Raw Vision 92 by Raw Vision

RAWVISION92 WINTER 2016/17

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 EDITORS Nick Petty, Natasha Jaeger ACCOUNTS MANAGER Judith Edwards SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER Suzy Daniels ADVERTISING MANAGER Michael Gormley FRANCE EDITOR Laurent Danchin 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) ISSN 0955-1182

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RAW NEWS Outsider events and exhibitions around the world.

CLARENCE AND GRACE WOOLSEY Bottle cap sculptures of the ‘Caparena’.

GEORGIANA HOUGHTON Mediumistic artist from Victorian England.

BRENT BROWN Moveable assemblages of paint and cardboard.

MINNIE EVANS The early beginnings of celebrated American folk artist.

MOSHE Works by self-taught artist rescued in Denver.

CHARLES SMITH Homage to the history and struggle of African Americans.

ALEVTINA PYZHOVA Russian outsider with a personal twist.

WILLIAM HALL Fantasy vehicles by homeless Los Angeles artist.

NICK DELLA PENNA Obsessive outdoor construction in upstate New York.

RAW REVIEWS Exhibitions and books.

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

COVER IMAGE: Clarence and Grace Woolsey, Untitled (detail of Caparena figure), c. 1961–1972, bottle caps, wood and wire, Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Orren and Marilyn Bradley and Kohler Foundation, Inc.

Raw Vision (ISSN 0955-1182) December 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

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AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, BRITAIN

JOSÉ NAVA

OUTSIDE IN

Jan 25 – Jul 2

until Jan 20

Jan 20 – Mar 12

Joseph Crépin

José Nava

Koji Nishioka

DUBUFFET COLLECTION AT GUGGING MUSEUM

jean dubuffet’s art brut.! the origins of the collection features 169 works from Dubuffet’s collection, with works by Aloïse Corbaz, Adolf Wölfli, Auguste Forestier and other well-known outsiders. The historical exhibition was first shown in 1949 at Galerie René Drouin, Paris. Today, the works form the original core of the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, who compiled this showcase on their 40th anniversary. MUSEUM GUGGING, Am Campus 2, A-3400, Maria Gugging, AUSTRIA. www.gugging.at

Fish Out of Water features works by Mexican fisherman turned self-taught artist José Nava. THE KOPPEL PROJECT 93 Baker Street, W1U 6RL, London, UK thekoppelproject.com

Outside In presents the work of Koji Nishioka, Makoto Okawa and Yasuyuki Ueno in Nama Ato: Japanese Outsider Art. ATTENBOROUGH ARTS CENTRE, Lancaster Rd, Leicester LE1 7HA www.outsidein.org.uk

DAVID BOWIE SOTHEBY’S AUCTION

BEDLAM

November 2016

until Jan 15

Almost 51,500 visitors attended the pre-sale exhibition of the sale of David Bowie’s art collection at Sotheby’s in London. The Outsider Art pieces in the collection drew extremely high prices, with work by August Walla selling for £68,750 / $86,419, Augustin Lesage for £35,000 / $43,995, Johann Garber for £30,000 / $37,710 and Johann Fischer for £23,750 / $29,854. www.sothebys.com

Bedlam: the asylum and beyond explores how notions of madness have been shaped over centuries. Includes works by Adolf Wölfli, Vaslav Nijinsky and Richard Dadd, alongside works by contemporary artists. WELLCOME COLLECTION 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK wellcomecollection.org

Gwyneth Rowlands, Adamson Collection Trust

Jean Perdrizet

MUSEUM DR. GUISLAIN until May 28

GUSTAV MESMER AT ART & MARGES Feb 9 - Jun 11

August Walla

Gustav Mesmer, Hartmaier und Mangold

Another World: Laboratory of Illusion and Fantasy continues to showcase work by J.J. Grandville, Gustav Mesmer, Gerard Heymans, Jean Perdrizet and Mathew Kneebone. MUSEUM DR. GUISLAIN Jozef Guislainstraat 43, 9000 Gent, BELGIUM www.museumdrguislain.be

An immersive exhibition of the works of Gustav Mesmer will showcase machines, photographs and original drawings. Save the World? continues until January 29, with works by Giovanni Battista Podestà, André Robillard, George Widener and more. ART & MARGES MUSÉE 314 rue Haute,1000 Brussels, BELGIUM www.artetmarges.be

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CUBA, DENMARK, FRANCE

LE DERNIER CRI

KOLOR ART COLLECTIVE

until Apr 16

March 2017

Churrasco

ART BRUT PROJECT CUBA until Jan 28

ZONE project: Afro-feminist photo series celebrates feminism and afro culture. Arranged by the kolor art collective, the provocative photographs explore current themes affecting black women in Brazil. BATOFAR 11 Quai François Mauriac, 75013 Paris, FRANCE

