RAWVISION91 AUTUMN/FALL 2016
EDITOR John Maizels DIRECTORS Henry Boxer, Robert Greenberg, Audrey Heckler, Rebecca Hoffberger, Phyllis Kind, Frank Maresca, Richard Rosenthal, Bob Roth ART EDITOR Maggie Jones Maizels SENIOR EDITOR Edward M. Gómez FEATURES EDITOR Nuala Ernest ASSOCIATE EDITOR Nick Petty ACCOUNTS MANAGER Judith Edwards SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER Suzy Daniels ADVERTISING MANAGER Michael Gormley FRENCH EDITOR Laurent Danchin
RAW NEWS Outsider events and exhibitions around the world.
OBITUARIES Stephanie Smither and Erkki Pirtola.
RAW COLLECTOR Chicago’s artist-collector Michael Noland.
JOHANN HAUSER The classic star of Gugging’s Haus der Kunstler.
HAWKINS BOLDEN The assemblage scarecrows of blind southern artist.
NIJINSKY The little known work of celebrated ballet dancer.
JOE COLEMAN Interview with the master of the apocalypse.
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Michael Bonesteel, Jenifer P. Borum, Roger Cardinal, Ted Degener, Jo Farb Hernandez, Tom Patterson, Colin Rhodes, Charles Russell PUBLISHED by Raw Vision Ltd PO Box 44, Watford WD25 8LN, UK tel +44 (0)1923 853175 email info@rawvision.com website www.rawvision.com USA 119 West 72nd Street, #414, New York, NY 10023 (Standard envelopes only)
THE CAN HOUSE Embellished property in north of England.
ART AND TRAUMA A study of traumatic effects on two outsider artists.
HOGANCAMP Miniature war scenes in rural New York
RAW REVIEWS Exhibitions and books.
GALLERY & MUSEUM GUIDE ISSN 0955-1182
A round-up of notable venues around the world.
COVER IMAGE: Johann Hauser, Naked Woman with Hat, 1986, (detail), courtesy Museum Gugging.
Raw Vision (ISSN 0955-1182) September 2016 is published quarterly (March, June, September, December) by Raw Vision Ltd, PO Box 44, Watford WD25 8LN, UK, and distributed in the USA by Mail Right Inc., 1637 Stelton Road 84, Piscataway, NJ 08854. Periodical Postage Paid at Piscataway, NJ, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address corrections to Raw Vision c/o Mail Right International Inc., 1637 Stelton Road 84, Piscataway, NJ 08854. USA subscription office: 119 72nd Street, #414, New York, NY 10023. (Standard envelopes only). Raw Vision cannot be held responsible for the return of unsolicited material. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Raw Vision.
AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM VISIONARY AWARD
WORLD’S BEST ART MAGAZINE
UTNE INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD
MEDAILLE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS
R AW N E W S
AUSTRIA, BRITAIN, BELGIUM
OUTSIDE IN CALL FOR ARTWORK
until Jan 8
deadline Nov 4
Stavey Fish
HAUSER AT MUSEUM GUGGING
Johann Hauser
Artists in South West England are invited to submit artwork for a major exhibition. Outside In, Arts & Health South West and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery are working together on Alternative Visions: Undiscovered Art in the South West, which will tour across the region. Deadline for submissions is Friday, November 4. www.outsidein.org.uk
THE GALLERY OF EVERYTHING Oct 5–9
johann hauser ... i‘m the artist!, presents an overview of the artist’s impressive lifework, with over 200 works from his years at Gugging. MUSEUM GUGGING Am Campus 2, A-3400, Maria Gugging, AUSTRIA www.gugging.at
LEJO AND WALLA
The exhibition juxtaposes two artists, Lejo and August Walla, who have disparate approaches to photography yet complement each other. MUSEUM GUGGING Am Campus 2, A-3400, Maria Gugging, AUSTRIA www.gugging.at
Adolf Wölfli
Lejo
Sep 29 – Nov 23
The Gallery of Everything returns to Frieze Masters with le Foyer de l’Art Brut, featuring Aloïse Corbaz, Fleury-Joseph Crépin and Adolf Wölfli. THE GALLERY OF EVERYTHING, Frieze Masters 2016, Stand H4, Regents Park, London, NW1, UK www.gallevery.com
ART & MARGES MUSÉE
Oct 22 - May 28, 2017
Oct 22 - May 28, 2017
Emery Blagdon
Gustav Mesmer
MUSEUM DR. GUISLAIN
A Different World, Laboratory of Illusion and Fantasy will look at the work of five5 artists and their collective balance between art, knowledge and science. MUSEUM DR. GUISLAIN Jozef Guislainstraat 43, 9000 Gent, BELGIUM www.museumdrguislain.be
4
RAW VISION 91
Save the World? presents artists who feel driven to devise imaginary solutions to repair or save the world ART & MARGES MUSÉE 314 rue Haute,1000 Brussels, BELGIUM www.artetmarges.be
R AW N E W S
BRITAIN, FRANCE
JEAN DUBUFFET AT LAM Jun 25 – Jan 8, 2017
Gilbert
Pallant House Gallery will be displaying an installation of small sculpture works by the self-taught Jewish artist Friedrich Nagler. PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY 9 North Pallant, Chichester PO19 1TJ, UK www.pallant.org.uk
Jean Dubuffet
Friedrich Nagler
PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY until Oct 16
The installation Dubuffet. Jean of the Cities, Jean of the Fields will show a selection of paintings and sculptures by Jean Dubuffet. LILLE MÉTROPOLE MUSÉE D’ART MODERNE 1 allée du Musée, 59650 Villeneuve d’Ascq, FRANCE www.musee-lam.fr
BEDLAM: THE ASYLUM AND BEYOND
MICHEL NEDJAR
until Jan 15, 2017
until Oct 23
‘Bedlam: the asylum and beyond’ will explore how the experiences of mental illness and notions of madness have been shaped over centuries, as well as thie possible future. WELLCOME COLLECTION 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE, UK www.wellcomecollection.org
COLLECTION CÉRÈS FRANCO
GILBERT PEYRE Sep 16 – Feb 26, 2017
Michel Macréau
until Oct 31
La Peau et les mots LA COOPÉRATIVECOLLECTION CÉRÈS FRANCO Route d’Alzonne, 11170 Montolieu, FRANCE www.lacooperativecollectionceresfranco. com
6
RAW VISION 91
