Raw Vision 85

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RAWVISION84 WINTER 2014/15

EDITOR John Maizels DIRECTORS Henry Boxer, Robert Greenberg, Audrey Heckler, Rebecca Hoffberger, Phyllis Kind, Frank Maresca, Richard Rosenthal, Bob Roth ART EDITOR Maggie Jones Maizels SENIOR EDITOR Edward M. Gómez FEATURES EDITOR Nuala Ernest ASSOCIATE EDITOR Natasha Jaeger ACCOUNTS MANAGER Judith Edwards SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER Suzy Daniels US ASSISTANT Ari Huff FRENCH EDITOR Laurent Danchin CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Michael Bonesteel, Jenifer P. Borum, Roger Cardinal, Ted Degener, Jo Farb Hernandez, Tom Patterson, Colin Rhodes, Charles Russell ADVERTISING MANAGER Kate Shanley ArtMediaCo, Sales & Marketing 799 Broadway #224 NY NY 10003 917 804 4642 ArtMediaCompany@gmail.com

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 West 72nd Street, #414, New York, NY 10023 (standard envelopes only) BUREAU FRANÇAIS 37 Rue de Gergovie, 75014 Paris tel +33 (0) 1 40 44 96 46 ISSN 0955-1182

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RAW NEWS Outsider events and exhibitions around the world.

RAW COLLECTING A glimpse of Audrey Heckler’s collection in New York.

JULIAN MARTIN Unique pastel works by Australian self-taught artist.

LARRY LEWIS’S PATENT MEDICINE Strong, playful collages of femininity.

RONALD LOCKETT’S FLOWERS Dark, archaeological works exploring death and memorialisation.

MARIA PRIMACHENKO A celebrated Ukrainian naive artist.

THE DREAMS OF TAIWANESE PENSIONERS Three very different environments.

EMMA HAUCK Unrequited love letters written from inside an institution.

SOLANGE KNOPF The delicate yet dramatic drawings of the Belgian artist.

RICHARD SHARPE SHAVER The artist’s personal science theories.

RAW STUDIOS A look at Little City studios from Illinois.

MOVIE ROUND UP A look at recent films and DVDs on outsider art.

RAW REVIEWS Exhibitions, events and books.

GALLERY & MUSEUM GUIDE A round-up of notable venues around the world.

COVER IMAGE: Julian Martin, Untitled (stars), 2013

Raw Vision (ISSN 0955-1182) December 2014 is published quarterly (March, June, September, December) by Raw Vision Ltd, PO Box 44, Watford WD25, 8LN, UK and distributed in the USA by Mail Right Inc., 1637 Stelton Road 84, Piscataway, NJ 08854. Periodical Postage Paid at Piscataway, NJ, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster send address corrections to Raw Vision c/o Mail Right International Inc., 1637 Stelton Road 84, Piscataway, NJ 08854. USA subscription office: 119 72nd Street, #414, New York, NY 10023. (Standard envelopes only).

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM VISIONARY AWARD

WORLD’S BEST ART MAGAZINE

UTNE INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD

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.

Subscribe online @ www.rawvision.com or fill in the form on page 79.

MEDAILLE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS


RAWNEWS

FRANCE, GERMANY

ROCK N ROLL

GALERIE ART CRU BERLIN

May 29 – Oct 11 Following a donation of 45 works Henry Darger: 1892–1973 recreates the artist’s imaginary world and is complemented by loans from international collections including Darger’s 3-metre-long masterpiece, The Battle of Calverhine which will be on show for the first time in France.

April 2 – May 9 Rock ‘n’ Roll Folk Art brings together artists from the Deep South, the cradle of rural blues, between Memphis and the Mississippi Delta. ese self-taught artists are still influenced by the Creole culture of New Orleans and the Louisiana bayous of the swamp.

Apr 29 – May 22 Henrik Zoltan Dören expresses his view of the world in an elaborate system of colours, signs, symbols and inscriptions, creating vibrant artworks. Also at Galerie Art Cru Berlin, from March 20 until April 23, White Faces features the highly expressive clay sculptures of heads by Brunolupo.

Henry Darger

Henrik Zoltan Dören

DARGER EXHIBITION IN PARIS

LA POP GALERIE MUSÉE D’ART MODERNE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS

A l'Espace Félix

GALERIE ART CRU BERLIN

11 Avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris, FRANCE

2 quai Général Durand

Oranienburger Straße 27, 10117 Berlin-Mitte, GERMANY

www.mam.paris.fr

Sète, FRANCE

www.art-cru.de

CRÉATION FRANCHE

LE COEUR AU VENTRE

KUNSTHAUS KANNEN

Apr 17 – Jun 7 Two parallel solo exhibitions feature the works of French artists Catherine Dupire and Pol Jean.

until Apr 25 Works by Christine Coste and Petra Schwanse are shown at Le Coeur au Ventre.

until May 31 Bilder aus der Sammlung: Paul Weidemann, Heinrich Büning and Hans-Georg Kastilan features a selection of drawings of houses and old-fashioned writing.

FRANCHE 58 Avenue du Maréchal de

Hans-Georg Kastilan

MUSÉE DE LA CRÉATION

Christine Coste

Vladimir

Pol Jean

Petra Schwanse

Apr 27 – May 30 Works by self-taught painter Vladimir will be shown at Musée de l'Art en Marche, Lapalisse.

Paul Weidemann

ART EN MARCHE

L’ART EN MARCHE

Lattre de Tassigny, 33130

LE COEUR AU VENTRE

9 Avenue du Huit Mai,

Bègles, FRANCE

27 rue Tramassac

KUNSTHAUS KANNEN

03120 Lapalisse, FRANCE

www.musee-

Place de la Trinité 69005

Alexianerweg 9, 48163 Münster, GERMANY

art-en-marche.fr

creationfranche.com

Lyon, FRANCE

www.kunsthaus-kannen.de

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RAWNEWS MUSEUM HAUS CAJETH

MUSEUM HAUS CAJETH Haspelgasse 12, 69117

EUROPEAN OUTSIDER ART CONFERENCE

ART BRUT JAPAN AT MUSÉE VISIONNAIRE

May 28 – Jun 1 This year’s International EOA Conference, titled Heterotopias: Outsider Environments in Europe, will take place in Sicily. Curated by the Osservatorio Outsider Art, it will be an itinerant conference that will start in Palermo and move on to visit different sites. Chaired by Thomas Röske, other speakers will include Eva di Stefano, Roger Cardinal and Leslie Umberger.

