RAWVISION O O LL K K • NNAAIIV V E • I INNTTUUIITTIIV V EE • VVI ISSII O ON NAR OUUTTSSI IDDEERR • B R RU UTT • FFO R YY
RV 80 WINTER 2013 $14.00 £8.00 €15.00
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PROPHET ISAIAH ROBERTSON
MADGE GILL
25274 83776
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SCHRÖDER-SONNENSTERN
RAWVISION80 WINTER 2013
CONTENTS
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
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RAW NEWS
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MADGE GILL
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FRIEDRICH SCHRÖDER-SONNENSTERN
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PROPHET ISAIAH ROBERTSON
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JOHN GILMOUR
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LIZ PARKINSON
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CHUCK ROSENAK
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CHAZ WALDREN
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RAW REVIEWS
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GALLERY & MUSEUM GUIDE
Outsider events and exhibitions around the world.
Early twentieth-century, mediumistic English artist’s postcards.
SENIOR EDITOR Julia Elmore FEATURES EDITOR Nuala Ernest EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Natasha Jaeger 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 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 119 72nd Street, #414, New York, NY 10023 (standard envelopes only)
Man and beasts coexist in his fantastical menagerie.
Foretelling the apocalypse at a built environment at Niagara Falls.
Insider art from a Scottish asylum in the early 1900s.
Works by self-taught Australian artist.
Interview with the legendary American folk art collector.
The art of love and prayer.
Exhibitions and books.
BUREAU FRANÇAIS 37 Rue de Gergovie, 75014 Paris tel +33 (0) 1 40 44 96 46 ISSN 0955-1182
Raw Vision (ISSN 0955-1182) December 2013 is published quarterly (March, June, September, December) by Raw Vision Ltd, PO Box 44, Watford WD25, 8LN, UK and distributed in the USA by Mail Right Int., 1637 Stelton Road 84, Piscataway, NJ 08854. Periodical Postage Paid at Piscataway, NJ and additional mailing offices. Postmaster send address corrections to Raw Vision c/o Mail Right International Inc., 1637 Stelton Road 84, Piscataway, NJ 08854.
COVER: Prophet Isaiah Robertson, Niagara Falls, NY, 2012 photo © Fred Scruton
AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM VISIONARY AWARD
WORLD’S BEST ART MAGAZINE
UTNE INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD
USA subscription office: 119 72nd Street, #414, New York, NY 10023. (Standard envelopes only). RAW VISION cannot be held responsible for the return of unsolicited material.
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MEDAILLE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS
RAWNEWS
BRITAIN
KATE BRADBURY
SECRETS OF OUTSIDER ART
February – March 2014 e Adamson Collection Trust are collaborating with Bethlem Gallery and Bethlem Museum and Archives for an exhibition from the Collection at Bethlem Gallery (February 12 – March 7); Kurelek and Adamson at Bethlem Museum; and Kurelek: the Maze at the Maudsley Learning Centre (March 13). More details from david.o’flynn@slam.nhs.uk.
November 9 – December 1, 2013 Kate Bradbury: Squalls and Murmurations includes drawings, sculptures, and pieces made from found objects by the Outside In: National 2012 Award Winner.
until November 28, 2013 An international group of outsider artists from a wide range of backgrounds celebrate the origins of their art in Epiphanies! Secrets of Outsider Art. Curated by Sue Kreitzman and Peter Herbert, the exhibition explores fantasy, spirituality and hyper reality.
mary bishop
joe gagliano
kate bradbury
ADAMSON AND BETHLEM
PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY 9 North Pallant, Chichester PO19 1TJ, UK
THE CONFERENCE CENTRE St Pancras Hospital, 4 St Pancras Way London NW1 0PE, UK
BEN WILSON’S GUM ART
until January 26, 2014 Madge Gill: Medium & Visionary is a major retrospective of the self-taught, mediumistic artist who produced thousands of enigmatic ink drawings. With over 100 original artworks, and contextual photographs and documents, the exhibition also includes Gill’s most important work, e Crucifixion of the Soul, a calico over ten metres in length.
November 29 – December 7, 2013 An exhibition of the miniature chewing gum works of Ben Wilson, also known as “Chewing Gum Man”, will be showing at the Julian Hartnoll Gallery.
madge gill
ben wilson
MADGE GILL RETROSPECTIVE AT ORLEANS HOUSE
ORLEANS HOUSE GALLERY Riverside, Twickenham, TW1 3DJ, UK. www.richmond.gov.uk/arts 6
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JULIAN HARTNOLL GALLERY 37 Duke Street, St James’s London SW1Y 6DF, UK
RAWNEWS
GERMANY, ITALY, NETHERLANDS
JOSEF WITTLICH
RARE WORKS BY RAGGIO SHOWN AT RIZOMI_ART BRUT
WELTKULTURERBE VÖLKLINGER HÜTTE Europäisches Zentrum für Kunst und Industriekultur, 66302 Völklingen / Saarbrücken GERMANY www.voelklinger-huette.org
until December 20, 2013 RIZOMI_art brut presents ten recently discovered works by Davide Mansueto Raggio, who produced pieces on tree parts and corrugated paper.
davide mansueto raggio
josef wittlich
until December 1, 2013 avant pop! is a one-person-show at Völklinger Hütte, celebrates the works of Josef Wittlich (1903–1982).