Gilbert Pierre presents his ‘sculpturemachines’, designed from recovered objects and brought to life. HALLE SAINT PIERRE 2, rue Ronsard, 75018 Paris, FRANCE www.hallesaintpierre.org
Présences will present a large number of drawings, as well as masks and dolls made from recycled fabrics collected during Nedjar’s travels. MUSÉE D’ART ET D’HISTOIRE DU JUDAÏSME Hôtel de Saint-Aignan, 71, rue du Temple, 75003, Paris, FRANCE www.mahj.org
R AW N E W S
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, NETHERLANDS, SWITZERLAND
GALERIE GALERIEART ARTCRU CRUBERLIN BERLIN
PRINZHORN COLLECTION
Until Oct 29
GALERIE HAMER Oct 29 – Dec 31
El Sirio
Paul Goesch Huub Niessen
Galerie ART CRU Berlin is showing drawings by Dutch artist Huub Niessen and objects by Michael Rasmussen from Denmark. GALERIE ART CRU BERLIN PS-Art e.V. Berlin, Oranienburger Str. 27, 10117, Berlin, GERMANY www.art-cru.de
Huub Niessen
until Jan 15, 2017
New Encounters shows works from new and emerging artists including Gijs Ambrosius (The Netherlands), Henry Faust (USA), Amir Kamand (Iran) and Günther Schützenhöfer (Austria). GALERIE HAMER, Leliegracht, 38-NL 1015 DH, Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS www.galeriehamer.nl
Paul Goesch – Between Avant-garde and Asylum has been extended until 2017. PRINZHORN COLLECTION Heidelberg, Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg, GERMANY www.sammlungprinzhorn.de
OPENING OF MUSÉE D’ARTS BRUT from April
NEK CHAND AT LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA until Nov 27
The Musée d’Arts Brut, Singulier et autres opened its doors to the public in April 2016. It features 2500 works of art brut, singular, visionary and self-taught art from over 250 international artists L’ATELIER MUSÉE 1 rue Beau Séjour, 34000 Montpellier, FRANCE www.atelier-musee.com
MUSÉE DE LA CRÉATION FRANCHE
Nek Chand
Barry Kahn
Sep 24 – Nov 20
The Venice Architecture Biennale includes an installation based on Nek Chand’s Rock Garden of Chandigarh. Constructed by Anuj Saini, Nek Chand’s son and brought from India with a selection of sculptures by the great master, it is hoped the sculptures will be able to remain in Italy after the exhibition. LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA, Campo della Tana, 2169/S, 30122 Venezia, ITALY www.labiennale.org
8
RAW VISION 91
Visions et Création Dissidentes includes NYcityscape paintings from Susan Brown and ink illustrations from Barry Kahn. MUSÉE DE LA CRÉATION FRANCHE 58 Avenue du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, 33130 Bègles, FRANCE www.musee-creationfranche.com
R AW N E W S INTUIT until Jan 2, 2017
USA
LOY BOWLIN’S HOLY JEWEL HOME
GREY CARTER until Nov 13
Lonnie Holley
until Dec 31
Intuit revisits the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s groundbreaking 1982 exhibition Black Folk Art in America 1930–1980. INTUIT 756 N Milwaukee Avenue Chicago, IL 60642 www.art.org
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center offers visitors the opportunity to observe, in real time, conservators working on the preservation and conservation of Loy Bowlin’s The Beautiful Holy Jewel Home art environment. JOHN MICHAEL KOHLER ARTS CENTER 608 New York Avenue, Sheboygan, WI 53081 www.jmkac.org
Recent Small Works explores work by JJ Cromer including his new and expanded techniques. JJ Cromer is a self-taught artist from Appalachia and began drawing as an adult shortly after he and his wife were married in 1998. GREY CARTER – OBJECTS OF ART 1126 Duchess Drive McLean, VA 22102 www.greyart.com
HIGH MUSEUM
THE HICKORY MUSEUM OF ART
ongoing
Nov 18 – Mar 5, 2017
The Hickory Museum of Art, in cooperation with Grey Carter-Objects of art, will present the work of self-taught artist Paul Lancaster in Ethereal & Innocent: The Visionary World of Paul Lancaster. THE HICKORY MUSEUM OF ART 243 3rd Ave NE, Hickory, NC 28601 www.hickoryart.org
14
RAW VISION 91
THE MENIL COLLECTION
until Oct 8
until Oct 16
Jon Serl
Harald Stoffers
An opportunity to see the largest public collection of objects from Reverend Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden. Among them are sidewalk slabs; concrete sculptures, including The Calf and the Young Lion, The Weaned Child on the Cockatrice’s Den, Finster’s Gospel Bike, and many signs and paintings that once adorned the garden. HIGH MUSEUM OF ART 1280 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA 30309 www.high.org
CAVIN MORRIS GALLERY
The Eloquent Place: New Works by Josef Hofer and Harald Stoffers. CAVIN MORRIS GALLERY 210 Eleventh Avenue, Suite 201, New York, NY www.cavinmorris.com
As Essential as Dreams: Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Stephanie and John Smither THE MENIL COLLECTION 1533 Sul Ross St, Houston, TX 77006 www.menil.org
OBITUARIES STEPHANIE SMITHER (1941–2016)
Stephanie Kerr Smither, a champion of the work of self-taught artists and patron of arts organisations, died at her home in Houston, Texas, in June, at the age of 75. In recent years she had suffered from pulmonary fibrosis and undergone a double lung transplant. Stephanie was born in Huntsville, Texas, where her father owned a department store, and she met her future husband, John Smither, who became a prominent Houston attorney. Son John Kerr Smither recalled that his mother “took a creative approach to home-making; at first her artcollecting was an extension of her assembling of fabrics, silverware and other items for the home, then she and my father realised that what they had been doing was creating a real art collection. Building it turned out to be my mother’s own form of artistic expression.” Stephanie’s serious art collecting began around 1988, when she took part in a museum-organised trip to Africa. At that time, she met with Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. (1929–1998), the first curator of the Museum of American Folk Art (now the American Folk Art Museum) in New York. She was influenced by Hemphill’s expansive view of a wide range of vernacular