Apr 1 – Jul 26 Musée Visionnaire will show more than 100 works by 20 contemporary Japanese art brut artists, following on from the exhibition Art Brut – Japan – Switzerland at Museum im Lagerhaus last year. Artists will include Yu Fujita, Masao Obata, Shinichi Sawada and Takashi Shuji, complemented with photographs by Mario Del Curto.

Yu Fujita

Giovanni Cammarata’s site in Messina, Italy

Germain Van der Steen

until Jun 26 Masterpieces of naive and outsider art from a private collection are presented in Mit Herzblut gemalt [Painted with Heart and Soul]. Includes work by Emerik Feješ, Louis Vivin and Josef Wittlich.

GERMANY, ITALY, NETHERLANDS, SWITZERLAND

MUSEE VISIONNAIRE

Heidelberg, GERMANY www.cajeth.de

Predigerplatz 10, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland www.outsiderartsicilia.com

www.museevisionnaire.ch

HERENPLAATS

PASCAL TASSINI AND ÉRIC DERKENNE

Apr 30 – Aug 16 The Miracle in the Shoe Insole, curated by Dr. Kylikki Zacharias, offers the surrealists’ view on the artwork of “madmen”. Some of these 120 masterpieces by 42 artists will be shown for the first time.

Apr 3 – May 31 Visible Inner Worlds features the artwork of Ronald Schriel, Adri Goedendorp, Maarten Wendrich and Siew Wai Chong.

until May 10 A selection of textile sculptures and writings by Belgian artist Pascal Tassini are being shown, along with photographs by Mario Del Curto and a film by Christophe Hella showing Tassini at work. A parallel exhibition features the ballpoint pen drawings of Éric Derkenne, also from Belgium.

HERENPLAATS

Éric Derkenne

GALERIE ATELIER

Pascal Tassini

August Natterer

Ronald Schriel

SURREALISTS AT PRINZHORN COLLECTION

PRINZHORN COLLECTION

Schiedamse Vest 56–58,

Klinik für Allgemeine Psychiatrie, Universitätsklinikum

3011 BD Rotterdam,

Heidelberg, Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg, GERMANY

THE NETHERLANDS

COLLECTION DE L’ART BRUT, Avenue Bergières 11,

sammlung-prinzhorn.de

www.herenplaats.nl

1004 Lausanne SWITZERLAND. www.artbrut.ch

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RAWNEWS

SWITZERLAND, USA

GREY CARTER

Apr 11, 2015 – Apr 2016 Vibrant, colourful paintings by the late Florida outsider artist Eddy Mumma (“Mr. Eddy”) are presented in Mr. Eddy Lives! Mr. Eddy was a recluse and double amputee whose solace and delight was in the production of his joyful paintings. This is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of Mr. Eddy’s work to date with 118 paintings on display.

through May Dense, psychological ink drawings by Cuban self-taught artist Joaquín Pomés Figueredo will be shown through May 2015.

MUSEUM IM LAGERHAUS

THE AMERICAN VISIONARY ART MUSEUM

OF ART, 1126 Duchess

Davidstrasse 44, CH-9000 St Gallen, SWITZERLAND

800 Key Highway, Baltimore, MD 21230

Drive, McLean, VA 22102

www.museumimlagerhaus.ch

avam.org

www.greyart.com

Mr. Eddy

Joaquín Pomés Figuered

MR. EDDY SHOW AT AVAM

Apr 21 – Oct 18 In April 2014, the Museum im Lagerhaus acquired the collection of Mina and Josef John. The collection comprises approximately 1,000 works of Swiss outsider art and includes the largest private collection of pieces by cement sculptor Ulrich Bleiker, objects by Paul Schlotterbeck, fantastical musical instruments by Max Goldinger and giant airplanes by Ernst Kummer. For 6 months, the Museum im Lagerhaus will show a comprehensive overview of the John Collection.

Max Goldinger

MUSEUM IM LAGERHAUS

GREY CARTER-OBJECTS

ICA BOSTON

SANDRA SHEEHY AND ANNA ZEMÁNKOVÁ

Apr 12 – Sep 6 In Singular Spaces: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments, photographs by Jo Farb Hernández document the art environments of eight self-taught artists

until May 10 When the Stars Begin to Fall: Imagination and the American South, a group show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, examines black experience in the South. Works by outsider artists such as Bessie Harvey, J. B. Murray and Henry Ray Clark are shown alongside contemporary artists.

until Aug 30 In Sandra Sheehy and Anna Zemánková: Botanical, the works of Sheehy (UK, b. 1965) and Zemánková (Czech, 1908–1986) are displayed together, conveying mystical and metaphorical aspects of the botanical world.

Bessie Harvey

Josep Pujiula i Vila’

Joe Minter, ornton Dial (background)

until Dec 20 History Refused to Die at the newly named Alabama Contemporary Art Center features over 75 works by Alabama self-taught artists from the collection of William S. Arnett and the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.

SINGULAR SPACES

Anna Zemáanková

ALABAMA ARTISTS

ALABAMA

from Spain.

CONTEMPORARY ART

FOWLER MUSEUM AT

INSTITUTE OF

CENTER, 301 Conti St,

UCLA, 308 Charles E

CONTEMPORARY ART

JOHN MICHAEL KOHLER ARTS CENTER

Mobile, AL 36602

Young Dr N, Los Angeles

100 Northern Ave, Boston,

608 New York Avenue, Sheboygan, WI 53081

centreforthelivingarts.com

CA 90024 www.fowler.ucla.edu

MA 02210. www.ica.org

www.jmkac.org

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THE LEGENDARY NEK CHAND CELEBRATES HIS 90TH BIRTHDAY The world’s most celebrated self-taught artist working today reaches a milestone and continues to refine his monumental Rock Garden By M. S. AULAKH

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n December 15, 2014, the Chandigarh Administration celebrated Nek Chand’s 90th birthday in the sprawling, open-air theatre of his 25-acre Rock Garden. The artist’s family members, as well as friends, fans, art connoisseurs, media representatives and government officials, came to congratulate the legendary creator and wish him a long and healthy life. Even at his advanced age, Chand hopes to add more beauteous sights to his fantasy garden, which has won great acclaim as a marvel in the world of art and architecture. Over the years, Chand has received numerous awards for this great work, including, for example, the Médaille Grand Vermeil de la Ville de Paris in 1980, and the Padam Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honours, which was bestowed upon the artist in 1984. For his project for the Capital Children’s Museum in Washington, DC, in 1986, Chand won a special