NEW DANISH OUTSIDER ART GALLERY

GILBERT PEYRE

Sep 2016

until Feb 26

Gitte Madsen

Gérard Lattier

The first exhibition of Art Brut Project Cuba's Collection brings together the biggest collection of Cuban art brut and Outsider Art. RIERA STUDIO Marta Abreu St. No. 202. Cerro. Havana, CUBA www.rierastudioart.com

Denmark’s first gallery dedicated to the work of Danish and international outsider and self-taught artists opened in September 2016 in an industrial estate in Vaerloese, near Copenhagen. COPENHAGEN OUTSIDER ART GALLERY Kirke Værløsevej 26A, 3500 Værløse, DENMARK www.coag.dk

Curated by Pakito Bolino, Underbrut: Art Marginal Contemporain? features outsider and folk artists such as Raymond Reynaud, Gérard Lattier, Evelyne Postic, Ody Saban and Howard Finster. FRICHE BELLE DE MAI 41 rue Jobin 13003, Marseille, FRANCE

CREATION FRANCHE until Jun 11

Féminin pluriel puts women in the spotlight, with works by Madge Gill, Martha Grünewaldt, Marie Hénocq, Evelyne Postic, Ody Saban and others. MUSÉE DE LA CRÉATION FRANCHE 58 avenue du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny 33130 Bègles, FRANCE www.musee-creationfranche.com

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Eternity Has No Door of Escape is a film by Arthur Borgnis about the history of art brut, featuring interviews with key figures in the field and rare footage of Hans Prinzhorn, Jean Dubuffet, Aloïse Corbaz and Harald Szeemann. Borgnis is crowdfunding to raise funds to complete the film. A clip can be viewed at vimeo.com/188080628. Borgnis can be contacted at arthur.borgnis@ gmail.com.

Gilbert Peyre

Madge Gill

ART BRUT FILM

Gilbert Pierre presents his dark and enchanting “sculpturemachines”, created from recovered technological objects. LA HALLE SAINT PIERRE 2 Rue Ronsard, 75018 Paris, FRANCE www.hallesaintpierre.org

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USA

INTUIT

CREATIVE GROWTH

Jan 19–22

Jan 20 – Jun 4

Jan 19–22

Henry Darger: Author/Artist juxtaposes Darger’s art and writings. INTUIT 756 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL 60605 www.art.org

At this year’s Outsider Art Fair, Creative Growth will present a selection of work from established and emerging artists working in their Oakland, CA-based centre for artists with disabilities, including Susan Janow, Dan Miller, and William Scott. CREATIVE GROWTH ART CENTER 355 24th Street, Oakland, CA 94612 www.creativegrowth.org

WINFRED REMBERT

SYLVIA FRAGOSO

The Outsider Art Fair has announced exhibitors for its 25th anniversary edition, which will run from January 19–22 at The Metropolitan Pavilion in New York. The fair will showcase 60 galleries, representing 28 cities from nine countries, with eight first-time exhibitors. METROPOLITAN PAVILION, 125 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011. outsiderartfair.com

MUSEUM OF SEX

Jan 7 – Feb 12

Winfred Rembert

Jan 18 – Sep 18

Dan Miller

photo: John Faier

photo: Casey Kelbaugh

OUTSIDER ART FAIR

SPEED ART MUSEUM

Sylvia Fragoso

United States Artists honoured Winfred Rembert with a grant for his autobiographical works. unitedstatesartists.org Ceramics and drawings by developmentally disabled self-taught artist Sylvia Fragoso are on view at The Good Luck Gallery. THE GOOD LUCK GALLERY 945 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, CA 90012 www.thegoodluckgallery.com

LANCE RIVERS

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Lance Rivers

Curated by Frank Maresca, Known/Unknown: Private Obsession and Hidden Desire in Outsider Art illustrates the scope of sexual and erotic subject matter, in all mediums, within the fields of Outsider, self-taught and folk art. Featuring work by Henry Darger, Morton Bartlett, Thornton Dial, Steve Ashby, Johann Garber, Marilena Pelosi, Royal Robertson and more. MUSEUM OF SEX 233 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016. www.museumofsex.com

Willie Birch

Johann Garber

Jan 12 – Mar 9

A New World in My View: Gifts from Gordon W. Bailey until February 5. SPEED ART MUSEUM 2035 South 3rd Street Louisville, KY 40208 speedmuseum.org

Lance-scape Architecture, Lance Rivers' first solo exhibition in San Francisco, sheds light upon his prolific career as an artist living in the city by the bay. It explores the wonder of life amongst monumental forms: bridges, buildings, tunnels and other icons of human industry. CREATIVITY EXPLORED, 3245 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. www.creativityexplored.org