RIZOMI_ART BRUT Corso Vittorio Emanuele II n. 28, Turin, ITALY. www.rizomi.org
ANNAMARIA TOSINI
LATIN AMERICAN ART
e O.O.A. Magazine is an international review of outsider art, conceived and edited in Sicily. After three years of being published digitally, the magazine is now available in print. Glifo Edizioni, the new publisher, is keeping the Italian PDF issues released in 2013 and 2014 free.
until January 6, 2014 Annamaria Tosini’s delicate sculptures made from recycled paper are currently displayed in the Tineo Pavilion along with photographs of her garden. Curated by Eva di Stefano.
December 2013 In December, Galerie Hamer will present a unique survey of contemporary outsider art from Latin America. Five countries will be represented with artists including Alexandro Garcia, Sebastian Ferreira and Oscar Morales.
www.glifo.com 10
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alexandro garcia
annamaria tosini
O.O.A. MAGAZINE
BOTANIC GARDEN IN PALERMO Padiglione Tineo Via Lincoln 2 - Palermo, ITALY
GALERIE HAMER Leliegracht 38, 1015 DH Amsterdam NETHERLANDS
RAWNEWS
USA
SOUL STIRRING WORKS BY AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS
MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM
opens January 31, 2014 Uncommon Folk: Traditions in American Art is Milwaukee Art Museum’s largest ever exhibition. More than 400 objects are on show, all drawn from the Museum’s own holdings of folk and self-taught art.
sam doyle
rita mae “rabbit” pettway
until April 6, 2014 Soul Stirring: African American Self-taught Artists from the South honours renowned, self-taught artists who created stirring artworks with a variety of media. With works by Sam Doyle, Leroy Almon, Roy Ferdinand, Clementine Hunter, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Nellie Mae Rowe, Herbert Singleton and Purvis Young. ese artists were not stifled by their lack of funds or their absence of formal training, and all demonstrated a strong creative spirit and commitment to their communities.
MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM 700 N. Art Museum Drive Milwaukee, WI 53202 www.mam.org
JIM BAUER’S ROBOTS
RAY YOSHIDA COLLECTION
OUTSIDERS AT CHRISTIE’S
until January 31, 2014 Jim Bauer’s robot-like sculptures made from kitchen items and hardware are currently shown at e Ames Gallery.
until March 2, 2014 e Open Eye is a series of five exhibitions responding to Chicago artist and teacher Ray Yoshida’s (1930–2009) home collection and his outlook. Some 2,600 pieces are on show, including drawings by self-taught artists, African masks, comic books, smoking stands, kachina dolls, tattoo sketches and more.
Christie’s has secured a selection of outsider art for its January sales in New York. e collection comes from Kristina Johnson, an avid collector of Folk Art and outsider art.