Pirtola (r) with artist Johannes Ivakko, photo: Veli Grano
ERKKI PIRTOLA (1950–2016)
Erkki Pirtola, a visual and performance artist, critic and a champion of ITE art, died suddenly on a street near his home in Helsinki on 23 January 2016. He was 65. Pirtola‘s view of art was expansive. He knew the history of art but had his own, very original interpretation of it. He was greatly influenced by artists whose work dealt with the problem of being human, from van Gogh to Joseph Beuys. Pirtola’s take on art was profound and unique. In his opinion, creativity that flourishes among children, outsider artists and those in the margins of art was an instrument for seeing the ‘world-in-between’. According to him, this was an area that could reunite the spiritual and physical worlds. Pirtola’s own anarchic career as an artist started in the 1970s, and he held his first solo exhibition in Helsinki in 1976. He received a wider cult
art forms and self-taught artists’ works, an outlook that revolutionised the folk art field in the United States. Stephanie and John Smither acquired paintings, drawings, ceramic face jugs, and more by artists from Texas and the American South, many of whom, such as Mose Tolliver and Howard Finster, they got to know personally during their art-collecting road trips. They became major collectors of the Huntsville-based Johnnie Swearingen’s oil paintings and the carved- and painted-wood sculptures of the Navajo artist Charlie Willeto. Stephanie Smither once observed, “To me there is an honesty, a realism and a warmth about self-taught artists. There’s something about the handmade, about making something from very little, that really appeals to me.” Michelle White, a curator at the Menil Collection, a Houston museum known for its modern-art holdings, including Surrealist works, pointed out that the Smithers’ collection is unique in that it began with a focus on art of the American South when it was still possible for collectors to acquire works in person from now-legendary artists, but that it also reflects a broader, more international sensibility, a result of its owners’ embrace of European art brut and works by self-taught artists from other parts of the world. After John Smither died in 2002, Stephanie continued adding to the collection, part of which she donated to and is on view, through October 16, at the Menil in the exhibition “As Essential as Dreams: Selftaught Art from the Collection of Stephanie and John Smither.” In Houston, Stephanie supported such organisations as the Houston Ballet, the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, and its neighbouring, mosaic-filled Smither Park, which was designed by the artist-builder Dan Phillips in honour of John Smither. The now-retired art dealer Phyllis Kind said of her close friend, “Along with having a sharp eye, Stephanie was always passionate about art and adventurous in the face of something new. She had a mind of her own and never followed the pack.” In Texas, Stephanie Smither is survived by her children, Paige Johnson, Ashley Langley, and John Kerr Smither, and their families. Edward M. Gómez reputation as a cartoonist for alternative magazines. He’d acquired an irreverent underground attitude from his good friend, the Lappish artist Kalervo Palsa, and in 1979 he found a new way to channel his energies as he began to apply this attitude in a larger scale with the Ö Group, which produced provocative performances. The Ö events introduced performance art to Finns, but Pirtola’s biggest impact on the Finnish arts scene came when he wrote his eccentric art reviews for one of the country’s biggest newspapers between 1980 and 1992. Pirtola found his topics in alternative galleries and from outside the established art world. The main objects of his inventive criticism were the spiritual death of modernism, the then-predominant trend in art and art institutions’ willingness to maintain the status quo as well as the world view, which was characterised by a deep prejudice that profit was everything, which had entered not only the art world but all of society. When Liisa Heikkilä-Palo of the Union for Rural Culture asked Pirtola to help survey Finnish contemporary folk art (later known as ITE art) in 1999, it was as if this was the thing he’d been looking for all his life. Pirtola said that ITE art ‘saved’ him. It was in ITE art that he found the ideals of his youth: boundless creativity that is characterised by a lightness that can make you laugh yet it also tackles our most profound truths and emotions. His close rapport with and affection for ITE artists was mutual. Pirtola wrote enthusiastic articles about ITE and outsider art for numerous publications, such as ITE year books and Raw Vision, and he also curated exhibitions and recorded dozens of videos of artists. Audiences could enjoy his hysterically funny videos at ITE exhibitions in Finland and overseas. One of the memorable moments is the lecture on Finnish ITE art that Pirtola gave with Hannu Saha at the publication of Raw Vision’s Outsider Art Sourcebook at Tate Modern in 2002. Pirtola’s four sons will keep their father’s work alive. They have donated thousands of videos featuring Finnish outsider art to the Finnish National Gallery archives Veli Granö RAW VISION 91
11
RAW COLLECTOR
THE ARTIST–COLLECTOR RUTH LOPEZ
photos by Kristen Norman
above left: Michael Noland stands alongside one of his paintings above right: anonymous figures, ventriloquist heads. Coal heads and figures by Mary Merrill
