Raw Vision 109 by Raw Vision

RAWVISION109 WINTER 2021/2022

EDITOR John Maizels DIRECTORS Henry Boxer, Robert Greenberg, Audrey Heckler, Rebecca Hoffberger, Frank Maresca, Marilyn Oshman, Richard Rosenthal, Bob Roth ART EDITOR Maggie Jones Maizels ASSISTANT EDITOR Mariella Landolfi FEATURES EDITOR Nuala Ernest ASSOCIATE EDITOR Natasha Jaeger ADVERTISING MANAGER Susan Hirschhaut PRODUCTION EDITOR Aoife Dunphy ACCOUNTS MANAGER Judith Edwards SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER Suzy Daniels CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Michael Bonesteel, Jenifer P Borum, Ted Degener, Jo Farb Hernández, Tom Patterson, Colin Rhodes, Charles Russell, Daniel Wojcik PUBLISHED by Raw Vision Ltd Letchmore Heath WD25 8LN, UK tel +44 (0)1923 853175 email info@rawvision.com website www.rawvision.com

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RAW NEWS The latest in outsider art exhibitions and events

RAW CLASSICS The coronation of a Pope by Aloïse Corbaz

UFOs IN OUTSIDER ART Extraterrestrial activity has long captivated outsider artists

REBECCA HOFFBERGER The founder-director discusses her AVAM journey and beyond

BARBARA DENYER For this US creator, her home and her art were one and the same

THE LIBERTY BOYS A family for whom tattooing was a way of life and an artistic outlet

EDWIN JEFFERY Carving out the story of the civil rights struggle in the USA

MARILENA PELOSI A Brazilian artist conjures unsettling scenes from a parallel world

WELMON SHARLHORNE Time in prison gave Sharlhorne his art, and still informs it

REVIEWS A bumper haul of books, films and exhibitions

GALLERY & MUSEUM GUIDE Details of notable international venues

ISSN 0955-1182

COVER IMAGE: Daniel Martin Diaz, The End Is Near (detail)

Raw Vision (ISSN 0955-1182) December 2021 is published quarterly (March, June, September, December) by Raw Vision Ltd, PO Box 44, Watford WD25 8LN, and distributed in the USA by ePost Global, 18 Central Boulevard, South Hackensack NJ 07606. Periodicals postage paid at South Hackensack NJ. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Raw Vision c/o 18 Central Blvd, South Hackensack NJ 07076

Raw Vision cannot be held responsible for the return of unsolicited material. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Raw Vision.

MEDAILLE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS

BEST DESIGN MEDIA AWARD

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM VISIONARY AWARD

WORLD’S BEST ART MAGAZINE

UTNE INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD

R AW N E W S image: Creative Growth

OUTSIDER ART FAIR NEW YORK 2022

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM Jan 21 – Sep 5 Encompassing four centuries of folk and self-taught art, AFAM explores a variety of related themes: creative gestures of repetition, seriality, recurrence, iteration, variation and innovation, in artwork as well as in the collection of artwork. Pieces are juxtaposed to explore the idea of “multitudes” in terms of the production of the artists themselves, as well as the idea of “containing multitudes” as a metaphor for the Museum’s collections as a whole. While some items are from AFAM’s existing collections, others are new acquisitions on display for the first time, including work by – among others – Sam Doyle, William Edmondson, Ammi Phillips, Mary Paulina Corbett, Henry Darger, Helen Rae, Bill Traylor and Judith Scott. AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM 2 Lincoln Square, New York, NY 10023, USA www.folkartmuseum.org

THE ORANGE SHOW The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art (OSCVA) has announced a major expansion of its campus. The Houston-based site – which is dedicated to visionary art environments, particularly art cars, and the artists who make them – will now cover eight acres. The expansion will include spaces for performance, exhibitions, events and education, and a visionary art library and archive. The art cars, previously seen only during an annual parade, will have a permanent area. The key feature of the redesign is an 800-footlong ramp running through the entire campus, providing new ways to engage with the buildings and art. “We want to reimagine the way visitors approach contemporary art by stepping away from the traditional museum spaces and challenge and redefine our ideas about what constitutes fine art, and who it can come from,” says Tommy Ralph Pace, Executive Director of the Orange Show. THE ORANGE SHOW 2401 Munger Street, Houston, TX 77023, USA www.orangeshow.org photo: Rogers Partners