THE AMES GALLERY 2661 Cedar Street, Berkeley, CA 94708 www.amesgallery.com
sam doyle
jim bauer
karl wirsum
CALIFORNIA AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM 600 State Drive, Exposition Park, Los Angeles, CA 90037 www.caamuseum.org
JOHN MICHAEL KOHLER ARTS CENTER 608 New York Ave, Sheboygan, WI 53081 www.jmkac.org
CHRISTIE’S 20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020 www.christies.com RAW VISION 80
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POSTCARDS FROM THE SPIRIT WORLD Madge Gill channelled her spirit guide, Myrninerest, to create works of all sizes and her small postcard drawings were an important and constant format for her By ROGER CARDINAL
Untitled, n.d., Mark De Novellis collection
It was on March 5, 1919, that Madge Gill discovered her vocation as an artist. Following a particularly miserable period in her life, which involved bereavements, post-natal depression and a long illness culminating in the loss of an eye, the 37-year-old EastEnd housewife suddenly found herself overtaken by sensations of ecstasy, energised by a mysterious impulse that generated an outpouring of inspired writings, colourful embroidery and compelling drawings in India ink. These last proved to be her most distinctive works. Over the next four decades until her death, she 20
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maintained a tireless production, embarking repeatedly on drawings of amazing complexity and scale. For weeks she would slave away, inscribing her dense designs onto rolls of untreated calico which sometimes measured as much as 30 feet long. And all the while, she made sure to add to her enormous output with small, intimate images, improvised by the dozen on blank postcards. According to the artist herself, the creative process was always governed by her personal spirit-guide, whom she named Myrninerest. This ethereal creature would
All postcards are approx 5.5 x 3.4 ins, 14 x 8.75 cm, card
Untitled, n.d., Vivienne Roberts/MadgeGill.com collection RAW VISION 80
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THE FABULOUS CO-EQUALITY OF MAN AND ANIMAL Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern and his heretical bestiary By PETER GORSEN Emil Friedrich Schröder was born on September 11, thrown into reform school. Convicted for vagrancy and 1892, the second of thirteen children in the hamlet of the brazen theft of horses, the 26-year-old is legally Kaukehmen in the rural district of “Elchniederung” [elk incapacitated at the mental asylum of Allenberg with the flat] near East Prussia’s north-east border with Lithuania. diagnosis “adolescent insanity”. He is also said to have Living on a farm where pigs, cattle and horses were bred, expressed the delusional idea of a vehicle driven by steam and a wondrous travelling circus whose members are said or electricity being able to reach a speed of 3,600 to have taught stable-boy Friedrich “small comic roles” kilometres per hour. After further internments, the and discovered his “comic talent”, are among the lasting delinquent who was released several times escapes to impressions of his youth. From his frank autobiographical Berlin in 1919. ere he begins boasting of mindaccount we learn nothing expanding “capacities as a about his family, except for medium”, the religious, mystical Neither Schröder’s his concern about no longer antenna of his inspiration, when subconscious mythical memory being a financial burden to an unnamed occult sect or lodge his parents: a passive alcoholic nor his cultural and religious takes him under its wing and father who earned a living as acquaints him with the teachings knowledge should be a head railway postal clerk of phrenology, graphology, underestimated. and a mother with frail chiromancy and astrology. nerves, physically unfit for Under the pompous title “Dr. her role. “Friedrich the one and only” feels abandoned by phil. Eliot Gnass von Sonnenstern, Specialist Psychologist the whole world and, from childhood on, finds pleasure in for University Science”, he opens an “Institute for the climbing trees in the twilight and peeing on Culture of the Body, Spirit and Soul” that also travels to eavesdropped-lovers in their Sunday best, which to him is health resorts in northern Germany. As a naturopath, worth the good hiding that follows. He replaces the sexual faith healer and medical occultist, the doctor, with the intercourse he cannot have with loving, protective sexual fortune teller “Aunt Martha” (Möller) at his side, who contact with animals, the then still punishable “zoophilia becomes his lifelong comrade and patron in good times erotica” (Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing). and in bad, simulates a role that fulfils the expectations of It is with the same lack of moral feeling and pleasure his gullible audience. A small group of people vests the in such naughtiness, malice and filth that Schröder’s sense duo with an authority that the two are then obliged to of justice defends itself against the reprisals of the live up to. eir unorthodox, secular pastoral care and hypocritical social order, and he, little by little, becomes counselling is a social phenomenon and sincere insofar as the convincing liar and erotic troublemaker without any it is needed and taken seriously by a social group. sense of guilt or remorse who finally, as a dedicated Nevertheless, the false doctor who is held devotee of moral insanity and dark romanticism, works accountable and regarded as being non-psychotic is legally mainly as an artist. His indifference and indisposition with opposite regard to any useful occupation thwarts both his Das mondmoralische Kulturschandmal [the moon moral culture of shame], 1972 professional training as a gardener and also his usefulness lithograph in the army. As early as the age of fourteen years old, the 26.2 x 19.5 ins., 66.5 x 49.5 cm Suzanne Zander Museum work-shy troublemaker with leanings towards robbery is
