said, “When I first bought that [land], everybody in Mullinville had a chance to buy it. So I put up cannons for all the dead in my family... ”. Then, after a dispute with the town ensued, “...I said, I’ll show you sons of bitches what it’s all about. So I bought that old
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BABAHOUM’S WORLD From his windswept Moroccan homeland, this artist creates images of simplicity, harmony and balance MATTHIEU PERONNET
above: Building, 2016, pencil and gouache on paper, 21 x 29 in. / 73 x 53 cm opposite: The River, 2010, pencil, gouache and walnut stain on cardboard, 21 x 31 in. / 54 x 78 cm All images courtesy: Philippe Saada
Babahoum was drawing at a very young age – probably in the same position as today, squatting down on the floor, maybe even drawing on the floor. “I was gifted, being able to draw is a gift,” he says. He lives a day’s walk west of the port city of Essaouira on Morocco’s Atlantic coast. Home for him is one of a small group of houses that are surrounded by hills of argan trees, where family members of all ages also live. He was born there 82 years ago. It is a countryside swept by the winds: soft, light, western wind, which calms and cools in the heat of the summer; eastern wind from the Sahara, which picks up the dust, hurts the eyes and slams doors. Everything is swept away by the wind, even children’s dreams. As a young man, Babahoum left this countryside, avoiding a life of farm labour and possibly searching for new horizons. He tried his hand at various trades – scrap merchant, second-hand goods dealer providing daily supplies to the souk merchants, worker in an olive press – looking for a place for himself and a life that he
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wanted. It was not until the eve of his seventieth birthday that he walked into an art gallery in Essaouira to show the dealers his drawings. He did not even dare to say that they were his work. Today, Babahoum has rediscovered the peaceful countryside of his birth. It is unchanged, still windswept. Life is a cycle. Babahoum’s life must have been full of tribulations and disenchantments but from that life, in the countryside and the town, he has created a singular body of work. Crouching down, Babahoum draws and paints under the kind gaze and suggestions of his wife. Recovered wood, cardboard and paper are the surfaces upon which he works; gouache and walnut stains are the pigments; and brushes and ballpoint pens are his tools. Central to his work are numerous figures and animals, methodically arranged, in rural or village settings. He paints daily life, the souk, houses with inhabitants at the windows, goats climbing up into argan trees, shepherds’ camps. He often creates
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Tony “Bright” Davis This Chicago artist and former pimp depicts his dark past in graphic technicolour
DAVE HOEKSTRA
Davis in Fosco Park, Chicago, in 2019, photo: Dave Hoekstra all images courtesy: Project Onward
Tony “Bright” Davis is walking through his old stomping grounds on the Near West Side of Chicago. He limps along with the help of a black cane. It is a chilly autumn afternoon. Davis wears a beige blazer, bright red shirt and scarf, and large pointed brown shoes. He calls his brown footwear “Lipizzanos”, named after the horse. “You know the Lipizzan”, Davis says, with a sly smile. “They are born black or brown and get whiter as they get older.” Davis, 59, knows a few things about changing. During the 1970s and early 1980s, he was one of the flashiest pimps in this West Side neighbourhood. His hair flowed down his back and his chiseled facial features seemed to have a Native American spirit. People on the street called him “Papoose”. Today, he is one of the more successful artists at the Project Onward gallery in Chicago, a non-profit organisation working with neuro-diverse artists, including people living with autism and mental illness issues. There, Davis makes his art, using markers and ink and gel pens in bright colours (hence his current nickname)
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to depict the pimps, hustlers and prostitutes that once defined his world. Davis has battled drug addiction as well as physical problems resulting from living on the Chicago streets. Project Onward co-founder and former executive director, Rob Lentz, once tried to get Davis access to health services, only to discover that the artist had no identification or Social Security number. “It was like he never existed because the life he previously lived was completely off the grid”, Lentz says. “For years, we wanted to compile his story and turn it into a graphic novel; he always loved comic books, and in his art he was always turning his friends and associates into superhero-like characters. But all those years of hard living and addiction have taken a toll on his focus.” Nevertheless, Davis has gained a following for his art. In January 2020, his work appeared with that of other Project Onward artists at the Outsider Art Fair in New York; but it was back in 2014 that Pierre Muylle – the director of MADmusée, an outsider art museum in
Car Wash, 2011, ink and marker on paper, 30 x 22 in. / 76 x 56 cm
overleaf: The Pimps’ Ball, 2013, ink and marker on paper, 30 x 22 in. / 76 x 56 cm