BIG SOME DAY The Woolsey bottle-cap “Caparena” WILLIAM SWISLOW

go much beyond the suggestions and instructions farm couple with a bottle-cap hoard and time that appeared regularly in home craft publications, on their hands sounds like the stuff of folk-art kids’ activity magazines and newspaper craft columns. legend, and in Clarence (1929–1987) and Grace Picture frames, mud scrapers, table-top figures, (1921–1992) Woolsey it was a pretty great one. baskets, trivets and other objects were all advised, and They sculpted hundreds of objects with bottle caps all produced in quantity by home crafters, as in the 1960s and early 1970s, and showed the work evidenced by vintage merchandise sales on ebriefly before it vanished into the loft of a brother’s commerce sites like eBay and Etsy. barn for over 20 years. After the couple’s death, the Grace Woolsey, according to her nephew Dale hoard (including enough leftover caps to enable the Price, was a hobbyist, and she almost certainly read creation of counterfeits using original materials) was some of those sold at a farm publications. auction. “She’d kind of sit Feeding the at the table and legend was the mess with things”, sale price and he said. Among the marketother endeavors, making she made little aftermath. Sold furniture out of for less than old tin cans, a $100, the whole popular craft body of work activity in the fell into pieces 1950s and 1960s. that passed Some rapidly through people thought a chain of beyond antique and art conventional dealers until handicrafts, what started as Cutting from the Cedar Rapids Gazette, July 25 1971, showing the Woolseys and their work though: people a pastime, and like Grace and her initially looked like husband Clarence. Something clicked that took their conventional Americana, came to the market branded creativity to a level beyond hobby art – arguably to as significant folk art. artistic mastery. In the Woolseys’ own time, what seemed to most It seems that their intentions at the start were interest the world was the huge number of bottle caps prosaic enough. They told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls required to create the 400-odd objects that Courier that one snowy night they decided to figure newspaper articles reported in 1971. Volume was the out what to do with the caps they had collected, and primary theme of an article in the Iowan Waterloothey just started stringing them on wire. The paper Cedar Falls Courier. In fact, what to do with bottle caps reported that their first piece was a church, used to be a topic of public concern, worthy of news representational just like the wagons, barns, teepees, coverage and advice: in World War II, metal shortages mailboxes and other depictive forms they went on to sent bottlers scrambling to collect old caps, and that create. Their work in this vein is impressive enough, attention continued in the years of increasing postwar abundance. In the absence of any kind of widespread recycling opposite: Untitled (Caparena figure), c. 1961–1972, wood, bottlecaps programmes, people continued to accumulate bottle and wire, 42 x 20 x 13 ins. / 106.7 x 50.8 x 33 cm, caps, and there was no end of ideas about what to do Smithsonian American Art Museum, purchased through the with the cork-lined metal disks. Most solutions didn’t Samuel and Blanche Koffler Acquisition Fund 16

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GEORGIANA HOUGHTON MEDIUM AND SPIRITUALIST Spirit-led watercolours from a Victorian artist who has recently been highly lauded in London SIMON GRANT

n the wet summer of 1871, the artist Georgiana Houghton exhibited 155 of her spirit drawings in central London. It was unprecedented in both scale and content. At great financial cost to herself, Houghton (1814–1884) single-handedly staged the show in the hope that her artistic manifestations, guided by the hand of her “invisible friends” would not only further the cause of Spiritualism but also signal her arrival as a serious artist. Sadly, it was not to be and, not surprisingly, critics found her seemingly abstract work hard to accept. As one critic put it: if readers were to imagine such a thing as an accurate copy of coloured and white ‘Berlin’ wools, all tangled together in a flattened mass, framed and hung round a gallery, some idea could be formed of the appearance of this most strange exhibition.

Another described her artwork as a “sad and ludicrous… gallery of painful absurdities”. Audiences of the day were more accustomed to the frothy yet restrained narratives of the PreRaphaelites, while the most radical art on view at the time of Houghton’s exhibition was Whistler’s controversial “Nocturne” paintings. While these artists flourished, Houghton sold only one picture from her exhibition and was almost bankrupted by the process. To today’s viewers it is hard to appreciate not only the radical nature of her vision but also her determination and willpower to convince others of her talent. About her life, we know surprisingly little to date. We don’t know if she had formal training as an artist, though her early iterations of the spirit drawings that show flowers and fruits suggest she may have followed many other women of her time to train as a botanical artist. Houghton was born on April 20, 1814, in Las Palmas, on the island of Grand Canary. The seventh child of George and Mary Houghton, she went on to spend much of her life in London in genteel poverty. Her merchant father had lost money in an unspecified 22