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APOCALYPSE AT NIAGARA FALLS Prophet Isaiah Robertson’s carpenter-hands are being used as tools of God to inform the world about his prophecies of Armageddon By FRED SCRUTON
Just before her early death, when he was twelve years Ontario Avenue home and property. old, Isaiah Henry Robertson’s mother received a vision Prophet Isaiah’s “second prophecy”– that The that the Lord had special plans for her son. As a young Rapture (the second coming of Christ and the ascension man in Jamaica, she had taught him to pray for of the Saved) would occur in 2014, began with Salvation, and, following Jesus’ example, he became a symbolic bead patterns on the floors, and candle carpenter and built his first house without having been placements inside his house. A dedicated “Holy Room” trained in carpentry. Born in 1947, Isaiah Robertson stays locked when not being used for prayer, but an emigrated to Canada at age 24, and worked primarily in overflowing of candles and beads can be seen the construction trades. Surprised by the low cost of throughout the house. Containing and outlining the fixer-up housing stock across the border in Niagara patterns are lines of purple beads that represent the path Falls, he moved there from Ontario in 2004, and began to Salvation. Later, directed to announce his message to renovate and resell houses. Having never been and offer a source of healing to the world, Prophet artistically inclined, Isaiah built a 25-foot Robertson left behind an This is not the work of man. No wooden cross at the head unremarkable residence in of his stone driveway, and man could be capable of this. Canada with no hints of his soon covered it and his near-future undertakings. home with additional A few blocks from his Niagara Falls, New York State wooden cut-outs as well as signs, numbers, and symbols home, Robertson is a parishioner – not a preacher – at from this second prophecy. the Mount Erie Baptist Church, and its three-storey “This is not the work of man”, Robertson explains sanctuary is the site of his “first prophesy” – that The with a wave of his arms, “no man could be capable of Jubilee (a year of forgiveness and redemption) began in this”. Much like the rest of us, he stands back in out-of2006. Originally hired by the church to simply body awe to behold what has been wrought. Working sheetrock and panel the walls, he recalls that a guest without plans, he accepts no credit for the precise and speaker at an outdoor spiritual revival event could sense intricately fitted designs made material through his there was a person with the gift of prophecy in their Servant-of-God labours. Frequently punctuating his midst, and, not long after, he covered the sanctuary sentences with “praise God”, “hallelujah”, or “praise his walls with an architectural inlay of interlocking stained wood panels. Using a laser pointer, he shows where right Lights mounted to Robertson’s house illuminate the 25-foot cross as evening sets in, and apparently accidental grain-cut patterns in the oak its healing message of redemption begins to light up the darkness plywood are actually biblical messages. God had directed Prophet Isaiah to use oak, and the goldenoverleaf Visitors are led on a pathway of The Seven Seals. Numbers six, seven, and five (in order brown hues provide a rich ground for numerous applied from the sidewalk) are depicted on the entrance walkway. At the steps, number four rewood cut-outs. Often appearing abstract and decorative, directs to the front and around the house towards the cross. Numbers three, two, and one Robertson can explain the meaning of each shape. A terminate at the “pearly gates”. Flanked by protruding yellow-belled trumpets of Gabriel and centered on the gable, a seven-pointed star surrounded by a sunburst-like pattern simplified form with straight and curved lines, for represents God, “a wheel in the center of a wheel.” Just below the purple gutter, and example, represents the Lamb of God. To celebrate the above the front porch windows, ten yellow arches symbolise the windows of heaven first day of The Jubilee in the summer of 2006, Prophet Isaiah placed and lit over 1000 candles around his photos: Fred Scruton
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INSIDER AR T The drawings of John Gilmour from the early years of the Twentieth century at the Crichton Royal Institute in Scotland By MARY MARGARET JOHNSTON-MILLER and JAMES DAVID MILLER
Born in 1862, John Gilmour grew up in Glasgow, reasonably settled daily habits. He regularly worked Scotland. As a young man he worked as a bookkeeper outside in the Crichton gardens, and even took up golf at before emigrating to the USA in 1888. He spent the next one point. e notes also consistently described a man in few years between New York City and Trinidad, working the iron embrace of paranoid delusions, including the as a sugar trader. In 1891 he married Emma Reid, another belief that he had “contaminated his wife and children” expatriate Scot whose family was involved in the with syphilis and that his supposed healers were bent on Trinidadian sugar industry. ey would have three destroying him. e final entry in his Glasgow case notes children together. Gilmour ended his working days in suggests this blend of the mundane and the manic. New York City as a department head at a sugar brokerage Gilmour “has been