Belgium – discovered Davis’s work at Project Onward. “I was convinced immediately”, Muylle wrote in an email. “The pimps, the cops, they are all part of this American comics/hip hop culture to us. But the way he turns this into great work is impressive. We bought two bigger drawings showing a scene of whores behind bars and a cop looking at them. The composition makes it a mix between Snoop Dogg and Rembrandt.” To understand Davis you have to be aware of the roots from which he grew. Born in Chicago, he was raised by his mother Delores Thomas. His father Eddie Davis was convicted of murder when Davis was in school. “He went away and I didn’t see him again until the seventies”, Davis says. “He did it again and that’s it. First time was murder, second time was double murder.” Davis knows his father was incarcerated; he does not know if he is dead or alive. By the early 1980s, the public housing developments – “the projects” – that had been built on the Near West Side of Chicago were a focal point for the criminal street gang Black Gangster Disciples. This
is where Davis learned his game. Across the street was Fosco Park, a six-acre open space. Today, Davis’s son D’Ante drove him to the park. It brings back memories for the artist. He looks at an abandoned church and high-rise nearby. He talks about bringing girls to parties for older men in the high-rise. “Sugar Daddies”, he says, “They’d use their Social Security cheques. It wasn’t always about sex.” Davis looks at his son, who is 25, then he looks at a red-brick wall. “That’s where we sold the drugs”, he says, “Right around the corner of that wall. I slowed my roll there. D’Ante was about nine or ten years old. I had to stop.” During his previous career, Davis did some small-time at Cook County Jail on the South Side of Chicago, but he says it was for guns and not for peddling drugs. Davis gave up street life in 1986 and began drawing in 1989. “A girlfriend was trying to write a note”, he says. “She had a couple of markers. I said, ‘Pam, can I use some of these markers?’ I started sketching and ended up drawing a guy in a suit with a bright red valet vest.”
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THE CAVES OF SPHAÈROS A French artist has created a cosmic environment in a crypt beneath Paris ALLA CHERNETSKA
David Sphaèros is known by some as a sculptor, and by others as the founder of the rock band, Aqua Nebula Oscillator, which he has described as “a spatial circus aimed at recreating a psychedelic vision on stage”. In recent years, Sphaèros’s various creative activities seem to have merged. Living a subterranean, nocturnal life in Paris, in a cavern dating from the sixteenth century – “Caves”, as he calls them – Sphaèros creates sculptures,
music, mystic accessories, photographs and videos. They are all part of his sanctum. Before settling in his Caves in 2005, Sphaèros led a nomadic life, travelling all over the world in a quest for transcendental enlightenment, and living for a time in India and the US. In 1997, Sphaèros settled in London to create a “theatre of oddity”. He conducted ecstatic performances comprising music, dance, a fakir and
Part of Sphaèros’s Caves, (left to right): Innommable, 1998, mixed media, bull horns, bones and fur; Homme Faucon, 2004, mixed media, goat horns, fur and barn owl legs; Homme Paon, 2005, mixed media, and rooster and peacock feathers; Vièrge et ses Hallucinations, 2016, mixed media and otter skin; Milk, 2014, mixed media, articulated skeleton and bronze powder; Jumelles, 2003, mixed media, antelope horns and ram skull; and Sphaèros III, 2019, mixed media, glass eyes, human hair, otter skin, chicken bones and antelope horns
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visual projections, with artists wearing masks that he had created. Sphaèros made his first sculptures at the age of 15, after seeing shrunken heads made by the Jivaroan people of Peru and Ecuador in a museum. He desperately wanted to possess such heads, so he created sculptures that seemed to be part ghost and part monster, and were reminiscent of creatures depicted by the artist Hieronymus Bosch and horror author HP Lovecraft. With their bulging, staring eyes and silent, gaping mouths, his works often evoked the act of screaming. For these early creations, Sphaèros used three approaches. In the first, starting in 1989, he felt he made spirits speak, and translated their messages into sculptures made mostly from clay and pigment. He would create each sculpture over a single night, during a kind of a ritual in which he was in a trance-like state. The second approach, from 1999, was more premeditated: he made assemblages
from gifts he had received from people, which were intended to protect the givers. His third technique involved creating art while taking an inner journey under the influence of psychedelic substances. In most of his work, Sphaèros includes stones and bones that he has found in places of ritual. He also uses his own blood, human skull powder, human hair and animal parts, such as bird feathers, owl talons and cobra skeleton powder. He always chooses predators or symbolic animals because, for him, they have a great energetic force which he believes can help people find their spirit animal. Some of his sculptures, such as Jumelles (Twin Sisters, 2003), have a double or triple face to show the different aspects of the human soul. In 2003, Sphaèros decided to leave most of the sculptures he had made up until that point in the forest in which he had been living, and to devote himself to music. He wanted to return his artworks to their source,
Another part of the Caves, (left to right): Reine Blanche, 2006, mixed media, fake fur and shells; Eldorado (2017), mixed media, camel vertebrae and human hair; and suspended heads (including Sphaèros’s), created for a live performance titled “Possession”