I
n the foyer of artist and collector Mike Noland’s twostorey, wood-frame house is a small, carved wooden table with a marble top that belonged to stone carver E. Popeye Reed (1919–1985). Reed used it as his desk. Noland, who lives in a small town northwest of Chicago, also saved a carved wooden door from Reed’s deteriorating home. When Noland was a graduate art student at Ohio State University in the early 1980s, he became friends with woodcarver Elijah Pierce (1892–1984), painter William Hawkins (1895–1990) and Reed. “I had this very rich introduction to this art”, he said. “It was almost like fate or destiny that I would be in Ohio and be able to hang out with them“, he said. Noland said he has begun to think about which museum might have his collection down the road. “I’m very blessed to have known these artists”, said Noland. “I knew they were important people.” Nearly all of the walls in Noland’s house are packed, salon-style. Shelves hold sculptures and objects by anonymous artists. Large drawings by Martín Ramírez flank a picture window. Certain works stand out – like the large sandstone carving of an angel by Reed, and the carved bowling-trophy case made by an unknown artist and filled with carvings by William Dawson (1901–1990). Noland veered away 16
RAW VISION 91
from collecting solely American artists a few years ago when he added a piece by Swiss artist Francois Burland (b. 1958). “We don’t own it”, Noland said of his extensive collection. “We are the caretakers.” In Noland’s collection there are carved wood plaques by Pierce, and one of those was Noland’s first big purchase. “We had to go to the credit union and take out a loan”, said Noland, who recalls he needed $500.00. All things being relative, a large amount for the student. “It was a leap of faith.” In art school, Noland was urged to pursue art world success, but his friends outside of the academy gave him other ideas. “They were making art for a lot of different reasons”, said Noland, none of which had anything to do with the notion of career. They made art, he said, because they loved making art. “It has taken me 35 years to carefully collect and edit”, said Noland. He was lucky to learn from the “godfathers” in the field like the late Bert Hemphill, who founded the Museum of American Folk Art in New York, the late curator Robert Bishop, and the late Seymour Rosen who founded the nonprofit organisation SPACES, who taught Noland that building a collection is a process.
works by David Butler, Martin Ramirez, Raymond Coins, William Hawkins and Elijah Pierce
works by Elijah Pierce, anonymous relief carving, anonymous ventriloquist heads and stone carvings by E. “Popeye” Reed
below: works by Karl Wirsum, E. “Popeye” Reed, Minnie Evans, S. L. Jones, Raymond Coins and anonymous puppets
RAW VISION 91
17
THE GUGGING METHOD HAUSER AND LEO NAVRATIL ROGER CARDINAL
A
dding further weight to the groaning shelf of publications issued in recent years by the Gugging ‘House of the Artists’, there now appears a festive homage to Johann Hauser (19261996), often seen as the star of the original Gugging group. (1) As artistic director of the Gugging project, Dr Johann Feilacher has masterminded an exciting volume: Johann Hauser. . . I am the artist! It weighs five kilos and runs to 516 pages, with 535 illustrations. (2) It represents the catalogue of the Hauser retrospective, which runs at the Gugging Museum till January 8, 2017.
18
RAW VISION 91
Born in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 1926, Johann Hauser knew no father and was maltreated throughout his childhood, living with his mother in a resettlement camp in war-torn Austria until, in 1946, he was officially diagnosed as mentally deficient and designated a ward of the state. In 1949, he entered a mental institution at Klosterneuburg, near Vienna in above: Johann Hauser with a plastic girlfriend, 1987, photo: Mathias Braschler. right: Woman with Headdress, 1984, 15.7 x 11.8 ins. / 40 x 30.1 cm, pencil and coloured pencil, Essl Museum Klosterneuburg.
22
RAW VISION 90
NOTHING TO BE SCARED ABOUT The blind, Memphis-based artist Hawkins Bolden’s found-object sculptures, made to chase away birds, are attracting admirers of postmodernist assemblage EDWARD M. GÓMEZ
I
n a nuanced way that is more poetic than scientific, artists often distinguish between looking and seeing. For them, looking refers to the basic sensory function of perceiving the world, while seeing connotes comprehension of whatever is in view. Moreover, in the cultures of many different times and places, artists have long played an acknowledged role as both keen observers of the world and explorers of the imagination. They have been recognised as seers, or conveyors of understanding of subjects both perceivable and imaginary.
So what are audiences to make of the kind of “seeing” that is expressed through the creations of an art-maker who is blind? This is one of the fascinating questions surrounding the remarkable oeuvre of the American self-taught artist Hawkins Bolden (1914–2005), who was born and spent his life in Memphis, Tennessee, and lost his sight after being injured in a boyhood baseball-playing accident, when he was hit in the head by a bat. Bolden was born in 1914, shortly after the start of World War I. Few details about his life’s story have been
RAW VISION 91
27
PIROUETTES ON PAPER Discovering little-known paintings and drawings by one of the twentieth century’s most influential ballet dancers SCOTT ROTHSTEIN
Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1950) photographed at Krasnoe Selo, summer 1907. Unknown photographer.