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award from the Washington Building Congress, and the Freedom of the City of Baltimore, Maryland. Today, while Chand’s mortal frame may lack the youthful energy it once enjoyed, his psyche and


clockwise from left Nek Chand, surrounded by family and well-wishers, cuts his birthday cake, photo: Manoj Mahajan; over 200 life-size figures wait to be installed, photo: John Maizels; completed sculptures at the workshop area; Nek Chand is driven by his son, Anuj Saini, in a golf cart presented by the Nek Chand Foundation, photo: Manoj Mahajan

willpower are still strong. Uprooted from Berian, his native village in what is now Pakistan, as a result of the partition of India in 1947, the young Nek Chand joined the caravan of his tribe of displaced people who left their

homeland, uncertain about where they would go and what their future held. Chand’s family settled temporarily on the outskirts of Gurdaspur, a city in the far north of Punjab. Later, the refugees’ shelters were ordered to be removed because a cantonment (temporary quarters for troops) was to be built for Indian Army units near the India–Pakistan border. Consequently, Chand’s family had to move again. As a result of these early migrations, the young and sensitive Nek Chand’s psyche was badly bruised. He developed a pensive state of mind and became introverted. He dreamed of building a version of his lost home in a secluded place beyond the reach of the authorities who manage the mortal world according to their whims and fancies. After settling into the job of roads inspector for Chandigarh’s public works department, in the early 1960s Chand began developing his vision of a world of RAW VISION 85

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EMBODIED MEANING: THE WORK OF JUDITH SCOTT By CHARLES RUSSELL

We have neglected the gift of comprehending things through our senses. Concept is divorced from percept, and thought moves among abstractions. Our eyes have been reduced to instruments with which to identify and to measure; hence we suffer a paucity of ideas that can be expressed in images and an incapacity to discover meaning in what we see. – Rudolf Arnheim (1)

J

udith Scott’s sculptures are powerful, silent presences. They enter our space – as we enter theirs – existing as independent beings seemingly sufficient unto themselves, suggesting the committed spirit of their creator, to resonate in us deeply. Critics and viewers often find themselves evoking organic, physiological references, or comparing the works with sculptural creations of other cultures and artists. Such comparisons, whether with Kongo Nkisi, the Philadelphia Wireman, or contemporary mainstream artists such as Martin Puryear and Franz West, simultaneously speak of the viewer’s art-history and cultural knowledge and spur speculations about the possibility of primary phenomenological experiences that are common across cultures.

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The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum recently presented the first major survey of the work of the American selftaught artist Judith Scott (1943–2005), which examined the evolution of her use of materials and techniques. A longtime participant in the studio art programme at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California, Scott began making art at the age of 44. She had Down’s syndrome, was deaf and did not speak.

Untitled, 2003–04, fibre and found objects 56 x 28 x 12 ins., 142.2 x 71.1 x 30.5 cm Creative Growth Art Center, Oakland, CA photo: Benjamin Blackwell

As viewers, we find ourselves seeking to identify how these mysterious works speak, and of what, for it is evident that we are moved and transformed by them in the sense that Arthur Danto spoke of when he asserted that “the transformation of ordinary persons onto another plane is one of the great effects of art.” We are lifted to a plane of more intense and expanded awareness, enriched by a sense of greater clarity and understanding than we normally experience. For Danto, viewers “embody” the meanings the artworks have come to bear through the acts of their creators. “Like the viewers they transform, [artworks] themselves are embodied meanings. To see [the work] as art is to undergo a transformation corresponding to the transformation of the materials of the work undergo: ‘viewer’ and work are together RAW VISION 85

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SINGULAR SPACES The self-built art environments of Spain, and their creators By JO FARB HERNÁNDEZ

A

rt environments in Spain – like those the world over – display a wide range of forms, reflect different aesthetic outlooks and have been constructed using a variety of media. Some are monumental architectural structures, such as the 86,000-square-foot cathedral built by Justo Gallego Martínez (b. 1925) in Madrid, or the castle of Serafín Villarán (1935–1998), which he, his daughter Yolanda and her husband Luis Miguel Fernández constructed in Cebolleros. Others consist of groupings of sculptures, such as the figures of Máximo Rojo (1912–2006) in Alcolea del Pinar or the fantasy creatures of Peter Buch (b. 1938) in Pobla de Benifassá. Still others take the forms of park-like grottos, like O Pasatempo in Betanzos, which was made by Juan María García Naveira (1849–1933), or decorated interiors or exteriors, such as

an environment in Barbastro that includes stone carvings, made by José Foncillas Ribera (b. 1928), or La Casa de las Conchas (The House of Shells) by Manuel Fulleda Alcaraz (b. 1933), in Rojales, or another Casa de las Conchas, in Montoro, by Francisco del Río Cuenca (1926–2010). There are shrines, like the Xardín Paraíso (Garden of Paradise) of Raúl Viqueira (b. 1947), in Laraño, and personal museums, like the Museo del Mar “Las Caracolas”, in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, constructed by José María Garrido (1925–2011). Assemblages of found, natural or created objects include a stone environment in Villatoro, crafted by Manuel Garrido Villalba (b. 1926), and the Museo de Man, which Manfred Gnädinger (1936–2002) built on the rocky shores of the Cantabrian coast in Camelle. The sites are all idiosyncratic, personal and unique

left and below: The garden of German-born Peter Buch in Pobla de Benifassà. A former housepainter, Buch bought a property in Castellón in 1985 and started to form local rocks and earth into structures and creatures before covering them with concrete, broken tiles and other found materials. Later, he made iron frames to support them. Buch’s site is 3.5 hectares in size. It features ten buildings and hundreds of animals and figures. It is open to visitors, but few make the uphill trek to this remote part of Castellón all photos by Jo Farb Hernández