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MARCHING ON As the Kohler Arts Center celebrates the work of Dr Charles Smith – Vietnam veteran, activist and minister – his political messages and untold AfricanAmerican histories spread his faith JEFFREY WOLF
Stokely Carmichael, 1985–99; concrete, paint and mixed media; 20 x 46 x 7.5 in. / 51 x 117 x 19 cm, Dr Charles Smith: Aurora installation view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2019, photo: Jeffrey Wolf
Tall, thin and muscular, Dr Charles Smith (b. 1940) wears dark aviator sunglasses and a pith helmet bearing the United States Marines insignia. His stature and voice are strong. One cannot write about Dr Smith – visual artist, historian, activist and minister – without reflecting on his time in Vietnam. At the age of 24 – married, and active in the Civil Rights movement for the previous six years – he was drafted into the Marines; not through his own choice but on an order meted out while he was in the induction office. He went to Vietnam feeling like a “second-class citizen”. Four years later, in 1968, he was discharged
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from service with a Purple Heart. He says that Vietnam coverage rarely addresses the black experience, and that it was “on their backs” that the war was fought. Almost 7,500 African-American soldiers lost their lives, a fact rarely mentioned publicly. Much like former Vietnam veteran artist Gregory Van Maanan, Smith’s initiation to the battlefield came quickly, a harsh awakening to the danger. As fate would have it, both men left their foxholes just before bombs hit, killing everyone in them. Smith says that in response to the order to “kill everything that moved, and burn down everything
Overview and entry area, Dr Charles Smith's African American Heritage Museum and Black Veteran's Archive, Aurora, Illinois, c. 1995, photo: Lisa Stone
else... the only way to survive was to do exactly as you were told.” In battle, race didn’t matter – it was a “Field of Blood,” he says – and memories of fellow veterans, brothers, black and white, will live with him forever. He needs to justify his wartime behaviour to himself every day. He quotes The Bible, James 2:18: “Show me your works apart from your faith and I will show you my faith by my works”. In its discussion of the life-changing experiences of
veterans, the book Vietnam: Reflexes and Reflections (The National [Vietnam] Veterans Art Museum, 1998) says that some “develop a fire in their mind that consumes them... that, if they live, they will fulfill a destiny”. That destiny of fulfillment is evident in the work that Dr Smith has done and continues to do to this day. In 1968, out of the service and on the heels of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, Smith worked
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INJURED SPIRITS The work of Iranian artist Samaneh Atef reflects the plight of persecuted women in a hostile political situation COLIN RHODES
above: Untitled, n.d., pen on paper, 8 x12 in. / 20 x 30 cm opposite: Women in Prison #3, n.d, charcoal on paper, 12 x 16.5 in. / 30 x 42 cm
The image of a strong female figure is at the core of Samaneh Atef’s work. An intense, emotionally charged being, this eternal image of femaleness seems to be coextensive with the world. Atef’s woman adopts different guises: fighter to victim, child to mother,
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human to daemon. At times, she is the sole, iconic human presence, at others she appears in manifold. Never can she be viewed passively; looking at an Atef creation is always an encounter. Born in 1989, in the city of Bandar Abbas on the
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EXHIBITIONS
Willem Van Genk
Willem Van Genk
WOEST: WILLEM VAN GENK Outsider Art Museum,Hermitage Amsterdam September 19, 2019 – May 3, 2020 Catalogue: Woest: Willem van Genk, Uitgeverij Lannoo, 2019, 160 pp, €25, ISBN 978 94 0146 477 2 Willem van Genk is arguably one of the most compelling artists to have come out of The Netherlands in the last half-century. An accomplished draughtsman and highly imaginative creator of the urban landscape, his work amounts to a highly personal psychological chronicle of the late twentieth century. An inveterate traveller, both in real space and time and in imagination backed up by thorough research, Van Genk’s art demands close and long attention. And there is much to see and spend time with in “Woest: Willem van Genk”, at the Amsterdam Outsider Art Museum (until 15 March 2020, then at the Collection de l’Art Brut Brut, Lausanne and the State Hermitage Museum, Moscow). This is the first solo exhibition of the artist in The Netherlands in a decade. It is also one of the most comprehensive showings of the artist’s work ever mounted. Curator Ans van Berkum has managed to assemble a truly retrospective show, containing more than 60 works from all periods of the artist’s career, sourced from Dutch and 82