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crisis. Like many of her time, she came to spiritualism and spirit drawing through a recent death in the family. In Houghton’s case this was her sister Zilla (who had herself been an artist) and, through a chance meeting with a near neighbour, the celebrated spirit medium Mrs Marshall, Houghton soon found herself propelled into practicing the art of the séance, often alongside her mother. By October 1861 she had her first appearances from “high spirits” – her “appointed guardians” Zacharias, John and Joseph. Houghton was spurred on by her deeply-held Christian faith, and validated her purpose in those terms. Her great aim was, as she wrote in her autobiography Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance (1881), “to show ‘What the Lord hath done for my soul’ by granting me the Light now poured upon mankind by the restored power of communion with the unseen”. Houghton would go on to develop these multi-layered drawings with increasing complexity. Moving away from the simple, organic-like shapes, she would introduce sinuous lines and spirals, as well as minute white dots applied with a tiny brush. Nothing in art was comparative at the time, although one of the more positive reviews that Houghton received for her exhibition compared her style with a canvas of JMW Turner’s “over which troops of fairies have been meandering, dropping jewels as they went”. In works such as The Risen Lord (June 29, 1864) and Glory be to God (July 5, 1864) the works are even more densely layered, and yet Houghton’s art always looks balanced and measured. There is purpose in her

above: Portrait of Georgiana Houghton (1814–1884), courtesy of the College of Psychic Studies, London opposite: The Portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ, December 8, 1862, watercolour on paper, 22.8 x19.3 ins. / 58 x 49 cm, Victorian Spiritualists’ Union, Melbourne, Australia

BUILDING CARDBOARD CASTLES IN THE AIR

Walt Disney World, 2015, 26 x 29 x 6 ins. / 66 x 73.7 x 15.2 cm, cardboard and mixed media, Outsider Folk Art Gallery, PA

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Brent Brown layers cardboard and paint to form his upbeat, characterful and movable assemblages RON SCHIRA

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, 2015, 36 x 22 x 8 ins. / 91. x 55.9 x 20.3 cm, cardboard and mixed media, Outsider Folk Art Gallery, PA

orking with cardboard, scissors and inexpensive paint, Brent Brown of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, has created a sizable repertoire of movable figures and objects that encapsulate and honour the lasting impressions of his childhood through television and movies. Recalling his own innocence and the need to re-invent his memories and heroes, both fictitious and real, his marionette-type characters move their limbs and bodies in an imitation of the images he grew up with, and the things that left a lasting impression on him. Brown was born 41 years ago in Indiana, and was deprived of oxygen at birth. As a learning-disabled child, he spent much of his time at the Riley Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hospital, Indiana University, Indianapolis. He was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and now lives in an assisted-living apartment complex near Reading, Pennsylvania, with help from the Mosaic House Clubhouse, a psychiatric rehabilitation service for people experiencing mental health challenges.

He says his talent was recognised early on when he was asked in school to draw a stick figure. He drew a fully-detailed person. As a young boy he was inspired by Bible stories and comic books, then by television and movies. Aged ten he won an art contest, which further encouraged his interest in art, especially puppetry and ceramics. He had always made art in his spare time â&#x20AC;&#x201C; images of monsters from movies, clay masks of faces seen in print from all over the world and more. Having no formal or continuing art education, he credits his Wilson High School art teacher, Robert Chapel, with instructing him on how to make stained glass, and how to work with terracotta clay and other mediums. After high school, he was employed in a factory run by a local organisation that helped people with specific learning disabilities while he made his artwork at home. Later, in his twenties, a few of his pieces were displayed in the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing

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FA I T H A N D WA R Wilmington, World War II and the art of Minnie Evans EDWARD M. PUCHNER

n the first days of June 1944, the artist Minnie Evans (1892–1987) sat down with a faith healer named Madame Tula. Evans handed her two drawings, My Very First and My Second, and the mysterious prophet told her that they foretold the current global conflict, World War II. Madame Tula then instructed Evans to make a new painting to bring about the war’s conclusion. Days later, Evans painted Invasion Picture. (1) When asked about this seminal painting, Minnie Evans described an image of total destruction, pointing out “bombs” and the figure of Fu Manchu, further adding, “I never worked like I worked on that

picture.” Invasion Picture was indeed a decisive, artistic moment brought about by complex personal, religious and collective experiences. Far from being an “innocent” as others have labelled her, the artist was quite aware of the sociopolitical context of her home town of Wilmington, North Carolina, during World War II. She asserted that the war affected a real turning point in her career, after which she expanded her artistic production. This 1944 painting signalled a new process by which Evans reoriented her experiences into artworks that each functioned as faith-based responses to a rapidly modernising world.