working in the gardens in the firm. He died in July 1931. Sandwiched between these forenoons and has been doing well.” He was also on years in the worlds of family and business, John Gilmour suicide watch, God having “told him to kill himself.” spent over ten years in various mental institutions. We ere was “no improvement mentally but rather the know something of Gilmour’s life inside these institutions opposite. He is still very delusional and often very from several sources including case notes, letters, poems miserable.” Despite his mental condition he was and articles, and a handful of startling drawings created at “discharged relieved”, meaning, in the nomenclature of Gilmour’s last asylum, the Crichton Royal Institute in the time, somewhat improved. Dumfries, Scotland. Gilmour’s words and images from Crichton offer Gilmour’s drawings a similarly complex selfGilmour left behind words and are among the many art portrait. He left poems and works created by Crichton articles from the patients’ images which reflect the patients and now preserved at amalgam of the everyday and the magazine, e New Moon, the Dumfries and Galloway several enraged letters written extraordinary that characterised Archives in Dumfries. e to asylum superintendents, collection dates from the and a three-page document his life inside Crichton. opening of the Crichton entitled “e Parable of the Royal Institute in 1839. Its New Gods”. He also created first superintendent, William A. F. Browne, was a several striking drawings, which offer a pictorial proponent of art therapy and collected many of the accompaniment to the parable. Most of e New Moon patients’ works. Art historian Maureen Park addresses the material seems the work of the steady man who enjoyed Browne-era art in her beautiful book Art and Madness. (1) the everyday rhythms of work in the gardens: articles and Gilmour was admitted to Crichton on 4 July, poems on such topics as the replacement of Crichton’s 1905. By that time he had spent short periods in three horse-drawn laundry lorry with a mechanised one and the other asylums: St Ann’s in Trinidad, Amityville Insane variety of birds to be found in the Crichton grounds. Asylum on Long Island and the Glasgow Royal Lunatic Gilmour’s unpublished writings come closest to Asylum. He would spend the next eight years at the above right Common Sense Rowing Boat Crichton. e case notes from the two Scottish watercolour, pen/brush and black ink on wove paper institutions, and John Gilmour’s writings and drawings 8.5 x 13.25 ins., 21.6 x 33.6 cm irregular from the Crichton years, offer a sense of how he below right experienced life inside the asylum. Scales Both institutions’ case notes consistently watercolour, pen/brush and black ink on wove paper portrayed Gilmour as man of good physical health and 8 x 13 ins., 20.3 x 33 cm
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his drawings’ emotional and imaginative power. Most striking is “e Parable of the New Gods”. It is clearly intended to be Gilmour’s own story. e central figure is called Sacchari Comprador, suggesting Gilmour’s
profession of sugar trader. Comprador has “fallen ill of a complaint he could not understand”. Searching for help, he encounters a succession of supposed healers, all called Jesus and each having the surname of one of his asylum
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OUTSIDE THE OUTSIDERS Arresting works by an internationally recognised, self-taught Australian artist who was a forerunner in the antipodean world of outsider art By TERRENCE RELPH
Parkinson is not what you would expect an outsider artist to be: she is outside the outsiders. She is educated, comes from a stable family background and leads a conventional family life. However, her artwork is still very much that of an outsider and does not fit anywhere else. At school, Parkinson’s “art teacher would tell her to do work ‘big and bold’”, but Parkinson later developed her own style in isolation during the 1970s and, over the following years, her art was raw and unsophisticated. However, as time went on her style became more robust and emotive, with extra attention being paid to detail. It became more considered and structured instead of being purely a product of her subconscious. Parkinson started off using Indian ink with oldfashioned mapping pens. In 1977, Parkinson met Herbert Eckert, a friend of Jean Dubuffet. Eckert sent photographs of her work to Dubuffet, to which he responded by praising her work for its originality. Dubuffet subsequently forwarded the photos to Michel évoz, the former curator of the Collection de L’Art Brut in Lausanne, who negotiated directly with Parkinson to purchase three drawings in 1978 and 1979 to be part of the Neuve Invention section. is gave validity to what Parkinson was doing. However, her mother was not happy with this outcome
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because an artist friend had told her that only “mad people” have work there. She said, “tell Elizabeth to have nothing to do with them”. Instead, Parkinson embraced the situation and pursued her art-making obsessively. She needed to draw every day, although her parents tried to dissuade her. ey could not understand it and were also terrified that she would become a “beatnik” and disgrace the family. If she had to create art they wanted her to “paint pretty pictures of nice things”. Having had no formal training in painting or drawing beyond school, she has developed her own style. Her work, which is often very emotive and reflective of her circumstances at the time, is detailed and striking, and she often draws faces with different expressions and a strong use of colour that exemplifies and amplifies her emotions. is can be seen in Woman with Eczema and Red Snakes, painted when she was suffering from extreme bouts of eczema; Parkinson said that, at that time, she felt like a snake shedding its skin. below left Twisted Snakes, 2013 fine felt-tipped black ink pen on paper, 18 x 24 ins., 47.5 x 61 cm below right Faraway Tree, 2013 fine felt-tipped black ink pen on paper, 22.5 x 30.5 ins., 57.5 x 77.5 cm