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international public and private collections, with many seen in public for the first time. Works range from huge early cityscapes, like Panorama Moscow (1964) and the Galerie Hamer’s Leningrad (c. 1955), to later, complex, multipaneled paintings, like SelfPortrait in “De Ark” (1974) and Hair Salon (1988). As often as not, the backs of Van Genk’s works are almost as interesting as the fronts. He had a habit of sticking letters, travel brochures and other ephemera relevant to the subject, and several works have been cleverly installed in a way that allows viewers to see the whole piece. The exhibition and accompanying book were designed by the Belgian fashion designer, Walter van Beirendonck, who professes himself to be greatly inspired by outsider art and Van Genk’s “soulmate”. In general, his design is sympathetic to the artist’s work and assists viewers in their movement through the museum spaces. One has to question, though, the decision to position a huge cut-out bust of Van Genk with collaged bits of his work exploding out his opened cranium, with the word “Woest” emblazoned across. It infers a kind of Dadaistic absurdism which Van Genk did not espouse, and the title, best translated as “fierce”, seems to me to do a disservice to the artist’s measured practice. That aside, this is a really important show that deserves to be seen. COLIN RHODES
EXHIBITIONS
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Martin Ramírez
Henry Ray Clark
Adolf Wölfli
Minnie Evans
OUTSIDER & VERNACULAR ART: THE COLLECTION OF VICTOR F. KEEN Intuit, Chicago February 6 – September 7, 2020 Even though one-person shows are the best way to experience deep immersion into an artist’s work, group exhibitions can be useful in their own way – especially in educating new audiences. Group exhibitions curated from the work of an individual collector are more problematic in that few such collections possess consistently top-quality and/or a variety of examples by every artist in the collection. The Victor F. Keen Collection at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago (until September 7, 2020) displays the best and worst aspects of the single collector group show. It was curated by Intuit’s Alison Amick from a larger exhibition that opened last October at the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center in Pueblo, Colorado Among some 50 works by 40 artists, the Keen Collection trots out the usual suspects – Castle, Dial, Doyle, Finster, Hawkins, Ramírez, Traylor and Wölfli – and presents a number of works by each artist. Among this coterie of blue-chip masters, it’s hard to find an inferior example. In fact, one particular epic Ramírez work on view here, an untitled (Trains and Tunnels) 6.5-foot-long masterpiece, is among the most breathtaking works he ever created. To this viewer, however, the artists and artworks that really stand out are the relatively little-known ones that we rarely get to see in the flesh: Nigerian artist Prince Twins Seven-Seven, who died in 2011, is one; others include Jim Bloom, Marcos Bontempo, and Henry Ray
Clark. The exhibition also contains a number of artists represented by only one example (Calvin Black, Evans, Hauser, Frank Jones, Morgan and Tolliver), and although they serve to acknowledge the collector’s awareness of these artists, they only whet the appetite. Furthermore, artists who work in more than one medium, such as Godie and Von Bruenchenhein, are represented here by only one medium. In the case of Von Bruenchenhein’s 3.5 x 2.5-inch photographs, they are so miniscule and inconspicuous that they hardly seem worth the effort of hanging (or even collecting in the first place). This is not to say that bigger is always better – Castle’s smallscale gems are a perfect case in point – but sometimes it is. In addition to the aforementioned Ramírez work, there are other monumental pieces in the Keen Collection by Finster, Grimes, Hunter, Widener and Purvis Young that are well worth the visit. MICHAEL BONESTEEL RAW VISION 105
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EXHIBITIONS
Daniel Concalves Judith McNichol
Beverly Baker
Raymond Morris
Evelyne Postic
Davood Koochaki Hein Dingemans
Julia Sisi
Dan Miller
Nigel kingsbury
MONOCHROMATIC MINDS: LINES OF REVELATION Jennifer Lauren Gallery, at Candid Arts Trust, London 25 February – 4 March 2020 Monochromatic Minds is the latest venture of the peripatetic Jennifer Lauren Gallery. This ambitious exhibition, featuring 61 artists and around 150 works was at the Candid Arts Trust. The premise of the show was disarmingly simple; a selection of black and white art made by artists who have at times been gathered under the rubric of outsider art. The result, however, was a sophisticated system of compelling art that transformed the gallery space into an energetic, thought-provoking and highly intellectually satisfying visual conversation. Work in the show ranges from the boldly emblematic – Davood Koochaki, James Alison, Liz Parkinson – to densely worked, 84
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near claustrophobic essays in detail – Carlo Keshishian, David Abisror, Leslie Thompson. It also runs the gamut of techniques of conscious abandonment so beloved of the surrealists, from automatic drawing and writing – Malcolm McKesson, Julia Sisi, Dan Miller, Harald Stoffers, Beverly Baker – to mediumism – Madge Gill, Agatha Wojciechowsky – and visionary perception – Raymond Morris, Nick Blinko, Ody Saban. Visual Symbols dredged from the unconscious, whether through dream or imagination, are also commonly present, from Evelyne Postic and Margot’s tumescent organic images, to Jane Davigo’s suggestive narratives and Olivier Daunat’s remarkably spatial, yet airless precise urban universes. The sense of experiencing and participating in an active process of unfolding and growth, and also perhaps of dissolution was nowhere more poignantly expressed in two untitled figure drawings by the late Nigel Kingsbury. COLIN RHODES