32
RAW VISION 91
F
or a short time, from 1918–19, not long before mental illness completely overtook his life, Vaslav Nijinsky (1889/90–1950) created a group of drawings and paintings. In contrast to the volumes written about Nijinsky as ballet dancer and choreographer, there has been very little consideration given to these works. The Nijinsky paintings and drawings are intimate in scale: the paper whose surface he worked over was no larger than 11.8 x 14.6 ins. / 30 x 37 cm. Although the proportions are modest, the images are powerful. It can be a challenge to remember that these works are almost 100 years old, since they appear both current and timeless. Nijinsky used ink, crayon, pencil and paper as mediums. The crayon and pencil drawings have a geometry defined by circles. These works are obsessive and hyper-focused. When he used ink on the page, emotions define the picture plane, as well as revealing a sense of spontaneity. Viewing only one or two of these pieces, particularly the drawings, gives the impression that Nijinsky may have simply been exploring a decorative geometry. But when exposed to a larger group, the obsessive nature of Nijinsky’s drive is evident. Variations and themes, applied with line, energise each page. A sense of urgency emerges, as if the artist felt compelled to explore every possible configuration of one simple concept. Since few facts are known about his motivations, it is a complex task to establish Nijinsky’s place in the history of twentieth-century art. Likewise, insufficient reliable information exists as to the meaning of his iconography. Attempts have been made to define this art, but in general these interpretations have been based on conjecture. It is particularly unwise to make assumptions about Nijinsky. His life was exceptionally unconventional. Most
contemporaries who wrote about him had a selfserving agenda and were hardly concerned with truth and accuracy. When Nijinsky is quoted in his own words, it is usually from a group of notebooks he kept at the same time as he was making art. While fragments of these journals seem logical and coherent when taken out of context, the majority of the writing exposes a man struggling with the onset of profound mental illness. What is known about Nijinsky at the time he created this art is that he was a highly-informed individual. It would be naïve to interpret these works as simply the efforts of a mad man. Just a few years before he began making paintings and drawings, Nijinsky lived at the epicentre of European avantgarde culture. Many historians consider his collaboration with composer Igor Stravinsky (1882– 1971) and ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872– 1929) to be the event that set in motion a century of revolutionary creative energy in every field of Western art. Most likely, Nijinsky was in an overexcited state in 1918 when he rented a home for himself and his family in St Moritz. His writings at the time reveal the type of intensity often associated with mania. However, interpreting Nijinsky’s art solely through the prism of mania or another mental illness is too limiting. Elevated emotions may have driven Nijinsky to create a large body of work in a relatively short time, but his raw and visceral imagery reflects the intent of a man still in control of his vision. Like many early twentieth-century artists who transitioned their art into pure abstraction, several of Nijinsky’s works have a trace of representational form. On more than one occasion, Nijinsky stated he was rendering the eyes of soldiers, attempting to express on paper the devastation he saw in the faces of those who had experienced the horrors of World War I. In
RAW VISION 91
33
JOE COLEMAN REBECCA LIEB talks to Joe Coleman as his fame spreads further with the opening of an exhibition displaying his latest work.
Rebecca Lieb: You just spent eight years doing these two portraits, one of you and the companion piece of Whitney [Ward, Coleman’s wife]. Was it a conscious decision to dedicate eight years to this project?
it’s likely that your abilities become less and less, and you become physically challenged when you get to the other side of the ladder - I’m at the precipice, so I wanted to push myself and challenge myself in all these ways.
Joe Coleman: It was a conscious decision to commit when I started my big self-portrait [Doorway to Joe, 2015]. The self-portrait took over three years. Then I did these series of miniatures which, in my mind, were like satellites around the bigger self-portrait. Things I wanted to say that somehow didn’t make it onto the planet. So it has these orbiting miniatures. And when I’d finished the miniatures, I knew that I wanted to do another large painting, and the only painting that my gut and heart told me was this companion for the big self-portrait. Then, I knew it would have to be of Whitney [Doorway to Whitney, 2015].
RL: And your sixtieth birthday was just days before the paintings premiered at the opening at the Gargosian show. But you say you wanted to challenge yourself by doing something more personal, but you’ve done a lot of self-portraits and you’ve painted Whitney before, not by herself, but of you as a couple. JC: Sometimes people think of my paintings of Charles Manson (1988) Houdini (2010-11) or Hank Williams (1998) or figures that spoke to me in a very personal way. But my most frequent subject has always been self-portraits. All of the portraits I’ve ever done are self-portraits too, but in fact self-portraits are what I paint the most. I also painted family members from the portrait of my brother Bill. In a very intense way, the first one was when Indian Larry [the famous motorcycle customiser] died and I knew that I needed to commit a year to working on Larry’s painting [Indian Larry's Wild Ride, 2005] because he was part of our family.
RL: A literal companion, and the first time they’d ever met was at the “Unrealism” exhibition at the Gargosian Gallery [Miami, December 2–6, 2015 see Raw Vision 88, page 69]. JC: Yeah, that’s the fun part, and it was exciting for me to see them together. RL: But just going back to eight years, that’s the longest you’ve ever spent on one project. So was that a decision? Was that just something that came out of the circumstance? JC: Well it was a decision that’s made in the same way that I produce the work, which is slowly. So I wanted to challenge myself in every way: physically, by making the piece both bigger in size, but also more minute at the same time. I wanted to challenge myself in the commitment: previously, I’d spent a year producing one painting, and I don’t work on other paintings at the same time. I can’t. I also wanted to challenge myself, choosing subjects that are even more personal so it’s more emotionally challenging , and spiritually and physically because I don’t know if my hand and my eye are still going to have those same abilities. I have them now, but that could change tomorrow. And I was thinking 36
RAW VISION 91
RL: For the purposes of this interview, define “family”? JC: My tribe. Not necessarily blood, but the people that have entered my life in a very personal and important way. They’re my universe. Because my universe is not the USA and it’s not the globe, it’s my family - and Rebecca, you’re one of the family as well. RL: So, over the past decade, your style, which has always been intricate to a degree that hardly exists in art these days, has been becoming more so, and at the same time your canvases are getting bigger and bigger. Is this going to continue? How do you decide? Doorway to Joe, 2007-2009, acrylic on panel, 85.5 x 41.4 ins. / 217.3 x 105.2 cm.