above left Woman with Eczema and Red Snakes, 2005 coloured ink, black pen and acrylic paint on paper, 22.5 x 15.25 ins., 57.5 x 39 cm above right Woman with Mauve Butterflies, 2009, inks, pen and acrylic paint on paper, 8.5 x 11.75 ins., 22 x 30 cm left Jewellery masks, 2011, approx 12 x 8 ins., 30 x 20 cm
Ideas and imagery in Parkinson’s work can originate from the local flora and fauna around her home, where lizards, birds, spiders, grubs, butterflies, snakes, frogs and fish are common. ey all blend easily into her designs, as do flowers, ferns and trees, along with unusual landforms of the unique Australian coastline. Recently, Parkinson has extended her drawing of faces into the making of masks. Using stems of palm tree fronds from her garden, she removes all thorns and foliage and develops the mask’s face according to the individual characteristics displayed by the stem. She has always been fascinated by masks and has her own
collection from New Guinea, Indonesia and from flea markets. Today, Parkinson makes “jewellery masks” from metals, wire, beads and seeds. ese are of different sizes and shapes and have painted faces. Her palm-frond masks are also adorned with jewellery, and many sport “hair” of wire, wool or brushes, with hats, crowns, earrings and hanging beads. In Parkinson’s professional life, she was an economics teacher for a while before teaching jewellery-making for fifteen years. She has also written and illustrated three books and helped her late husband run various businesses. ese days she pursues her love of drawing and making jewellery masks, and her work has been exhibited extensively both in Australia and overseas. Terrence Relph was born in London’s east end and knew Madge Gill as a child. He moved to Australia in 1975 and co-owned the first outsider art gallery in the country. RAW VISION 80
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A LIFE OF COLLECTING ACROSS AMERICA James Arient interviews Chuck Rosenak about the folk art journey he and his wife Jan made through the USA, and his thoughts on the future of the genre
Chuck Rosenak is the reigning paterfamilias in the field of American folk art. With his late wife Jan he gathered four decades of experience in the field, in the thick of it all. Collector first, then writer, lecturer and archivist, he was among a small handful of people promoting American self-taught art, starting in the 1970s. I recently had a long talk with Chuck discussing his thoughts, views and recollections over the years. e interview took place on March 9, 2013, in the Robert A. Roth Study Library at Intuit, Chicago, Illinois.
finding artists. For instance; in 1980, Bob Bishop, the Director of e American Folk Art Museum, suggested that we visit Leo and Dorothy Rabkin at their home in Greenwich Village. e Rabkins told us they “had a new discovery, Sam Doyle”. Bishop was right, as always. We were excited to hear about their new discovery. But the Rabkins wouldn’t, or probably couldn’t, tell us where the artist lived. at Sam Doyle was a Gullah-speaking black Southerner was obvious. (1) But where did he live? We traded two Ashbys for two Doyles that day, and Jan went to work. James Arient: How did you get started collecting and what I don’t know how she did it, but in a month or two was the impetus that got you going? we found Sam Doyle on Fripp Island, South Carolina, Chuck Rosenak: Jan and I had been collecting all of our eating his lunch in the middle of a garbage dump full of married lives, but we went to the Whitney Biennial in discarded tin roofing panels. Back then, in the early 1973 and saw a piece of 1980s, Fripp Island was still sculpture by Edgar Tolson. occupied by what was left I do believe there will be a We thought it was the best behind from the ravages of flowering of interest in American the Civil War. e language piece in the show. It had been placed there of the island was Gullah and vernacular, self-taught, nonby Michael Hall, a the richest man on the Island academic art. Cranbrook sculptor and folk was Dr Buz. Dr Buz practised art collector. We called voodoo medicine with the Michael and he was a bit secretive, but eventually he told aid of a conch shell. Dr Hawk was the second wealthiest: me Tolson lived on a mountain in Campton, Kentucky – his strongest medicine came from the bones of a boiled and if you go there, you might be shot because they are cat. Sam Doyle explained Hawk’s cure: “You just walk in there and Mrs Hawk is boiling up a black cat and the making bootleg whiskey there. smell make you feel better”. ese two doctors, along We went to Campton and smelled the mash brewing. with Dr Rabbit and the other inhabitants of the Island, We found Tolson living in two trailers and he carved a few were depicted in Doyle’s paintings on abandoned tin pieces for us, and that was the start of it all. roofing panels. Sam greeted us in his Sunday-best justcome-from-church black, sharply creased pants and Were those the first pieces of self-taught art that you bought? starched white shirt. He was enjoying his Sunday lunch, Yes.
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Very interesting. Was he also the first folk artist you visited? Yes, he was the first folk artist we knew.