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A KEEN OBSERVER OF THE BRAZILIAN SCENE With compassion and an eye for detail, Zica Bérgami created a lively visual portrait of her homeland By EDWARD M. GÓMEZ

above: Cidade (City), 1981, ink on paper, 24.8 x 34.25 ins., 63 x 87 cm

M

aria Elisa Campiotti Bérgami (1913–2011) was born in Ibitinga, a small town in the centre of the state of São Paulo, in southern Brazil, whose embroidery industry has played a large part in the local economy since the 1960s, displacing its earlier reliance on agriculture and cattle-raising. Her parents had come to Brazil from Italy. Known as “Zica”, she grew up from an early age in the city of São Paulo where her appreciation of rural settings as well as her sharp eye for the details of urban life richly informed her visual art and helped give her pictures their distinctive character. In São Paulo, Bérgami lived in districts in which vestiges of traditional Brazilian life and the older urban landscape could still be found. In 1938, encouraged by her husband, an attorney, who gave her a piano as a gift,

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opposite, top: Cidade 2 (City 2), 1980, ink on paper, 14.17 x 20.07 ins., 36 x 51 cm

she began studying music. Her warm-hearted view of the big city was reflected in Lampião de Gás (Gas Streetlight), a nostalgia-tinged song she wrote in 1957. e Brazilian singer Inezita Barroso recorded this appealing waltz a year later, and with it scored a big, popular hit. In 1960, the song became a success in Japan when Yoko Abe performed and recorded the song in a Japanese translation. e Brazilian musicologist and music journalist José Eduardo Homem de Mello once called Lampião de Gás “the most beautiful song ever written about São Paulo”. Bérgami, who also wrote poetry, went on to compose dozens of other songs, and in the early 1960s began to draw. Just as her songwriting was characterised


Baile (Dance), 1982, ink on paper, 24.8 x 34.25 ins., 9.45 x 14.57 cm

Saída da escola (Leaving School), 1980, ink on paper, 18.11 x 24 ins., 46 x 61 cm

photos: João Liberato, courtesy Galeria Estação, São Paulo

by a mixture of longing, nostalgia and melancholy, her ink-on-paper drawings of everyday scenes – children playing in parks, traffic flowing along broad avenues (with an occasional head-on collision), agglomerations of high-rise buildings, bicycle races, elegantly dressed couples sweeping across the floors of dance halls – are both charming and reportorial. They are filled with informative visual details, from the shapes and textures of leafy trees to the patterns in the grillwork of a castiron fence or the posture of a respectful supplicant, kneeling to address a priest. During her lifetime, Bérgami showed her artwork in exhibitions in Brazil, Portugal, France, the Netherlands

and other countries, and her work won several significant awards, including a gold medal for its showing in the “Contemporary Brazilian Exhibition” at the 1985 Expofair in Lisbon. In 1989, her self-illustrated memoir, Onde estão os Pirilampos? (Where Are the Fireflies?) was published in Brazil. In it, among many vivid evocations of the unforgettable past that had nurtured her outlook and creative sensibility, the artist and composer of muchloved songs recalled “the poetic little rains, which blessed our old São Paulo” and a “blessed era” in the city that had shaped her, the thought of which prompted “so much yearning and so many memories”. RAW VISION 85

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ON JOHANN FISCHER The self-described “mediocre man” from the community at Gugging, Austria, who produced remarkable, complex drawings By MARIA HÖGER

Life is the Art of Life 2000, 5.8 x 4.1 ins. 14.7 x 10.4 cm all images pencil and coloured pencil, © Privatstiftung Künstler aus Gugging 38

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“B

in ein mäßiger Göttlicher, mäßiger mit zwei Umlaut A u. zwei scharfen Es, bin ein Heimeigener. im Haus der Künstler, ist das zu Hause, ist meine Heimat, weil ich nirgens nicht ankommen nicht konnte. Ich bin ein Tag u. Nacht gemachter. 16. Juni 1967, bin ein mäßiger geblieben; mit einem Umlaut A u. einem scharfen Eß.” (I’m a mediocre divine man, mediocre with two E’s and two D’s, I belong to a home. To the Haus der Künstler, that is my house, my home, because I never could arrive anywhere. I’m made by day and night. June 16, 1967, I’ve remained mediocre; with one E and one D.) Those are the words of Johann Fischer: a man who never managed to arrive, a man “made by day and night”, a man without a home, a “mediocre” man. Fischer was born shortly after World War I and lived through the depression that followed and World War II. His works are complex compositions of interwoven drawn and written elements. His oeuvre is “mediocre” in the sense that it strikes the viewer as not exhilarating, but rather controlled and somewhat distanced. Nevertheless, his pieces have great density and intensity. Author Gerhard Roth has called Fischer the “most underestimated Gugging artist”. Fischer’s second life began on June 16, 1967. This is what the haggard, neatly dressed and combed gentleman with sunken cheekbones explained to his guests over coffee and cake on his 83rd birthday at the Haus der Künstler in Maria Gugging, Lower Austria. Fischer’s first life began in 1919, not far from the above Technician, 1986, 15.8 x 11.8 ins., 40 x 30 cm overleaf Roofing Work, 1998, 40.1 x 28.7 ins., 72.9 x 101.9 cm following page I’m mediocre, sacred..., 1999, 24.5 x 34.5 ins., 62.5 x 88 cm

Haus der Künstler in Gugging, in a tranquil village whose population lived primarily off of viticulture and agriculture. World War I had ended one year earlier and people’s lives were overshadowed by losses and social hardship. Johann Fischer was the third of seven children; his parents owned a small farm and vineyard. He attended primary school and then completed an apprenticeship as a baker. World War II broke out when Johann Fischer was 20 years old. The following year he, like many other young men, was drafted into the German Wehrmacht. He was lucky: he survived, but ended up an American prisoner of war. Six years later he returned to his parents’ farm and eventually took it over. From that point on he became a winegrower, wanted to get married and start a family. Fischer first sought psychiatric treatment at the age of 38. At that time he spoke about a great fortune and oil wells in Venezuela. After a short stay he left the hospital and went back to work as a baker. Shortly thereafter, however, he expressed the belief that his thoughts had been recorded and reproduced in writing. In 1961, four years after his first treatment, Fischer was admitted as a permanent patient to the former Heil und Pflegeanstalt Gugging sanatorium, where he would spend the next 20 years of his life. In 1982, psychiatrist and former director of the Center for Art and Psychotherapy in Gugging, Leo Navratil, invited Fischer to live in the Haus der Künstler and so, at the age of 62, he moved into the “mecca for artists from Gugging”. He quickly felt at home and after a while – inspired by the various ways his colleagues expressed themselves – he picked up pencil and paper. With this, Fischer became the master of his new endeavour and “second life”. He began with simple depictions: using a black coloured pencil to draw people and animals. These were rendered in a style reminiscent of ancient Egyptian images: head and feet depicted strictly from the side, the upper body and one eye facing the RAW VISION 85