Sam Doyle

Feb 3–6 After the unavoidable cancellation of last year’s event due to COVID 19, the Outsider Art Fair is back in 2022 – and is celebrating with a special 30th anniversary edition. The in-person fair will take place over four days at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea, Manhattan, and will showcase the best in self-taught creations from legendary and newly discovered artists from around the world. METROPOLITAN PAVILION 125 W 18th Street New York, NY 10011 www.outsiderartfair.com

R AW N E W S MISSOURI DISCOVERY The sculpture later went to Paris but its wereabouts since then had been unknown. “It was like finding the Holy Grail,” Foster tells the New York Times. “Edmondson worked in Nashville, so who would ever dream that a piece would be in St Louis?” Born on a Nashville plantation in 1874, the son of previously enslaved parents,he worked as a janitor, fireman and hospital orderly, as well as selling vegetables from his garden. Despite the artistic success he achieved in 1937, when he died in 1951 Edmondson was buried in an unmarked grave. Today, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) holds five of Edmondson’s sculptures. Martha and Mary will go on view in “Multitudes” at American Folk Art Museum from January 21 .

William Edmondson

A long-lost sculpture by a renowned Black folk artist has been unearthed in a front garden in St Louis, Missouri. The discovery was made in 2019 by art collector and enthusiast John Foster who spotted the 10-inch high sculpture as he was driving by. He returned to ask the homeowner, 84year-old Sally Bliss, if he could take a closer look at the moss-covered carving. Hewn from rough white stone, it depicted two women sitting side by side, hands folded in their laps, feet poking out from under their skirts. Valérie Rousseau, a curator at New York’s American Folk Art Museum (AFAM), flew to St Louis to see the work and confirmed Foster’s hunch – it was Martha and Mary by William Edmondson. The piece had been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in 1937, when Edmondson became the first Black artist to have a solo exhibition at the NY institution.

AMERICAN VISIONARY ART MUSEUM

Muppet Shaman

Chris Roberts Antieu

until Sept 4 Healing and the Art of Compassion (and the Lack Thereof!) is the 26th show to be presented by American Visionary Art Museum’s (AVAM) and the swan song of founder, director, and primary curator – Rebecca Hoffberger – who retires this year. Inspired by the current Dalai Lama, the exhibition’s message is that compassion is a healing force in our lives, families, communities, social systems, and society as a whole, and its goal is to point a way forward beyond fear, violence and greed. It cites scientific research that says that increasing our acts of kindness positively impacts our physical and mental health and includes artwork – from artists such as Chris Roberts Antieau, Nancy Josephson, Richard C Smith, Paul Lancaster and Maura Holden – which reinforces the message that individual and social practices are all improved by compassion. AMERICAN VISIONARY ART MUSEUM 800 Key Highway, Baltimore, MD 21230, USA www.avam.org

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Big Hole Pass Jackson Montana

Mt Grazian in Maritime Alps

Grizzly Gulch Valley Ohansburg Vermont

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JOSEPH E. YOAKUM: WHAT I SAW until Mar 19, 2022 The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) is holding the first major museum exhibition of the work of Joseph E. Yoakum (1891–1972) in 25 years. Bringing together 100 of the African-Amercian artist’s 2000 or so artworks, Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw opened at MOMA in November 2021, following a run at the Art Institute of Chicago from June to October. As well as his view of the world, his religion and his experiences as a Black man in twentieth-century USA, the artwork reflects Yoakum’s life of far-flung travel. Born 25 years after the end of the Civil War, in Ash Grove, Missouri, he left home as a child to work with travelling circuses, moving around the USA and overseas. Then, during World War I, he was based in Europe in an all-African American noncombat unit. It was his extensive travels (he claimed to have visited every continent except Antarctica) and 6