1. Gullah is a language based on English, with strong influence from West and Central African languages
How did you find artists back then? We travelled all over the country. Jan was the expert on
Sam Doyle Ram Rose, ca. 1981 house paint and beer can on metal roofing panel 47.25 x 28 .25 x 3.75 ins., 120 x 71.8 x 9.5 cm
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THE AR T OF LOVE AND PRAYER Chaz Waldren’s work first surfaced as part of the Outside In programme for artists outside the mainstream at Pallant House Gallery in the UK By MARC STEENE
Chaz Waldren was born in 1950 in Pinner, London, decorated that they are nearly intelligible. They look and has lived in Felpham in West Sussex with his wife almost manuscript-like in their decorated detail and can Sally for the last twenty years. Felpham is where the also seem to resemble eighteenth century samplers. The visionary genius William Blake lived, and perhaps there prayer works are texts of encouragement, thanks and, at is something in the flat, watery landscape that instills a some level, protection. These prayers play an important love of religion, place and the unseen. role in Waldren’s life; they act as reminders and prompts The work of Chaz Waldren is infused with love: to avoid the temptations and weaknesses that beset us he creates a warm world all his own. There is a all, but most of all he believes that they work. The work wonderful picture by Waldren titled All Creatures Great station in his bedroom is covered with them, written on and Small, in which his wife Sally has grown into a small pieces of paper and attached to a cupboard on his huge lighthouse-type structure with closed doors at the desk. They direct him to have faith, but also to help bottom and holding a him give up smoking, a wonderfully decorative continual trial for the All his art seems talismatic as bunch of flowers in her previously heavy smoker. well as escapist, acting as a hand. On closer observation “Whenever I have prayed for protective force shielding him you can see a very small something it has always Chaz outside the tower gone well. Sometimes I from dangers and risks. standing in exactly the same sense the Lord is with me position as the larger Sally, flowers in hand locked and I am being blessed, but sometimes not. He knows outside, worshipping at the altar of his wife. The me better than anyone else. I would have been a goner importance of Sally in Chaz’s work and life is clear to years ago, the way I abused myself; I wouldn’t be here if see: he speaks strongly of how Sally is his foundation it hadn’t been for the Lord. I believe God answers and security, and his work makes this fact clear. All of prayer”. his early work was made for Sally, and this act of In the seemingly joyous world he creates there homage and gift is both the content and purpose of a is danger; it might be hidden, but it is there. Why work lot of the art he creates. so hard at protecting yourself if there is nothing to fear? The domestic security Waldren has found is On closer inspection of his work you realise that the also expressed in the many houses that appear in his beautiful seemingly peaceful Sussex Sea he uses in his work. It is a warm contented world he creates, though work does occasionally contain battleships, sometimes deeply mysterious, infused with religion and the with cannons firing, looming on the horizon. All his art subconscious workings of his mind. Speaking of his seems talismanic as well as escapist, seeming to act both relationship with Sally, Waldren says, “It might not as a protective force shielding him from the dangers and seem very romantic, but Sally has been my anchor, risks that might exist to him internally and externally in someone who keeps me down to earth and keeps me the world as well as an idealised place to escape to when going. I have been blessed, as every home should have a times get difficult. woman in it”. The more figurative/narrative works are created primarily as gifts for Sally, but he also creates other textHelmet of Salvation, 2012, based works as gifts for his other love, Jesus. These are gel pen and biro on paper, primarily prayer pictures, containing a prayer so densely 16.5 x 11.8 ins., 42 x 30 cm
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RAW VISION 80
RAWREVIEWS
EXHIBITIONS
alex grey
lindsey bessanson
human genome, humankind is or is not “on the road to becoming... better, healthier, happier [and] less warlike.” Referring to a key word in its title, Kevin Kelly, a co-founder of Wired magazine, once defined “singularity” as “the point at which all the change [that has occurred] in the last million years will be superseded by the change [that will take place] in the next five minutes.” Conceived and curated by AVAM’s founder/director, Rebecca Hoffberger, “Human, Soul & Machine” presents a wide-ranging exercise in connecting the dots—facts and ideas social, cultural, political, historical and economic—that link up, in various and sometimes unexpected ways. Conveyed through wall texts and the artworks on view, this rich pool of information—about everything from how the US government spends taxpayers’ dollars to the soulful musings of Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic—freeassociatively documents the evolution of technology, from humankind’s first use of fire (in drawings by the self-taught artist Chris Roberts-Antieau) to computer-chip implants that already have made cyborgs (bionic humans) of more than a few men and women around the world. Example: The Spanish-born artist-composer Neil Harbisson, who was born unable to see colors. He wears a cybernetic eye that is attached to his brain; it allows him to hear the frequencies of different colors through bone conduction. A video on display describes his condition.