that I want to push myself far in my fifties because RAW VISION 91
37
“BEERNADO DA VINCI” Philip Muspratt spent his last decades transforming his north of England home into a sun-catching masterpiece PETER WILSON
Front view of the Can House on Raby Road, Hartlepool inset: Two youths pass the Can House with beer cans
C
reativity knows no bounds, and people will use a seemingly endless variety of materials or possibilities to express, create or decorate. We use whatever is at hand, whether paint, paper, wood, metal, stone, glass; obviously, we’ll use whatever we can. We’ve even used berry-juices and charred sticks – the former spat over splayed hands placed as stencils on cave walls, the latter to further mark those caves with living figures. The buff brown and coloured dirt of the very earth itself is used
photos by Peter Wilson
in the intricate sand “paintings” of the Navajo Indians. These sand paintings’ primary function, however, was for healing not decoration. Philip Muspratt, far removed in time, geography and culture from either the Navajo or pre-historic cave dwellers, has also used the most basic of materials he had to hand to create, decorate and, in a way, to bring healing. His dirtof-the-earth, common-as-muck material being empty beer cans: Carlsberg, Heineken, Fosters, whatever – empty, drank dry and discarded. Trash to most, except for Muspratt, ex-soldier and retired bus driver who, from 1995 until his death in 2015, decorated his modest, semi-detached house and garden in Hartlepool (County Cleveland, England) with beer bottles then, from about 2005, with beer cans. The house, not surprisingly, is fondly known as “the can house”, and Muspratt himself as “the can man” or “Beernardo da Vinci”, as the local newspaper dubbed him. Muspratt’s work is a gem of creativity in an otherwise unspectacular northeastern coastal town which has seen better days.
Philip Muspratt by his fireplace, 2013
But, on second thought, Hartlepool has intermittently boasted flashes of peculiarity in its history. Maybe something to do with the heady, salt-laden sea air. During the Napoleonic wars, for instance, a French warship sank in a storm off the coast from the town. The ship’s monkey was the only survivor that, upon being washed ashore, was arrested, tried and hanged on the beach as a French spy by the local fisher folk (who had never seen a monkey or a Frenchman before): strange but true. Years later, in 2002, a certain Stuart Drummond, the town’s football team’s mascot who wore, naturally, a monkey suit at matches campaigned under the name “H’Angus the Monkey” to be elected town mayor and, without any previous political experience, was actually voted in: strange but true. Similarly Muspratt, whose only recollection of ever doing any art was when he was a school child, has created a unique work that consists of about 75,000 empty cans held mainly in place with waterproof, industrialgrade adhesive. “It all started”, said Muspratt, “when my dad, RAW VISION 91
45
48
RAW VISION 91
ART AND TRAUMA In an extract from his new book, DANIEL WOJCIK examines the effect of trauma on the life and work of two artists
Ionel Talpazan at his New York apartment in 1996, photo: Ted Degener
RAW VISION 91
49
Ionel Talpazan, UFO: Art & Science, Future To Peace The Earth, 2003, poster paint, marker, pencil and ink on paper, 40 x 25 ins. / 101.6 x 63.5 cm, photo by James Wojcik
A
lthough there is an extensive body of literature on art therapy practice and theory in the clinical setting, there is much less written about the spontaneous creation of art by individuals who, through their own ingenuity, have used creativity as a form of selftherapy in relation to grieving over a loss, coping with traumatic events, confronting stressful situations or dealing with mental illness. Painful emotions and traumatic experiences sometimes cannot be communicated in words, but the creating of things can be a medium for their expression, an external manifestation of inner turmoil or overwhelming experiences, and may help clarify issues or restore a sense of self-worth. To be clear in this context: creativity is not inevitably interwoven with suffering; tragedy and emotional pain are not prerequisites for artistic activity; and the creative outputs of the vast majority of individuals labelled “outsider artists”, “visionary artists”, “self-taught artists” and artists in general are not necessarily related to trauma or life-crisis. Although many of the individuals discussed in this study have used creativity as a way to cope with misfortune, they are not presented here as somehow representative of self-taught or “outsider” artists overall. 50
RAW VISION 91
The potentially therapeutic features of art making are illustrated by the art of Ionel Talpazan (1955–2015), a refugee from Romania who lived in New York City. Talpazan created more than 1000 paintings, drawings and sculptures inspired by his ideas about flying saucers and life in outer space. He said that he “sacrificed his life to the UFO” and his dream was to share his ideas with NASA scientists; his ultimate goal was to reveal the unknown technologies and hidden meanings of flying saucers, with the hope of helping humanity. Talpazan’s early work often shows scenes of outer space and the energies of the cosmos in an expressionistic style, his canvases thickly textured with rich pigments. His later work includes large diagrams of UFOs that reveal the details of flying saucer technology, with his theories about their systems of propulsion sometimes written on them (for example, antigravitational, magnetic, antimagnetic, nuclear, vacuum technologies and so on). These drawings resemble illuminated, mandala-like flying machines that radiate halos of energy or vibrate with hallucinatory intensity. With their meticulous details, clarity of form, and Talpazan’s absolute devotion to them, these diagrams convey a genuine believability.