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exposure to foreign landscapes – along with his faith and the tenets of Christian Science – that fed his remarkable art. “Wherever my mind led me, I would go,” Yoakum once said. “I’ve been all over this world four times.” Although a prolific artist, creating 2000 or so pieces, he did not begin on his landscapes until the age of 71. Drawn from his memories, both real and imagined, his landscapes reveal a unique, poetic perspective on the world and bear scant resemblance to the world we know. Following its MoMA presentation, the exhibition will travel to the Menil Collection, Houston, where it will be on view in 2022 from April 22 until August 7. THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 11 West 53rd Street, New York, N Y10019, USA https://www.moma.org/artists/26683

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ALOÏSE CORBAZ Couronnement de Paul VI CÉLINE MUZELLE writes about the symbolism within this vibrant 1963 piece

n Jean Dubuffet’s art brut collection (begun in 1945) – and within his concept of such works as an instinctive art form, untouched by contemporary artistic modes and movements – the work of the Swiss creator Aloïse Corbaz is considered an essential element. She is the author of hundreds of drawings, paintings, sketchbooks and scrolls, created between 1920 and her death in 1964, while she was a patient in a psychiatric clinic in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. She was in many ways the female equivalent of Adolf Wölfli among the art brut artists of her time. Her highly personal mythology – her characters with their unseeing blue eyes (“blind to rational life”, as she once wrote), animals, plants, architecture, inscriptions and intricate vehicles, all intimately bound together within changing scales and perspectives – is rooted in her wide-ranging field of reference, composed of both formal knowledge and the influences of the popular press. Elements from these two sources are indiscriminately combined, blended and eventually transfigured by the movements of her unsettled mind (which she referred to as the “consubstantial ricochet”), in a process that is entirely her own. Corbaz drew on the materials of a schoolchild (coloured pencils, wax crayons, gouache) but also on those of a seamstress (hand-sewn scrolls and patches), and she was not averse to introducing other materials (toothpaste, nectar extracted from crushed flowers) in order to conjure up love, the cathartic force of art, and transcendence in every possible form. This was certainly the significance of the ceremonial aspects of secular or religious consecration so often found in her work: here, the coronation of Pope Paul VI,

which took place on June 30, 1963, and which she must have learnt of from the newspapers and illustrated magazines in circulation at the clinic. There is something of “pop art” in Couronnement de Paul VI, and one is also reminded of Matisse and his paper cut-outs. This is a work created as Corbaz’s life was drawing to its close. The broad strokes of wax crayon are in vibrant tones, and expression is limited to its essential elements. The artist presents us with a powerful and radical synthesis of life in all its complexity, the hallmark of all her work. Two figures with pink tiaras, one crowning the other, are contained within a vase, the outline and content of which blend into their bodies which in turn contain flowers and fruit. The entire scene is placed beneath the auspices of a small domed temple, the “Temple of Love” which Corbaz so frequently refers to in the titles and inscriptions of her work. The alchemical character of the composition confirms the impression, born of her written texts and earlier work, that the artist was no stranger to Hermeticism and its symbolic codes and underlying philosophy. Here, the coronation of Paul VI is perhaps a pretext for the representation of the pontiff, a “pont” or bridge between Heaven and Earth, someone who unites and defies all duality. In the same way, the Hermetic vase (containing the two figures) is used for the transmutation of matter as well as, symbolically, that of human beings. This is the matrix at the core of which all forms of life, as well as inert materials, can blend – a creative matrix where figurative follies are acceptable and a forceful metaphor for Corbaz’s inner explorations. Corbaz who found, in the act of creation, a healing and a veritable rebirth. Céline Muzelle writes and runs projects about art brut and outsider creators. She co-authored Aloïse Corbaz’s Catalogue Raisonné. Couronnement de Paul VI, 1963, wax crayon on paper, 10 x 13 in. / 25 x 33 cm, private collection

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DEPICTING A LIVING MYTH Outsider artists have been portraying their extraterrestrial close encounters (of many kinds) for decades MICHAEL BONESTEEL

Ionel Talpazan, Visionary Art and Science UFO... , 2001, mixed media on cardboard, 20 x 17 in. / 51 x 43 cm, courtesy: Henry Boxer Gallery

e are now well into our first era of documented alien contact. Some maintain that extraterrestrial (ET) communication with humanity has been going on for thousands of years, if not longer, while others dispute the very existence of the phenomenon. The reality (or not) of UFOs is not the primary concern here. The focus for now is upon visionary artists and their alleged experiences with flying saucers, alien abductions and close encounters of any kind. Artists like Daniel Martin Diaz and Ken Grimes have had an abiding fascination with UFOs, while