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MEMORIALS GROWN FROM CLAY AND INK Cathy Ward’s art is both rebellion and celebration By DOUG HARVEY


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mpossibly intricate, nearly-abstract renderings of hair incised into scratchboard; baroque cut-paper collages sourced from porno mags; an immersive environment of carved and painted trees meticulously encrusted with Germanic kitsch; a decade-long exhaustive photodocumentation of food vans; luminous fin-de-siècle paintings for post-punk record covers; a faux-museological recreation of a neo-paganist secret society initiation chamber; a reenactment of the doomed trek of the Donner Party (minus the actual cannibalism) – unlike many artists classified as “outsider”, Catharyne Ward has passed through a succession of distinct phases more appropriate to the career of a mainstream post-studio conceptualist like Mike Kelley or Rosemarie Trockel. Yet, despite attending the Royal College of Art in London (albeit in ceramics) and hanging with Eduardo left: Surgenesis, 2008 16 x 20 ins., 40.6 x 50.8 cm

above: Gloriend, 2008 9 x 12 ins., 22.9 x 30.5 cm

images courtesy of the artist all works shown are china clay and India ink on board

Paolozzi, she has managed to avoid being shortlisted for the Turner Prize or gracing the cover of Artforum. So far. Such conventional accolades would not be hard to imagine, given the ambition, timeliness, crossdisciplinary panache and sheer visual beauty of the work, but Ward’s forceful idiosyncracy, authentically subversive political undertones and psychological candour – not to mention her labour-intensive craftsmanship – have kept her outsider credibility intact. Perhaps the most well-loved works in Ward's diverse oeuvre are her scratchboard drawings of cascading, contorted masses of hair, which have been likened to the work of Madge Gill and Austin Osman Spare. The somewhat disreputable hobbyist medium – a subtractive, even sculptural, drawing practice where a black India ink surface is scraped away to reveal an underlying layer of white china clay – packs a graphic punch, while coming equipped with a whole set of symbolic connotations. Its palette delivers a stark Victorian vibe and a sense of dreamlike inversion, as with a photographic negative or radiograph, before the first line is even carved out. Once it has, there is a constant undeniable violence to RAW VISION 85

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STEVE MOSELEY Full bottle whimseys that make miniature but strong visual noise By SUSAN D. JONES

photos by Clark Woolsey

above: New Testament Book Signing, 2013, 20 x 6 x 4 ins, 50 x 15 x 10 cm.

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which time he met his future wife. After she earned her doctorate in biochemistry, and the couple’s first child was born, Moseley became a full-time, stay-at-home dad. Feeling the need to take up a hobby, he started making ships in bottles. Later, he met a fellow model-maker and collector who suggested Moseley start creating whimseybottles. Since then, he has not looked back. A couple of years after moving to St Louis, Moseley was diagnosed with Primary Central Nervous System Vasculitis, a rare autoimmune disease. In hospital, he learned that if his body did not respond positively to steroid treatment his life expectancy would be only two weeks. Aware that some artists die before their artwork is discovered, Moseley decided that he did not want his work to meet such a fate. Moseley carves his whimseys from basswood, a straight-grained, soft, white wood. He also uses a twopart clay mixture. He has said that, on average, it takes him about 20 hours to make one of his bottle whimseys, but some require more time. The inspirations for Moseley’s bottles come from a variety of sources. His favourite subjects include sex, religion and politics. Moseley was brought up a Southern Baptist, then attended Roman Catholic mass with his wife early in their marriage, and both religious traditions have inspired his bottles. Moseley portrays subjects that people think about, but might feel too uncomfortable to discuss, and represents them in

s a child, I had a night-light that was a box with a scene in it, lit from behind its painted-plastic background. I loved it so much that I had to take it apart to see all the tiny houses and people inside it, only to find it was an illusion. But this love led me to an art form that became a passion – an art form that few know about and even fewer have ever seen. Objects constructed in bottles are called “bottle whimseys”; to create them, items are placed piece by piece through the neck of a bottle and assembled inside, like a ship in a bottle, though most bottle whimseys do not feature ships. In this folk-art genre, typical objects one might find inside bottles include crucifixion scenes, yarn winders, carved fans and chairs. The first bottle whimsey dates to the 1700s. The making of these bottles flourished from 1880, when glass bottles became plentiful, through the Great Depression. Most whimsey-makers were self-taught and crafted the tools they used. After World War II, whimsey production declined, and today, very few people still make them. Among those who do is the artist Steve Moseley, who was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1964 and now resides in St Louis, Missouri. Moseley does not consider himself an artist, but rather a model-maker. As a teenager, Moseley crafted model airplanes and hung them from his bedroom ceiling. Graduating from the University of Louisville with a degree in chemistry, he worked there for 10 years as a research technician, during 52

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all works are glass bottles, wood, paint and mixed media, c. 13 x 5.1 x 3.1 ins., 33 x 13 x 8 cm

On the 8th Day, 2014

Jesus is the most Manly Man, 2013

Does This Outfit Make My Butt Look Big?, 2012

Victor’s Secret and his Delusion, 2008

How Could You? How Dare You?, 2014

Susan D. Jones has been collecting bottle whimseys since 1990, and is the author of a book, Genius in a Bottle: The Art and Magic of Bottle Whimseys. sdjones.net/FolkArt/ FolkArt.html Patiencebottles.com

Modern Urban Family, 2015

humorous ways. His subjects include the Catholic childabuse scandal, financial corruption, the hypocrisy of Southern evangelicals, prostitution, racism and transvestites. After numerous brushes with death, Mosely does not care if others are offended by his art, and expects viewers to be unsettled. He has said that his best bottles are the ones that “piss off ” some people and make others laugh, and has seen different reactions from viewers when he has publicly displayed his bottles. Sometimes Moseley’s subjects are people he knows and, feeling no need to

hold onto finished pieces, he mails them to the subjects they portray. He has made bottles for artists such as Dale Chihuly, Ted Gordon, J.J. Cromer and Theresa Disney. I started communicating with Moseley soon after he started making his whimsey bottles, in 2007. I told him I would soon be undergoing open-heart surgery and I would be out of communication for a while. He made a bottle depicting my surgeon and me, and thought it would be funny to portray me with my hospital gown open at the back, exposing my rear end. It is one of my fondest treasures. I plan to be buried with it. RAW VISION 85