Harbisson’s geometric-abstract paintings show how he expresses his understanding of color visually, through art. What to do about snooping surveillance technology, not to mention the genetic modification of human bodies, ever more deadly weapons and the imminent arrival of super-capable, consciousness-possessing computers whose artificial intelligence will surpass the human brain power of their creators? Works in the exhibition, such as the Portuguese-born Rigo 23’s drawings on paper of unmanned killer drones (2010); Frank Warren’s “PostSecret” project, in which people anonymously send the artist postcards confessing hitherto unrevealed personal secrets (including, chillingly, I’m Facebook friends with my rapist); and Alex Grey’s mixed-media Sacred Mirrors (1980) directly or indirectly examine that question. e exhibition also ruminates about where the human soul—that old, romanticspiritual thing—might fit into a high-tech future that is already here today. Hoffberger observes, “Thanks to many incredible technological advancements, the times we’re living in are both exciting and scary. This exhibition proposes that we can either use technology to empower or to diminish what it means to be human. The choice, as the art and information on display suggest, is ours to make—and it is one we have a responsibility to make wisely.” – Edward M. Gómez
HUMAN, SOUL & MACHINE: THE COMING SINGULARITY! American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland October 5, 2013 – August 31, 2014
steve heller
This just might be one of the most urgent museum exhibitions to have been shown anywhere in the United States within the past decade and, as such, even as packed with provocative information and ideas as it is, it almost deserves to be twice as large. Still, with “Human, Soul & Machine: The Coming Singularity!”, the American Visionary Art Museum offers a lot to be inspired or deeply disturbed by, depending on how one may view the ever-expanding role of technology, and especially of artificial intelligence and all things digital, in so many aspects of contemporary human life. The exhibition considers if, after such achievements as the production to date of some two billion personal computers and the mapping of the
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RAW VISION 80
RAWREVIEWS
BOOKS
BASTOKALYPSE
STINK LIKE DOG
by M.S. Bastian & Isabelle L. Scheidegger & Speiss Publishers firma.bastian@bluewin.ch
by Etienne Le Comte Art Schism, Brighton, UK, 2013. www.stinklikedog.com
is book-shaped artwork is a continuous concertina page that reproduces a massive black and white canvas by two Swiss artists, M.S. Bastian and Isabelle L., which has been 10 years in the making. e graphic-style painting is on 32 canvases that together form a frieze 1 x 51.2 meters long and which has been shown around Switzerland since 2009. It has a text-like quality about it, because it is black and white and because it draws on so many allusions and references to lowand high-brow art and ideas. ese allusions, and the images themselves, form narrative strands that start and stop at different places, like a “make your own adventure” story in the midst of armageddon. Containing images from ancient myths and modernism, fantasy (the minotaur) and reality (the twin towers), literature and history, art (Hieronymus Bosch) and pop culture (Mickey Mouse), everything is interwoven in a frenetic melee of dynamic forms punctuated by “POW!” and “UNF!”. Poring over it, you can continue to pick out different images and narrative strands over several “readings”. e weight of the inevitable apocalypse – our own mortality, and the social shift from religious apocalypse to scientific end-of-days scenarios from global warming and over-consumption – is explored emphatically and humorously in this priapic, post-modern Guernica for an ADHD generation. – Nuala Ernest
is self-published book by Etienne Le Comte is a glossy 92-page book featuring seventeen years’ worth of intensive drawings. From punk band posters and album covers to small press comics produced on a photocopier, Etienne has built up this dense body of work whilst holding down any old job that paid and allowed him time to draw. He describes this book as the screenplay for an animated film he has developed, perhaps losing the plot (in more ways than one) along the way. Etienne describes the storyline as open-ended so that anything he draws can be loosely connected to the plot. Each drawing he produces takes on a different form of imagery with his work often covering the entire piece of paper. ere are also full colour photos of his murals, with the longest taking three months to complete. e imagery featured in the book is drawn from Etienne’s mind, with him often getting lost in the work for hours, days and sometimes weeks. In terms of drawing materials Etienne uses a variety of mediums, whatever appears to be at hand – rotring pens, uni pin fine line pens, pentel markers and tippex. His artwork is, more often than not, black and white, with only a few showing hints of colour. With each A3 piece taking several months to complete, it appears Etienne hides smaller stories in his imagery, which require the viewer to study them in detail. Other images have complicated ways of telling simple jokes or storylines that take you on a journey around the page. Some
of the drawings are annotated in a smaller explanatory 24-page book called ‘Lithuanian Cyborg Ninja Kick-MurderSquad vs. e Evil Dead.’ – Jennifer Gilbert
FOLK ART e New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 23 Edited by Carol Crown and Cheryl Rivers University of North Carolina Press, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-8078-3442-8 Muddy mangrove roots and “his n’ hers” broken rocking chairs cover this encyclopedia. ey jar against the plain white background; perhaps they are in a gallery. ey also bring that gorgeous sinister, sultry Southern Gothic feel, which is carried through Folk Art. With its impeccable research and palpable academic passion, all aspects of Southern folk art are discussed. Reading it, my head is left swimming with Southern history and whirligigs, art cars, gravestone carving, musical instruments and memory jugs. It was written in conjunction with another in the series, Art and Architecture, with the narrow waters between folk and fine art being muddied as some artists are listed in both. An impeccably researched tome (with a few colour plates, but mainly text), Folk Art brings together all of the different folk art-forms (with examples of artists), then biographies of the artists and their works. e book opens with a Faulkner quote: “Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.” en, it goes on to tell us all. – Nuala Ernest RAW VISION 80
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