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painters such as Royal Robertson and Howard Finster maintained that they had visions of flying saucers, and yet none of them claimed to have encountered ETs in real life. Not to discount Diaz’s and Grimes’s avid interest, nor to dispute the veracity of Finster’s and Robertson’s intuitive inspiration, but the following discussion is devoted to artists who profess or professed to have had actual perceived confrontations with ET events – and whose very reason for making certain works of art is a result of those confrontations. It is organised in accordance with late astronomer and UFO researcher J Allen Hynek’s initial classification of

opposite: Howard Finster, Man of Vision Found in Hosea 012–10 (detail), 1978, enamel on plywood, 48 x 16 in. / 122 x 40.5 cm, courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum

above: Paul Laffoley, The Thanaton III, 1989, oil, acrylic, ink, and vinyl lettering on canvas, painted wood frame, 73.5 x 73.5 in. / 186.5 x 186.5 cm, courtesy: Kent Fine Art

close encounters of the first, second and third kinds in his book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry (1972). Romanian native Ionel Talpazan (1955–2015) ran away from his foster home when he was just seven years old in 1963. While sleeping in a field one night, he awoke to find himself encircled by an uncanny blue light that felt like it was “from another world” (see Raw Vision 45). He later recalled the complete silence, and said, “I see things I never see before.” (1) Talpazan subsequently determined that the light must have emanated from a flying saucer hovering above him, even though he had no memory of actually seeing

it. As it was a visual sighting that took place within 500 feet (150 meters) of the source of the mysterious light, it may qualify as a close encounter of the first kind. In the years following that incident, Talpazan became inexplicably aware of the inner workings of alien spacecraft. Numerous contactees in the annals of UFO research have reported the retrieval of lost memories through dreams or hypnotherapy sessions, as well as the sudden gain of paranormal abilities as a side effect. In any case, the happening so transformed Talpazan that he felt driven to create works of art about UFOs for the rest of his life. His early artwork is painterly and

opposite: Howard Finster, Man of Vision Found in Hosea 012–10 (detail), 1978, enamel on plywood, 48 x 16 in. / 122 x 40.5 cm, courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum

above: Paul Laffoley, The Thanaton III, 1989, oil, acrylic, ink, and vinyl lettering on canvas, painted wood frame, 73.5 x 73.5 in. / 186.5 x 186.5 cm, courtesy: Kent Fine Art

Paul Laffoley, The Urban Fossickated Octave, 1968, oil, acrylic, ink, vinyl lettering on canvas, 49.5 x 49.5 in. / 125.5 x 125.5 cm, courtesy: Kent Fine Art

expressionistic, depicting interplanetary vehicles set against fanciful landscapes or soaring through outer space surrounded by planets. Later works depict technically precise cross-sections of flying saucers, revealing their mechanics and interior layout. He also fabricated a number of plaster and mixed media sculptures of flying saucers. New York art collector and dealer Aarne Anton says: “When I questioned him early on, he said he didn’t have a handle on what had happened to him when he was seven years old and saw the UFO and blue light in Romania. He had no memory of what happened to him

[immediately] after being touched by the blue light. There were times when he played down his early experiences because he didn’t want to be seen as a crazy person. I asked him how he knew the details [about UFO propulsion systems] and he said he saw them later in dreams in which aliens taught him about them. He always hoped that NASA would confirm his findings. He explained it all so beautifully and with conviction.” A close encounter of the second kind involves alleged contact with ETs that leaves a physical trace. It has been reported that the circular areas where UFOs

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REBECCA HOFFBERGER AND AVAM The founder-director of the American Visionary Art Museum is stepping down after 26 years. Here she tells Raw Vision’s Editor John Maizels about her journey

Hoffberger in 2020, in front of Johanna Burke’s Green Monkeys photos: Chris Myers, unless otherwise stated

JM: What was your first experience of outsider art? RH: My earliest upbringing was key to envisioning the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM), as I had wonderfully and naturally intuitive parents, who gave me lots of time alone in nature. My first outsider artist encounter was “Bumblebee”, a large man who had been institutionalised and who would often hitchhike. The adults knew he was safe to pick up, and he would hum madly (thus the name) while cutting intricate paper dolls with your kid‘s name interspersed. Let out of the car, he would stand there smiling with the paper garland outstretched and for sale for a dollar. So unlike any adult I had ever met. Bumblebee was someone who also fascinated filmmaker John Waters from his own Baltimore childhood.