My Very First, 1935, ink on paper, 5.5 x 7.9 ins. / 14 x 20 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, gift of Dorothea M. and Isadore Silverman

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Untitled (Chinese figure), c. 1944, oil on paper, 11.5 x 8.25 ins. / 29.2 x 21 cm, Luise Ross Gallery, New York.

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MOSHE In Denver, the life’s work of the artist known as “Moshe” is discovered – and rescued – just in the nick of time EDWARD M. GÓMEZ

Self-portrait, graphite and pastel on paper, 8.5 x 11 ins. / 11 x 28 cm, Webb Gallery, Texas

all Justin. That’s what a municipal-government official in Denver, Colorado, instinctively did earlier this year when he learned that the representative of a local rescue organisation that aids people in crisis situations had come across some unusual pieces of “rubbish” that just might have had some value – as works of art. Justin Massingale is an antiques dealer based near Denver, the capital of Colorado. Regarded as one of the best “pickers” in his area of seekers and discoverers of market-worthy cast-offs and collectibles, Massingale explores attics, old barns and estate sales in search of notable finds. When we met in Denver a few months ago, he recalled, “That city official knew that I’m always interested in seeing what people are throwing away, just in case there might be something of value. He knew I had experience with folk art and fine art.”

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It turned out, Massingale explained, that the occupant of a small flat in Denver, an elderly man with debilitating illnesses, could not pay his rent and needed both housing and medical care. He had agreed to give his belongings to the rescue organisation in exchange for its assistance in moving him into a nursing home. Massingale said, “When I arrived at the apartment, he already had moved out, but I found a woman from the rescue organisation throwing his belongings out the window into a trash dumpster. She had come across some flat items, wrapped in tissue paper, that appeared to have had some value to the old man – otherwise, why would he have wrapped them so carefully? She also found some paintings.” The rescue organisation was interested in any appliances or furniture that could be re-used. It was those items that the flat’s former occupant had agreed

Untitled, graphite and pastel on paper, 55 x 30 ins. / 114 x 72 cm, Webb Gallery, Texas

to give the group in exchange for its assistance. Rummaging around in the apartment, Massingale found piles of drawings of varying sizes; to his experienced eye, they appeared to have been made by the same person, along with various mixed-media objects he took to be sculptures. He also recognised that the paintings on canvas, some of which bore the modern artist George Tooker’s (1920–2011) signature, could have had both art-historical and market value. “I didn’t know who had made the drawings, which were were full of intense, colourful images”, Massingale told me. “I just knew that I had to rescue all of the art from the rescue organisation, and my time was limited!” Soon, he met the creator of the unusual drawings and sculptural objects, an ailing man in his seventies. Born James Brown in North Carolina, he had legally changed his name to “Moshe Zephaniah Ezekiel Isaiah Mordecai Baronestrevenakowske”, or “Moshe” for short. Massingale contacted his friends Bruce Lee Webb and Julie Webb, co-directors of the Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, Texas, south of Dallas, with whom he had worked on art-research projects in the past. Together, the artist, Massingale and the Webbs began organising Moshe’s artworks, documenting them photographically and creating a research-worthy, conservation-quality archive. Earlier this year, the

Webbs included a small selection of Moshe’s drawings in an exhibition at their gallery. Made with pencil, ink, pastel and other media on assorted papers, Moshe’s pictures bring to mind psychologically charged, classic, European art brut. Many of his images seem to have emerged from an emotionally intense dream world; in fact, he said, some are portraits or interpretive depictions of people or other subjects he has known. They feature female figures, cats, agglomerations of eyeballs and stylised sex organs in dense compositions, some marked by bold palettes or inventive, illusionistic uses of pictorial space. Throughout his life, Moshe has been a very private and reserved person, always making his art, he explained, “because I have to.” Moshe showed his work in Denver, but mostly he continued living modestly, alone with his cat and his art, which he consistently made, he said, “because you have to work at it every day to develop your own voice, your own vocabulary, your own way to communicate.” Now, rescued from the rubbish bin, it has begun to find its audience.

Edward M. Gómez is Raw Vision’s New York-based senior editor. Research-travel support from Denver Arts & Venues, a City and County of Denver agency, is gratefully acknowledged.