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REL EASING NE W AR CHETYPES The mosaic house of George Ehling, Hollywood, California By LILLIAN SIZEMORE

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eorge Ehling is as complex as the mosaic patterns he creates. At 87, he works alone as he has done for 45 years: piecing together scavenged tile to cover a castle-sized home. Ehling’s mosaic work is distinctive for its scope, but also for its playfulness. He is a master “mash-up artist”, like a modern DJ, incorporating classical patterns with modern scrap tile to produce a new language. He cross-pollinates architectural references and global geometric syntax, making an ancient visual grammar buzz with potential. Ehling works alone at his 4,500-square-foot Mediterranean castle overlooking California’s San Fernando Valley, purchased in 1967 with a $9,500 down payment from his father. Ehling allows help only for grouting and rock-setting. He states with pride, “Not one other person has set a single piece of tile on this house”. Like jazz improvisation, Ehling riffs on tradition. Here, a twisting meander of Roman border; there, an optical illusion borrowed from an Islamic tradition. A mad array of tile and glass bottles feels right at home within the vibrant geometric patterns. Any surface might contain scraps of hand-glazed iridised blue tile, angular bits of outdated kitchen floor tile, authentic Mexican Talavera, and a batch of leftover bathroom tiles deposited at the curb by a well-meaning neighbour. Not all the tile is repurposed. He explains, “The beige field tile is made in England, it was discontinued, and I bought 6,000 square feet at $1.75, including shipping all the way to Anaheim from New Jersey. I cut all the pieces by hand with nippers and a tile stripper, that was before I had my saw. The garbage-can stuff is all the colors.” Ehling was born in San Francisco, California on May 17, 1927, to German parents who had emigrated from Romania. Beginning at age 6, Ehling endured a period in orphanages and schools where he describes beatings and humiliations by the “sadistic nuns”. At age 15, he saw the famous body builder, Jack Lalanne, and was so impressed he began lifting weights to emulate him. By his twenties, with his physique in top condition, he 54

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made his way to Europe working as an exposition boxer and a movie extra for Cinecittà in Rome. Recycled broken tile is a practical and preferred medium for many designers of fantasy environments, from Simon Rodia and Raymond Isidore to Nek Chand. A technique known as “trencadis”, a randomly-set broken tile used in the architectural setting, was popularised at Park Güell by Antoní Gaudí and Josep Maria Jujol in the 1920s. Today, these environments are pilgrimage sites for mosaic lovers the world over. Indeed, Ehling started by trying out just that style. “I tried the random tile setting but that was before I knew just what I was doing. That was in my infancy.” Ehling added a level of technical originality that goes far beyond random breaks. Ehling’s capacity for interpreting pattern is mindblowing. He reworks ancient patterns, assimilating disparate materials to accommodate his thriftiness, ultimately transcending time and place. But Ehling doesn’t just copy ancient patterns: he uses the geometrics in his own voice. He will carefully study a Cosmati floor from Venice and, in true scavenger style, re-envision it with hundreds of green and blue glass bottles, carefully sliced on his beloved wet saw. He is free to improvise, but always stays true to a pattern’s origins. What he reproduces, with absolute fidelity, is the underlying structure, the unseen grammar that determines form and sets its style. Every cut piece is saved and categorised in buckets: useable. The interlocking geometrics always work together. Ehling is primarily self-taught, though he fondly remembers when he attended the school in Spilimbergo for a month each summer for three years in the 1980s,

right: main staircase in the foyer after Galla Placidia in Ravenna. The effect is no less stunning than entering the original Byzantine mausoleum photos copyright Auda & Coudayre Photography, 2011–14, except where noted



THE ORIGINS OF CURATING OUTSIDER ART Curators and exhibitions have helped shape the way in which the work of outsider art is perceived By DIETER DE VLIEGHERE

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ixteenth- and seventeenth-century cabinets of curiosities were collections of unusual and intriguing objects from different geographical and cultural backgrounds. Such a cabinet was often regarded as a microcosm or scaled-down version of God’s universe, curated by its owner-collector through categorising, arranging and displaying objects according to his conception of the world. At some point, a collector might have come across the kind of curious object that nowadays might be seen as an example of outsider art – perhaps an odd drawing made by one of his servants or a peculiar graffito on the wall of a nearby asylum – but such a specimen would not have been the sort of “divine” curiosity for which he would have been searching. As a curatorial model, however, the cabinet of curiosities would later play an important role, paving the way for the entrance of outsider art into the exhibition space. By the late eighteenth century, most cabinets of curiosities were split up as a result of science’s increasing separation into specialised disciplines. Their “naturalia” were sent to natural history museums, their “exotica” to museums of ethnology and their “artificalia” to art museums. Instead of looking for rarities and wonders, as cabinet owners did, professional museum curators began to search for classic specimens from their respective disciplines. The impact of curators in the new art museum was powerful, for they “produced” art in the modern sense of the word by “elevating” works to the status of art, works which, until being selected for study and display, primarily had been characterised by their 58

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Musei Wormiani Historia, frontispiece of Ole Worm’s catalogue, showing his cabinet of curiosities, 1655, courtesy Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. RAW VISION 85

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RAW STUDIOS

BETHLEM ART STUDIOS, LONDON

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ethlem Royal Hospital is one of the world’s oldest hospitals for people with mental health problems. Founded in 1247, it became known as “Bedlam” – a word still synonymous with pandemonium. After relocating several times, in 1930 it found a permanent home in Denmark Hill. Bethlem’s facilities now include its Archives, Gallery and Museum of the Mind, all of whose activities relate to mental health. The Museum’s collection includes objects and artefacts relating to the history of mental illness, as well as spectacular works by previous patient-artists Richard Dadd (1817–1886), William Kurelek (1927–1957), Jonathan Martin (1782– 1838, brother of artist John), Louis Wain (1860–1939) and Von Stropp (b. 1962). Once Dadd was admitted to Bethlem in 1844, a century before any formal concept of art therapy was devised, doctors there recognised that providing a space in which he could continue his work was helpful to his well-being and “settled behaviour”. At Bethlem and Broadmoor, Dadd painted his most well-known work, The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke (1855–64). The hospital has art studios in different departments. Its Bethlem Art Studios are run by the Occupational Therapy Department, while its Medium Secure Forensic Unit houses another studio, where acclaimed resident artists Albert and Rodney worked. 64