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JM: Were you always aware of the wider world in all its diversity? RH: Mom introduced me to the writings of clairvoyant Edgar Cayce and, even as a little kid, wild birds would land on me and I loved being outside in all weather. I could read well before going to school, and getting rheumatic fever – with its enormous leg pains – at age five taught me how to get out of my body to be able to sleep. I was always interested in big questions of reality and, from 13, was active at school and in the community on social justice issues, quick to mouth off to any teacher who bullied a student. Hiring at age 15 the only lawyer who’d work for free (who knew he was a communist?) to then win a class action suit to stop poor Baltimore City kids from being suspended from school indefinitely

AVAM’s main building with its youth-at-risk mirrored mosaics exterior was completed in 1995 as an addition to its 1913 industrial building

resulted in the birth of the Baltimore experimental high school, and my being voted the president of the Baltimore-Washington High School Coalition. My brilliant best friend and I would save our allowance and go to NYC to see Broadway plays and films, such as Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. There I met my second self-taught artist, Yanni Posnakoff, when I was just 13 (55 years later I would show his work at AVAM!). I also had a very influential friend, Dr Doris Bright, who was the first African-American Baltimore County teacher. Doris had introduced me to the Theosophical Society when I was only 12 and, by 13, I had read all of Madame Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine. All this to say that, from very early on, my friendships and cultural opportunities were extraordinarily diverse

and set the stage for all the elements I still incorporate into AVAM – with the plus of humour. I have always adored laughing. JM: As a young person, you lived in Paris and then Mexico. What were your experiences and how important were those formative years to you? RH: I applied to college at 15 and was accepted, but then received an invitation to study directly as apprentice to mime artist Marcel Marceau in Paris, after he had seen a film clip of me at a summer college programme when I was 13. So, at 16, I flew for my first time to Paris and, at 17, I married the star ballet dancer of the Paris Opera, later bringing him back to the USA to set up and choreograph for a more spiritual ballet > page 34

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AVAM’S 26 MEGA EXHIBITIONS: 1. THE TREE OF LIFE (Nov 1995 – Apr 1996) 2. WIND IN MY HAIR (May 1996 – May 1997) 3. THE END IS NEAR: Visions of Apocalypse, Millennium, and Utopia (May 1997 – May 1998) 4. LOVE: Error and Eros, Love Profane and Divine (Jun 1998 – May 1999)

Installation view, “All Faiths Beautiful”, photo: Dan Meyers

5. WE ARE NOT ALONE: Angels and Other Aliens (Oct 1999 – Sept 2000) 6. TREASURES OF THE SOUL: Who is Rich? (Oct 2000 – Sept 2001) 7. THE ART OF WAR AND PEACE: Toward an End to Hatred (Oct 2001 – Sept 2002) 8. HIGH ON LIFE: Transcending Addiction (Oct 2002 – Sept 2003)

Santiago Navila, Release, “The Secret Life of Earth”

9. GOLDEN BLESSINGS OF OLD AGE AND OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES (Oct 2003 – Sept 2004) 10. HOLY H2O: Fluid Universe (Oct 2004 – Sept 2005) 11.RACE, CLASS AND GENDER: 3 Things that Contribute “0” to Character (because being a schmuck is an equal opportunity for everyone!) (Oct 2005 – Sept 2006)

Esther Krinitz, Janiszew Prison Camp, “The Art of Storytelling”, courtesy: Art and Remembrance

12. HOME AND BEAST (Oct 2006 – Sept 2007) 13. ALL FAITHS BEAUTIFUL: From Atheism to Zoroastrianism, Respect for Diversity of Belief (Oct 2007 – Sept 2008)