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DR CHARLES SMITH The African American Heritage Museum FRED SCRUTON

nstead of sidewalks, an allegorical carpet-bottomed drainage ditch runs along both sides of Dr Charles Smith’s corner property in a restless residential neighbourhood of Hammond, Louisiana. A moat around “hallowed ground” with a small trestle bridge leading to the front entrance of his African American Heritage Museum and Black Veterans Archive home, it represents the Niger River. A low wall of rocks and broken concrete (one for every African American soldier killed in Vietnam) forms a water monsterguarded embankment along the “river’s” edge. Water surrounding the perimeter also recalls the swampland refuge of escaped slaves, and the concrete-sculpted, alligator-like monster represents both danger to the runaways, and protection from “slave catchers” who feared to enter. Large disembodied heads facing the

street are seen throughout the encircling wall, which is also symbolic of the Mississippi River levee where 23 decapitated heads from executed slaves were displayed on poles after the 1795 Pointe Coupee conspiracy and uprising. A few metres south of the water monster, the smooth, dark, Egyptian Memorial figure sits along the embankment. Larger than life-size and wearing an asp headdress, it represents the enduring but overlooked contribution of Egypt to the legacy of African culture. When wet from frequent rain, the glistening, concrete, pharaonic sculpture almost appears to have been previous page: The site is dominated by "Mother of Africa”, representing an African earth mother for all races, the Christian Mary and Smith’s own mother and wife

carved from basalt. Near the house, a (discreetly) topless sculpture of the former (and first female African American) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seems cast from gold. She’s a “golden girl” of modern culture, linked by latex gilding to ancient African royalty. Just inside the perimeter embankment towards the southeast corner, the Mother of Africa towers over the site in an outspread, white-washed dress. A queen representing African cultural fertility and an earth goddess for the human race (“[I believe] that life started in Africa”) also represents a trinity of

below: In addition to dolls’ and children's clothing, Smith incorporates found objects from the neighbourhood into his concrete sculptures

mother Marys: Smith’s own mother Bertha Mary Smith, his wife Mary and Mary of Nazareth. She wears a silver “Mother-of-Christ” radiating-crown emblem on her crest of braided hair. “Once that piece was completed, many of the young ladies in the neighbourhood started wearing their hair just like that… they grow up to be ladies… larger than life, but you’ve got to… carry yourself with the morals that go with [being] a queen.” Passing more slave heads along the southern boundary, visitors come to a colossal male figure sitting at the opening in the embankment wall where the small bridge leads onto the property. Dressed in white with thick horizontal black stripes, the founder of Hammond, Louisiana’s “favorite slave boy”, is impossible to miss. Interred without a name or dates

FARM LIFE Alexey Turchin received a letter in the early 1990s. There were no pictures, but he knew that the unknown Muscovite artist saw things differently

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ALEXEY TURCHIN with JELENA BOBROUSSOVA-DAVIES Translated by Ariadne Arendt

opposite: The Abduction of Europa, 2014, acrylic on cardboard, 11.8 x 8.7 ins. / 30 x 22 cm, ArtNaive Gallery Collection, photo by Jelena BobroussovaDavies right: Warm Evening in Farmstead, 2001, acrylic on canvas, 19.7 x 13.8 ins. / 50 x 35 cm, Bogem skaia-Turchin collection, photo by Alexey Turchin

levtina Pyzhova is a mysterious character, inhabiting a world where sexuality and the body are separated from each other like church and state. Her own body, like a huge potato, paralysed in places and devoured by disease, is nevertheless permeated with sexuality, like a clay hill irrigated by rivulets of thawed ice-water. Sexuality permeates all of Pyzhova’s imagery. A tiger hunts a doe, his eyes fixed on her perky rear as she casts him a sideways glance. The scene isn’t about hunting in the literal sense: it’s a game of subconscious desires, with one creature hoping to have its way with the other. Animal sexuality is one of Pyzhova’s dominant themes. She told me that a dog once knocked her over in the street and tried to rape her. Her husband, who

was looking on, remarked: “What kind of a woman are you? Even a dog can’t pass you by!” She loves telling tedious stories like this. She might start talking to a total stranger, and her third question would be to enquire the length of his penis. Pyzhova keeps a strict tally of her lovers – men who continue to pursue her even though she’s 80 and practically bedridden. But she also found an outlet for this sexual energy, in her art. She works for ten to 20 hours a day because painting entices her even more than sex. Her favourite subject matter is an encyclopaedia of sexual perversions, especially sex between people and animals. Many collectors criticise her for this subject matter, encouraging her towards more traditional genres like still lives and landscapes.

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WILLIAM A. HALL: THE L.A. CAR MAN Hall makes art in the vehicle he lives in, motivated by the death of his niece in a car crash COLIN RHODES