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above: Albert, Untitled, c. 2009, pencil on paper, 37 x 23.2 ins., 94 x 59 cm below: Patient X, Untitled, 2014, cardboard, tape and perspex, 35.4 x 78.7 x 90 x 74.8 ins., 200 x 190 cm

Bethlem Gallery, in Beckenham, Kent, is developed from these studios and serves artists who are currently at the hospital, as well as people who have used South London and Maudsley NHS Trust’s services. Established in 1997, Bethlem Gallery has gained an international reputation for the originality and talent of


left: Dan Duggan at work in the studio, 2012; above: Rodney, Untitled 1, 2014, Ink, pencil, watercolour and gouache on paper, 15.7 x 23.6 ins., 40 x 60 cm. below: Daniel, Archangel Metatron, 2014, Ink, pencil, watercolour and gouache on paper, 31.5 x 23.6 ins., 80 x 60 cm.

the artists whose works it shows. The studios and the gallery foster a supportive, patient-focused environment, and their small, artistled teams, which manage and facilitate them, provide opportunities for people to develop their practice and experiment with their ideas. In the spring of this year, the Gallery and the Museum of the Mind moved into the refurbished, original Administration Building in the Bethlem Hospital’s grounds; admission to both attractions is free. There is also a studio for workshops and events, which can provide extra exhibition space. This development brings together Bethlem’s art, past and present, and its medical history under one roof. Patients of the hospital often find themselves dealing with traumatic and frightening experiences, while also undergoing intensive therapies and contending with powerful drugs and their side effects. For such individuals, Bethlem’s studio programmes can offer a sense of balance to counteract such forces. Now, Bethlem’s emphasis is on hope and recovery – a far cry from the “Bedlam” of old.

Lee Galpin, a Gallery artist, describes his experience there: “Pills are okay, counselling is okay, and it will get you back on the streets, but what keeps your mind alive is what you learn here. at’s what it’s about – keeping your spirit alive.” Nuala Ernest Bethlem Gallery, Bethlem Royal Hospital, Monks Orchard Road, Beckenham, Kent BR3 3BX, UK. www.bethlemgallery.com RAW VISION 85

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RAWREVIEWS

EXHIBITIONS

Der Amazohn Strom und Amazohn Hall (The Amazon River and Amazon Hall), 1911, pencil and coloured pencil on newspaper, Adolf Wölfli Foundation, Kunstmuseum Bern

ADOLF WÖLFLI adolf wölfli. universum.! Museum Gugging, Maria Gugging, Austria September 17, 2014 – March 1, 2015 Adolf Wölfli (1864–1930), the Swiss artist who occupies a pivotal place in the pantheon of art brut, is the kind of emblematic, prolific figure whose oeuvre could easily command – and benefit from – the attention of a museum of its own. No such institution exists in his homeland, where the Adolf Wölfli Foundation’s holdings, including most of the artist’s known creations, are housed in the Kunstmuseum Bern. ere, only a small room is dedicated to Art Museum in New York in 2003 and in France at the Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art in 2011. “adolf wölfli. universum.!” offered another illuminating Wölfli survey. Organised by Daniel Baumann, former curator of the Adolf Wölfli Foundation, and Johann Feilacher, director of Museum Gugging, to 66

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commemorate the 150th anniversary of Wölfli’s birth, the show was not accompanied by a catalogue, but wall texts summarised Wölfli’s life story, noting that he had been born in rural, west-central Switzerland, abandoned by his father and, both before and after his mother’s death, obliged to work as a farm labourer in harsh circumstances. In 1895, after having twice served jail time for attempted rape, he was sent to the Waldau Psychiatric Clinic near Bern, where he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. There, until the end of his life, he produced 45 large-format, handmade, text-and-image-filled books; more than a dozen notebooks; and hundreds of single-sheet drawings. Divided into several different sections, this collective work tells a fantasy story of the creation of the universe by Wölfli’s alter ego “St Adolf ”, and mythologises the artist’s childhood. The Gugging exhibition showed how Wölfli started by making drawings with intricate compositions, like Rückkehr aus Sibirien (Return from Siberia, 1905), using only plain pencil on newsprint sheets. Later, he

developed more elaborate pictures that incorporated sophisticated, decorative patterning and symbols, as well as collaged elements and his own unusual musical notation. Examples on view of such works, made using pencil and/or coloured pencil on newsprint or paper, included Skt. Adolf Graab Quellen Schloss (St Adolf Grave Springs Castle, 1918) and Beim Gottes Dienst in Steiermark (At the Church Service in Steiermark, 1917). Today, musicologists still have not figured out exactly how the Wölfli’s compositions should be played (see “Wölfli’s ‘Sound Pieces’”, RV #75). At a time when the market for selftaught artists’ works is hungrier than ever for discoveries of fresh bodies of work that might display even some of the attributes of classic art brut, “universum.!” served as a vivid reminder of just how original and powerful the creativity of Wölfli was – and how enduring its mystery and impact are in the hard-to-classify field his art helped define. Edward M. Gómez


EXHIBITIONS

Jesse Howard

Mary Barnes, courtesy: Dr J. Berke, photo: Ollie Harrop

RAWREVIEWS

JESSE HOWARD Thy Kingdom Come Contemporary Art Museum St Louis, St Louis, Missouri January 16 – April 11, 2015, 2015 Jesse Howard (1885–1983) lived and worked north of the small town of Fulton, Missouri, for nearly 40 years. Throughout the 20 acres of his compound, Howard posted text-based works, expounding his beliefs and preoccupations in tight, block letters on largely wooden boards. Howard’s property was often the target of vandals or pranksters and as his work was defaced or stolen, his signage became even more vitriolic. In this thoughtful exhibition, curated by Jeffrey Uslip, Howard’s work is presented in groupings that reflect his primary concerns – political, religious and personal – and that underscores his commitment to free speech. Howard made an art form out of his outrage, introducing words painted red amid sentences of compressed letters in mostly black paint as a way of highlighting ideas. The red words are seemingly random, but if read with an emphasis, or, say, a musical direction like forza, you can hear this evangelist/artist’s voice and his exhortations and rants. Howard also employed manicules – the pointing hand symbol printers have used for years as a way of drawing attention to something – to literally point the finger at issues or people. Also on view are some of Howard’s rare assemblages, made of salvaged objects, including the striking The Saw

and The Scroll (1977–78), where a biblical-based text is painted on a long, crosscut saw and placed over a handpainted, rectangular canvas. There are also photographs of Howard’s compound, known as Sorehead Hill, so we get a sense of the densely populated nature of his property. Sorehead Hill was dismantled after Howard’s death in 1983. In one image, the artist stands tall on a ladder in front of a makeshift wall of about a dozen signs, staring down viewers for eternity. Ruth Lopez