VICTORY AT MARWENCOL After a brutal assault left his world shattered, Mark Hogancamp pieced together a new life for himself – at 1:6 scale KATHARINE GATES
I Mark Hogancamp carefully poses his figures for a scene where the Nazi SS carry US weapons as they walk into Marwencol, photo by Jeff Malmberg. All other photos by Mark Hogancamp
n 2004, photographer David Naugle stopped to make conversation with an odd character he had noticed around his small upstate New York town. Dressed in a vintage WWII US-army uniform, the man could often be seen walking unsteadily along the shoulder of the rural country roads, dragging a realistic scale-model army jeep behind him. The man, whose name was Mark Hogancamp, shyly explained to Naugle that he was aging the tires on the jeep so that his photographs would look more authentic. Naugle was intrigued. A few days later, he received a package from Hogancamp: a bundle of loose snapshots of intensely-imagined, intricately detailed scenes of war, love, anguish, vengeance and rescue – all at 1:6 scale. The photographs revealed a cinematographer’s eye for framing, a screenwriter’s ability to capture the essence of dramatic conflict, and a director’s vision of a fictional world made absolutely real. The story behind why Hogancamp made these compelling images was even more extraordinary. Four years before, On April 8, 2000, Hogancamp had spent the evening, as he usually did, at his favorite bar. After a stint in the Navy and a marriage that went sour, Hogancamp was basically a homeless alcoholic and, as he now puts it, “pretty much useless to everyone around.” That evening, though, he’d made some new friends: five young men, who seemed to like him and encouraged him to open up about his life. With illadvised candour, Hogancamp revealed his secret passion for wearing women’s shoes. When he left the bar, stumbling drunk, the men had been lying in wait for him. They attacked him, brutally beat him, viciously stomped his face against the asphalt street, and left him for dead. All because they erroneously believed him to be gay. Hogancamp spent nine days in a coma. When he awoke, he remembered nothing of the attack. In fact, he had near-total amnesia. He couldn’t remember his own life. He couldn’t remember his marriage. He had no memory of the touch of a woman. He also had no memory of why he ever wanted to drink. “As far as I knew, I was born on that day”, he now says. Hogancamp was left with brain damage, and difficulty walking and using his hands. After an all-toobrief period of physical therapy he was back out on the street, his life completely shattered. “I felt as though the real world had cast me out all alone and broken.” The documentary film Marwencol (2010, dir. Jeff Malmberg) tells the story of how Hogancamp used art to heal himself. Abandoned by the medical system and isolated from his former friends and life, Hogancamp had to find his own way to recovery. The physical therapist advised him to practice fine-motor tasks so he could regain some of his manual dexterity. So, Hogancamp went to a local hobby shop and bought an 1:6 scale figurine of a World War II, US-army man.
RAW VISION 91
57
R AW R E V I E W S
Philip Carey, Self Portrait of My Health History, photo by Charlotte DiNunzio
EXHIBITIONS
THE BIG HOPE SHOW American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, MD October 3, 2015 – September 4, 2016 One single installation was strong enough to be a stand-alone exhibition: a shattering collaboration between artist-activist Jackie Sumell and Herman Wallace, a Black Panther who spent 41 years wrongfully imprisoned. But there was much more to see at “The Big Hope Show”, mounted in celebration of AVAM’s twentieth anniversary. There were six new fabric appliqué works by Chris Roberts-Antieu on the theme of “Birds as a Symbol of Hope”. There was the vast ceramic poodle collection of Baltimore eccentric Bobby Adams, along with decades’ worth of Adams’ 62
RAW VISION 91
photographs capturing the universe of filmmaker John Waters. There were inspirational quotes from Oprah Winfrey and John Bunyan. It might sound like madness, but Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, AVAM’s Director and the curator of “The Big Hope Show”, seemed to have a method: using feel-good interludes to soften viewers for rawer, politicallycharged work. Amid current criticisms of the so-called “white cube”, AVAM does embrace a uniquely accessible curatorial approach, and this may help it to attract its enviably broad audience. Alongside unabashedly idealistic wall text, some pieces spoke for themselves. Philip Carey’s assemblage Self-Portrait of My Health History showed that illness can yield
humour and inventiveness. Carey’s cross-sectioned body and agonised face evoke the classic children’s game, “Operation!” But his materials – bandages, stacks of prescription bottles, stark photographs and medical images – belie the piece’s initial comic effect. NEA grantee Nancy Josephson’s 2015 sculpture, Erzulie Kouvez, was another major highlight. Every surface is encrusted in crystals, beads and pearls: a giant cage containing a multitude of brightly colored birds, topped with a winged human bust like a ship’s figurehead. The folky forms, fantastical subject matter and palpable artist’s hand all made for a perfect centrepiece for AVAM’s twentieth anniversary show. Margaret Browne
EXHIBITIONS
Richard Burnside, The Ancient King with Attendants, 1991, enamel on board, South Carolina State Art Collection
R AW R E V I E W S
RICHARD BURNSIDE: WHO IS KING? McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, Columbia, May 6 – August 6 This thoughtfully organised, comprehensive exhibition gathered more than 50 paintings, painted objects and other works by a Southern self-taught artist widely known since the 1980s. Spanning the interval from then to now, it was Burnside’s first museum retrospective and the first show to seriously explore his background and creative intentions. Especially notable was the prominence given to his voice, through videotaped interviews integrated with his art. The interviews were conducted by the McKissick’s exhibitions curator Edward Puchner, who made a strong showing with