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orking in the car for up to 12 hours a day, every day, almost exclusively using pencil and coloured crayon on paper, William A. Hall has painstakingly developed an intuitive opus of images and writing that offer viewers insights into possible futures and alternate presents. These images of a world seen through a creative eye form a sprawling and compelling set of visual narratives, inventions and social comment that is continually developing. Here are cars, trains, architectural and landscape visions, and mythopoeic characters. For two decades, the streets of Los Angeles were home to Hall. More than half of that time was spent living in a succession of cars: a couple of Cadillacs, a Buick and, most recently, a trusty old Dodge that is determined to just keep on going. The automobile is a potent symbol of America the world over. Cars represent freedom of movement and individual choice. They speak the American dream. They assume individual characters in the arts, from the novels of Kerouac and Steinbeck to Peter Yates’ movie-classic, Bullit. The car is also often a precarious sanctuary. This was the way for Hall. Too hot in summer and too cold in winter, but dry and relatively safe. Remarkably, the constrained space of the automobile interior was also a place in which he produced a remarkable body of art. Hall was born in LA in 1943 and describes his parents as creative people. His mother, he says, was a poet who told her son that she was a descendent of the British Romantic poet, Lord Byron. His paternal grandfather, T. Victor Hall (1879–1965), was an illustrator in New York, and Hall also describes his father as an illustrator, though he held down a day job as a traffic consultant. The family moved home several times, always in outer satellites of the Los Angeles conurbation. All of these things contribute to Hall’s story. Hall has drawn and made art for as long as he can remember. He maintains that he really learned art on his own, though he enjoyed art lessons in his school years. Art school might have beckoned, but his family didn’t have the money to send him. This is not something he regrets. He figured he would just get on with making art anyway. Indeed, there is generally an easy-going stoicism in Hall’s character that looks first for William A. Hall, Los Angeles, 2015, photo: Henry Boxer

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REVEALING THE PRIMORDIAL GENE

“W

ow, your father’s crazy.” This is what I hear sometimes after people have seen what he’s doing on his four acres in upstate New York. They say it in a playful yet concerned way, as if what he’s doing in not “OK”. Most people are impressed and enchanted by all the stone, stacked in various vertical ways, the mosaics attached, the random demonic sculptures in crevices or on top of pedestals. Some people, though, get agitated by its sheer purposelessness. They seem to go out of their way to tell me that my father is wasting his time. “What is this for?”, “Why is he doing this?”, they will ask. These, of course, are rhetorical questions, and the commentator will proceed to tell me (in a subtle way) how pointless it all is.

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My father collects the stones, which weigh about 100 to 150 pounds, from streams and rivers in the surrounding area. He rolls, hoists and pulls them, one at a time, to the place in the puzzle in which they fit. It could take anywhere from a few hours to a few days to get the stone to where it was meant to be. It’s a building plan only he knows. The process is one of moving giant rosary beads. The composition is by improvisation and intuition. My friend, Wade Schuman (a fairly successful painter/musician in New York City), offered his unsolicited analysis on my fathers stone-moving compulsion. He says genetic programming compels him build his structures, a hidden primordial gene that has activated in him. It’s not a decision he has made of

Eric Della Penna describes the environment that his father, Nick, has created in upstate New York

free will; rather, it’s like insects or birds building structures whether they are needed or not. There seems to be no pattern to the location or size of each stone structure he builds. Most are river rocks, some are brick and some are cement pillars. The odd thing to me is that he has obscured them all from view by planting trees around them, encircling it all with a pine tree fortress. It’s this secretive aspect that makes me think my friends “genetic” theory is correct. His single-minded obsession is beyond “art”; no galleries have been contacted, no publicists have been hired, no one has been invited to see and no wine has been offered. If it’s not biology that is compelling him, I sometimes think it may be religion (but don’t tell him

that): an offering or a sacrifice; a private Easter Island or Stonehenge. On the other hand, it could be punishment: the punishment of Sisyphus, the torment of Jesus. Then, sometimes I think it’s pure defiance, the way Ahab would defy god. And this is my fear: that it may destroy him, and thus redefine my own legacy and that of my sons. Through all the grey stone there are brief flashes of colour, patches of red brick and representational mosaics like Eastern Orthodox icons. Bits of pottery and ceramic sculpture are placed, mounted randomly or semi-symmetrically. There is no precision to be found anywhere. That’s one of the construction concepts he is quite vocal about. We live in a world of atomic precision and of absolute mathematical

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R AW R E V I E W S

James Hampton

EXHIBITIONS

NEW GALLERIES OF SELFTAUGHT AND OUTSIDER ART Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and F Streets, NW Washington, DC 20004 On October 29, 2016, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) reopened its galleries dedicated to folk art and the work of self-taught artists after an in-depth reconsideration of its holdings in these fields. Its installation of such works has been completely redesigned and features some notable recent acquisitions. This comprehensive renovation project was overseen by Leslie Umberger, the museum’s curator of folk and selftaught art. As part of the Smithsonian Institution, a network of national museums in the United States, SAAM is a major repository of American visual art and material culture. The barrel-vaulted galleries in the neoclassical museum building, in which folk and other self-taught 62