Wayne Coyne, King’s Mouth, “The Big Hope Show”, photo: Dan Meyers

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14. THE MARRIAGE OF ART, SCIENCE & PHILOSOPHY (Oct 2008 – Sept 2009) 15. LIFE, LIBERTY AND PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS (Oct 2009 – Sept 2010) 16. WHAT MAKES US SMILE? (Oct 2010 – Sept 2011) 17. ALL THINGS ROUND: Galaxies, Eyeballs and Karma (Oct 2011 – Sept 2012) Rick Skogsberg, Can’t Lose Shoe Collection, “The Secret Life of Earth”

18. THE ART OF STORYTELLING: Lies, Enchantment, Humor and Truth (Oct 2012 – September 2013) 19. HUMAN, SOUL AND MACHINE: The Coming Singularity (Oct 2013 – Sept 2014) 20. THE VISIONARY EXPERIENCE: From St Francis to Finster (Oct 2014 – Sept 2015)

Ingo Swann, The Light Giver, “The Visionary Experience”, photo: Dan Meyers

21. THE BIG HOPE SHOW (Oct 2015 – Sept 2016) 22.YUMMM! The History, Fantasy, and Future of Food (Oct 2016 – Sept 2017) 23.THE GREAT MYSTERY SHOW (Oct 2017 – Sept 2018) 24. PARENTING: An Art without a Manual (Oct 2018 – Sept 2019)

Wayne Coyne, King’s Mouth (interior), “The Big Hope Show”, photo: Shawn Levin

25. THE SECRET LIFE OF EARTH: Alive! Awake! (and possibly really Angry!) Oct 2019 – Sept 2021) 26. HEALING AND THE ART OF COMPASSION (and the Lack Thereof!) (Oct 2021 – Sept 2022)

Alex Grey, Praying, “All Faiths Beautiful”, photo: Dan Meyers

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THE STAGE SET HOME OF BARBARA CLARK DENYER In an affluent New York suburb is an art installation: a house that is a monument to objects and history, and the backdrop to the artist’s life KATHARINE GATES

n 2018, photographer Fred Charles took some pictures of an extraordinary home. They were stunning: jewelbox interiors, staged like theatre sets and filled with mysterious objects; a subterranean doll’s house; a painted bust of a bird-woman; exquisite dioramas of tombs and bleak miniaturised scenes devoid of inhabitants. And, in a few photos, their creator – a stately, costumed woman in her nineties, smiling wryly – Barbara Clark Denyer. Denyer had been creating her art in private for 60 years. When she died in 2020, aged 95, she left behind an astonishing body of work and the question of how to preserve it. The house sits in a cul-de-sac in Irvington, New York, a village on the Hudson River about 25 miles north of 38

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Manhattan. Converted from the 1868 carriage house of a now-demolished Victorian estate, it is a masterpiece, with a multi-coloured, slate tile roof and an interior panelled in dark wood reminiscent of Anne Boleyn’s Hever Castle. The main hall is its showpiece, and features an enormous fireplace, symmetrically aligned velvet sofas, and – scattered throughout – Denyer’s works. The house looks “staged”, as though it were up for sale and ready for potential buyers, but her daughter Lauri Marder says this is exactly how it was when Denyer lived there. It is a stage set, but one that her mother had been building and performing in for over six decades. An Altar to Vanity (1976) sits on an old refectory table

“A manifestation of my soul in the world. And inasmuch as it holds me it is also a symbol of the mother.”

(Denyer never used conventional pedestals or frames to display her work, instead incorporating them into furniture that she often salvaged from religious institutions). While the mosaic-tiled skull is close to lifesize, the tiny stairs leading up to it imply that it is a scale model: some kind of Mesoamerican altar to human sacrifice, or perhaps a maquette for a set design for some unspeakable gothic horror. Who or what is being sacrificed to vanity? This disorienting play on scale, in combination with chthonic violence, is evident throughout the artist’s work. Denyer’s Underground Dollhouse (1979) provides a window onto meticulously recreated rooms inspired by

those in the Metropolitan Museum: a Minoan temple, a seventeenth-century Venetian bedroom, and a bathroom with a toilet, a winking “throne room” of Knossos, Crete. The Minoan chamber is accessed via a tunnel in the roof, not the only reference to the Minotaur’s Labyrinth. There is humour and perversity in the work: is that a pair of handcuffs above the bed? These worlds-within-worlds are oddly empty of inhabitants. Were this a regular doll’s house, surely there would be tiny figurines inside. And, without its owner, Denyer’s home itself feels like an empty doll’s house awaiting its star performer. Denyer was born Barbara Clark in Austin, Texas, in 1925, to an indulgent oil magnate father and selfRAW VISION 109