MARY BARNES Boo-Bah The Nunnery, Bow Arts, London 16 January – 29 March 2015 The works in this exhibition, created by prolific outsider artist Mary Barnes (1923–2001), were predominantly from the collection of Dr Joseph Berke; the late artist’s therapist and friend. The show was named in honour of the pair’s relationship, following Barnes’ nicknaming of Berke ‘Boo-Bah’ in a metre-high love letter that appeared in the Nunnery display. Barnes’ close relationship with Berke came after she moved to Kingsley Hall in 1965, following a diagnosis of schizophrenia. At Kingsley Hall, she joined the Philadelphia Association which was an alternative treatment community created by psychiatrist R. D. Laing and colleagues. At this time, Berke came to work for Laing as a recent graduate. Their bond was strong, and has been

immortalised in a book co-authored by the artist and Berke entitled Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey through Madness, and dramatised in the play Mary Barnes by David Edgar. It was, in fact, Berke who introduced Barnes to art-making, providing her with crayons and encouraging her to paint with her fingers at the height of her illness. From the exhibition, it seems Barnes’ nature- and religion-inspired works can be split into two distinctive styles. Either dry, scratchy black marks carving out shadows and shapes onto the paper; or bold, gnarled colours through which faces and figures emerge. There were a couple of exceptions to this, namely three paintings in which bright colour bursts outwards, instead of curling and caving inwards. Some longer pieces showed the glimpses of empty paper to be just as much an integral part of the piece as the brushstrokes of paint themselves. The artist’s voice and personality and her relationship with Berke was strong throughout the show, with images narrating her later life, when she would travel the world, lecturing on art and mental health and exhibiting her work. Also a writer and a poet, her words were a prominent part of the show; for example, a piece that saw the merging of visual art and storytelling – aimed at children – that spoke of a baby bear who had experienced a nasty bee sting. The exhibition was fittingly held in Bow, East London, bringing Barnes’ work home to where her artistic career began back in the 1960s. Kate Davey RAW VISION 85

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RAWREVIEWS

FILM

Adamson in Netherne studio, and a later portrait at Ashton Wold

ABANDONED GOODS The Adamson Collection

See “Art as Healing: Edward Adamson” by David O’Flynn, RV #72

created huge plaster reliefs with a cathedral installation in mind, talks about the feelings behind her work, and we see the classic toilet-paper drawings of J. J. Began being installed at “Raw Vision: 25 ans d’art brut”, in Halle Saint Pierre, Paris. The eerie painted flints of Gwyneth Rowlands are introduced by Adamson himself. Adamson was fastidious about preserving his patients’ work, gathering about 100,000 items. A few years after he retired, the hospital was closed down and then demolished for development; some works were lost, but, luckily, most survive. When David O’Flynn took over as Chair of the Collection in 2006, he found around 4,500 unframed works stored haphazardly in cupboards and an old shower room in Lambeth Hospital, South London, as well as 500 small/medium sculptures. Today, the Adamson Collection is acknowledged as Britain’s most important collection of patient art and at last is being conserved and exhibited. The Wellcome Library in London has recently opened a display of Rowlands’ flints in their newly renovated Reading Room, a gallery/library/event space, and Lambeth Hospital displays 100 objects in a huge, bespoke glass cabinet. Recently, the Adamson Collection Trust were invited to host a special

David O’Flynn speaking at the House of Commons, 2015

Edward Adamson was the pioneer of art as therapy in Britain, and this short film is a fascinating study of the emergence and development of his work at Netherne Hospital, Surrey, between 1946 and 1981. So far, accolades for Abandoned Goods include winning the Golden Leopard award at the Locano Film Festival and being selected for the Sundance 2015 documentary section. The variety of voices and imagery used in the film – photographs, historical footage and clinical notes; audio recordings of past patients, Chair of the Adamson Collection Trust David O’Flynn, and Adamson himself – build up a powerful impression of life at Netherne. O’Flynn explains that the large mental hospitals built in rural Britain were originally idealistic experiments, to give patients a healthy life that would lead to their recovery. However, the hospitals soon suffered from official neglect and many patients were forgotten as they languished for decades. Former patients describe feeling as though they were “on the way out” and had been left to die. People in UK asylums in the 1920s and 1930s are likely to have had “unnecessary organs” removed, such as the spleen, appendix and teeth (treatment recommended by USpsychiatrist Henry Cotton). At meal times, patients had to use “Ward teeth” – dentures, handed out from sterile jars. By 1946, there was an optimism about both the emerging psychosocial interventions and the use of physical treatments, such as electroconvulsive therapy, insulin coma and brain surgery. Containment and physical restraint remained central, and personal belongings were minimal, with less than 30 per cent of patients having more than five possessions. e art studio at Netherne originally started as a way to find out more about schizophrenia, of which little was known, and how a patient’s graphic work, carried out under controlled conditions, could help to analyse their condition. Adamson soon realised that the very activity of art-making had great benefits and subverted the scientific programme to establish a genuine haven of expression for his patients. Sculptress Rolanda Polonksy, who

100 objects from the Adamson Collection in the cabinet at Lambeth Hospital

Fly Film, London (www.flyfilm.co.uk) dirs: Pia Borg, Edward Lawrenson 36 minutes

evening at the House of Commons where works were introduced. Over 100 selected artworks have been reproduced by the Wellcome Library as high-quality prints, to be installed at Lambeth Hospital and also exhibit. Martine Lusardy of Halle Saint Pierre notes that the way the Collection “is looked at has changed. It’s no longer a clinical gaze, but an aesthetic and artistic one. The work has changed status, which changes the status and identity of the people who created it. They are given back their place among human beings.” As Adamson says, patients “had to express themselves. It was a very urgent thing; they wanted to draw.” And, by collecting the works, he preserved and restored their humanity. adamsoncollection@gmail.com http://wellcomecollection.org/adamson-collection www.slam.nhs.uk/adamson RAW VISION 85

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