this, his first big project for the museum. In that and other respects it was a groundbreaking exhibition that fleshed out the cultural context for Burnside’s work and illuminated its meanings for him and his community. A longtime resident of Pendleton, South Carolina, Burnside started drawing as a young adult, ostensibly to distract himself from physical pain caused by a foot injury he suffered during his US-Army service. He credits his growing absorption in drawing for assuaging his pain. Eventually he switched to painting and developed the unmistakable style that became his art’s hallmark. Employing bold, highcontrast colours on a variety of surfaces, he paints strikingly reductive, vibrantly patterned frontal portraits of real and imaginary
royalty – alluded to in the exhibition’s title – along with images of insects, snakes and other animals, wild and domestic. In his insightful essay for the show’s catalogue, Puchner highlights the metaphorical aspect of Burnside’s king and queen portraits, “evocative of power and expressive on secular and spiritual levels”, as he writes. These royal figures serve as “a standard against which [Burnside] judges the leaders or kings he sees around him today.” In addition to works of the kind for which he’s best known, the exhibition included earlier pieces that reflect his art’s development. Video interviews with some of Burnside’s neighbours provided a sense of his prominent role in his hometown. Tom Patterson RAW VISION 91
63
R AW R E V I E W S
AS ESSENTIAL AS DREAMS: SELFTAUGHT ART FROM THE COLLECTION OF STEPHANIE AND JOHN SMITHER The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas June 10 - October 16, 2016 Before her death in June (see obituary, page 11), Stephanie Smither, a noted, Houston-based collector of self-taught artists’ works, donated some 50 paintings, drawings and sculptures from the holdings she and her late husband had amassed over several decades to the Menil Collection. Founded by French-émigré oil tycoons and opened in 1987, this museum’s holdings include antiquities and modern art, with a special concentration in Surrealism. Given the strong interest in art brut by twentieth-century Surrealists and other modern artists, the Smithers’ donation has found a curatorially welcoming and appropriate home at the Menil. It also puts this notable regional museum in a league with such other American institutions as the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, all of which have received major gifts from private collectors of important 64
RAW VISION 91
EXHIBITIONS
works by self-taught artists. Organised by Menil curator Michelle White, this exhibition takes its title from a text by the French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, who once observed that, for humans, the habit of accumulating objects is “as essential as dreams”. White has chosen strong samplings of creations by twelve artists whose works are represented in the Smithers’ donation, including such well-known figures as Martín Ramírez and Carlo Zinelli. Also on view are pieces by artists whose work they discovered or championed beginning in the early stages of their respective careers. Among them: Hiroyuki Doi, a Japanese creator of abstract drawings made up of tiny circles; Domenico Zindato, a Mexico-based, Italian maker of colourful, meticulously patterned drawings; Georgia Blizzard, a Virginian who crafted expressive, figurative ceramics; and the New Mexico-based Navajo Charlie Willeto, whose painted-wood sculptures broke a tribal taboo against the making of figurative art for non-ritualistic purposes. Also on display: psychologically charged drawings by the Belgian Solange Knopf, whose work has emerged in
recent years and which Stephanie Smither was one of the first collectors to enthusiastically embrace. An imaginatively installed, salonstyle grouping of additional works by other artists complements the miniportfolios of the exhibition’s twelve central-focus artists. Research-travel support from Visit Houston and The Whitehall Houston for on-location reporting is gratefully acknowledged. Edward M. Gómez
GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS AUSTRIA
B R I TA I N
CANADA
FRANCE
GALERIE GUGGING Am Campus 2 - A3400 Maria Gugging t: +43(0)2243 87087 381/f: 382 gallery@gugging.org www.gugging.org photography: lejo & august walla
PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY 9 North Pallant, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 1TJ t: +44 (0)1243 774557 info@pallant.org.uk www.pallant.org.uk
LA GALERIE DES NANAS 85 Daniel-Johnson CP669, Danville QC, J0A 1A0 www.galeriedesnanas.ca www.facebook.com/GaleriedesNanas Hors-les-normes, outsider & insubordinate
HALLE SAINT PIERRE 2 Rue Ronsard, 75018 Paris t: +33 1 42 58 72 89 www.hallesaintpierre.org
FRANCE
GERMANY
RUSSIA
SWITZERLAND
MUSéE DE LA CREATION FRANCHE 58 Av du Maréchal-de-Lattre-de-Tassigny, 33130 Begles t: +33 5 56 85 81 73 www.musee-creationfranche.com 8000 artworks that refuse academic schema
PRINZHORN COLLECTION Voss strasse 2, Heidelberg 69115 t: +49 (0)6221 564492 prinzhorn@uni-heidelberg.de http://prinzhorn.ukl-hd.de
ART NAIVE GALLERY 24/26, bld.2, Lyalin lane, Moscow, 105062 mob: +79268432221, +79265802103 artnaivegallery@gmail.com www.artnaive.ru
MUSéE VISIONNAIRE ZÜRICH Predigerplatz 10, 8001 Zürich t: +41 (0)44 251 66 57 info@museevisionnaire.ch www.museevisionnaire.ch
SWITZERLAND
CALIFORNIA
CALIFORNIA
ILLINOIS
MUSEUM IM LAGERHAUS Davidstrasse 44, 9000, St. Gallen www.museumimlagerhaus.ch t: +41 (0)71 223 58 57 Art Unbounded, August 30 – November 13
INSIDE OUT PRODUCTIONS AT LA GOAL www.Etsy.com/shop/lagoal 4911 Overland Ave., Culver City, CA 90230 310.838.5274 | www.InsideOutProductions.com artisst with developmental disabilities
JUST FOLK 2346 Lillie Avenue / PO Box 578, Summerland, CA 93067, t: 805 969 7118 www.justfolk.com American folk and outsider art
INTUIT: THE CENTER FOR INTUITIVE AND OUTSIDER ART, 756 North Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL 60622 t: 312 243 9088 intuit@art.org www.art.org Home of the Henry Darger Room Collection
LOUISIANA
MARYLAND
MASSACHUSETTS
NEW YORK
ANTON HAARDT GALLERY 2858 Magazine Street, New Orleans, LA 70115 t: 504 8919080 anton3@earthlink.net www.antonart.com Tolliver, Finster, Sudduth, Gibson
AMERICAN VISIONARY ART MUSEUM 800 Key Highway, Inner Harbour Baltimore, MD 21230 www.avam.org
GATEWAY GALLERY 62 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA 02445 t: 617 734 1557 www.gatewayarts.org Contemporary and self-taught art
PHYLLIS STIGLIANO ART PROJECTS 62 Eighth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217 www.phyllisstigliano.com Agent for Mary F. Whitfield.
See www.rawvision.com for Artwork, Books and Back Issues