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artists’ works have been reinstalled, feel inviting and intimate. Didactic information on wall texts and artwork-identification labels is clear and illuminating. Umberger and her design team have made imaginative use of existing architectural details to create bays or vitrines that neatly frame and showcase such compelling works as The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ General Assembly (c. 1950–64) by James Hampton (1909–1964), made of metallic-foil scraps; mixed-media, “healing” sculptures and paintings by the Nebraskan artist Emery Blagdon (1907–1986); and The Beginning of Life in the Yellow Jungle (2003), a mixed-media, wall-mounted work by Thornton Dial, Sr (1928–2016), which explores race in American society. There are many other treasures in these attractive new galleries. Among them: a “housetop”style quilt crafted by an unidentified artist in the 1920s, and a limestone Crucifixion from the 1930s by the

Tennessee-based stone carver William Edmondson (1874–1951). To encounter such works in a setting that allows them to be seen within the context of the broader history of American art is a valuable experience that cannot be underestimated. As Umberger pointed out on the new galleries’ opening day, “Works by self-taught artists can be found not only in these specialised galleries but also in other parts of the museum.” In this manner, she noted, visitors may appreciate the many ways in which talented, visionary art-makers who were or are not academically trained have contributed to the shaping of a sense of national cultural identity in the United States. With the opening of this reinvigorated museum presentation, the work of many of America’s most inventive self-taught artists and their resonant creations have been awarded a much-deserved, must-see new home. Edward M. Gómez

EXHIBITIONS

Beverly Buchanan

Leonard Daly

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BEVERLY BUCHANAN: RUINS AND RITUALS The Brooklyn Museum, New York October 21, 2016 – March 5, 2017

THE BUSH HAVE EARS: RAS DIZZY & LEONARD DALEY Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York October 13 – November 23, 2016 In Jamaica, a diverse group of selftaught artists who together became known as the “Intuitives” began gaining popular attention after their creations — paintings, drawings, sculptures and more — were featured in the exhibition “The Intuitive Eye” at the National Gallery of Jamaica in Kingston in 1979. That landmark survey, from which they derived their collective moniker, was organised by David Boxer, the NGJ’s now-retired, longtime director and chief curator. His pioneering research about the Intuitives recognised their contributions to the shaping of Jamaica’s sense of national cultural identity in the post-colonial period. (Jamaica became independent of Britain in 1962.) Ras Dizzy (circa 1932-2008) and Leonard Daley (1930-2006) were two members of the definitive generation of Jamaican Intuitives whose work Boxer championed. Cavin-Morris’s museum-quality mini-survey of Dizzy’s pictures in poster paint on illustration board and Daley’s in house paint or oil on canvas offered a revealing introduction to their

respective themes and techniques. Dizzy was a vagabond who traded his art for food and lodging. Depicted in bold colours and simplified forms, his favourite subjects included palm trees, fortune tellers, ships and horse races. Ras Dizzy’s real name was Birth Livingstone. “Ras” is a Rastafarian honourific; he became known as “Dizzy” for the tall tales he told about his imaginary travels. In Daley’s pictures, birds, snakes, human and not-so-human figures emerge and swirl together in dynamic, churning compositions, evoking a sense of fecund, primordial forces. His semi-abstract images suggest affinities with the psychologically charged works of certain painters in the United States in the years just before the eruption of full-blown Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s. In the broader outsider/selftaught art world beyond Jamaica, the works of Dizzy and Daley are still not as well known as they deserve to be. Evoking one of the abiding themes of this gallery’s curatorial programme, this introduction to their distinctive creative visions helped illuminate their contributions to the wider, deeper history of artistic expression among members of the African diaspora and their descendants in the Caribbean and the Americas.

While growing up in South Carolina, Beverly Buchanan (1940–2015) frequently accompanied her greatuncle, the dean of the School of Agriculture at South Carolina State College, a historically black institution, on his work-related road trips. They visited poor tenant farmers, often staying overnight in the makeshift cabins their hosts had built. Later, such vernacular architecture of the American Deep South became a major theme of her work. Buchanan studied under the Abstract-Expressionist painter Norman Lewis at the Art Students League in New York. She began making tabletop sculptures of shacks after she settled in Georgia, in 1977. She made these works, which resemble architectural models, with scraps of wood, giving them haphazard, patchwork-like forms that are reminiscent of Cubist sculpture. The jagged wooden strips that cover their windows and patch their roofs suggest the desperation and ingenuity that grow out of the human need for shelter and were inspired by actual, hand-built shacks she had seen in her native region. Buchanan regarded her sculptures as portraits. On one of them, which appeared in “Influences of the Untaught”, an exhibition at the Drawing Center in New York in 1988, she wrote, “My work attempts to celebrate the spirit of these shack dwellers who could be recognised for what they wore, how they walked, and by the kinds of flowers they grew in their front yards." Sarah Fensom RAW VISION 92

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