THE LIBERTY BOYS OF SCOLLAY SQUARE Tattooing the bodies of soldiers and sailors in 1900s USA allowed a family to make their artistic mark and a living JOHN FOSTER

ntil the 1870s, tattoos marked and identified outsiders in Western culture – sailors, prisoners, criminals and other perceived undesirables. However, with the rise of popular entertainment in US and European cities in the nineteenth century, tattooed bodies and tattooing entered the mainstream as attractions in dime museums, carnivals and circus sideshows. Recently, further cultural normalisation has brought the art of tattooing fully out of the shadows

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and into the spotlight, and today’s millennials adopt tattoos as an imprint of their youth – a rite of passage to adulthood. The story of one family of Boston tattooers highlights a formative period in the popularisation of tattooing in the USA. Two generations of the Liberty family – patriarch Edward “Dad” Liberty and his sons Frank, Harold, and Ted – dominated the Boston tattoo scene from the 1910s to the 1960s, plying the trade

opposite: Shop sign used by Ted Liberty during his brief stint in Baltimore, c. 1950, courtesy: Derin Bray below: Tattoo design owned by Frank Liberty, artist unknown, c. 1930, ink and watercolour on board, 17 x 13 in. / 43 x 33 cm, courtesy: Derin Bray

from their shops in Scollay Square, the city’s gritty entertainment district. Their careers straddled the Golden Age of American tattooing – which spanned both World Wars – and its postwar decline. The family saw the further demise of tattooing in their city when, in the 1960s, a ban on the practice was imposed on the whole of Massachusetts, and at the same time Scollay Square was destroyed in the name of urban renewal. Edward “Dad” Liberty, the son of French-Canadian

immigrants, grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, a roughneck factory city whose declining fortunes soon led him from wage work to entrepreneurship, running a series of low-overhead, often short-lived entertainment venues aimed primarily at men. Edward and his brothers operated bowling alleys, shooting galleries and storefront shows, where out-of-work sideshow performers, small exotic animals, games, and peepshow scopes offered working-class men fleeting diversion

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Photo enlargement of “Sailor” Carl Lindquist, c. 1925, owned by Edward Liberty, courtesy: Jared Hook

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Woman posing behind a board designed by Ben Corday (c. 1924), photo owned by Edward Liberty, courtesy: The Lyle Tuttle Tattoo Art Collection RAW VISION 109

HALF MAN NO MORE Through his carvings, Edwin Jeffery gives a quiet but powerful commentary on the ongoing African-American struggle for civil rights MARGARET DAY ALLEN

From Slavery to the White House, 2020, oak plywood and paint, 48 x 24 x 2 in. / 122 x 61 x 5 cm

all photos: Jelanie Watkins, unless otherwise stated

“I

’m not a carver; I’m a storyteller,” says Edwin Jeffery, Jr. Half of his woodcarvings relate to the African-American struggle for civil rights. He admits that some of the work is provocative. He wants to make people think. Much of his other art reflects his Christian faith and his pride in AfricanAmerican achievements. Jeffery was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1949. His mother was a caregiver and domestic worker. His father was a carpenter. When Jeffery was 18 months old, his parents separated, and he and one of his sisters moved in with their retired paternal grandparents. “We lived right across from the garbage dump,” he says. They had

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The history of African Americans: their capture, transportation to America, and sale into slavery; their lives as slaves (abolitionist Frederick Douglass at far right); and President Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves, Dr Martin Luther King, and President Barack Obama, first African-American president.

to keep the windows and doors closed during the summer months because of the strong odour. From a young age, Jeffery was interested in the arts and showed creative talent. He wrote a modern version of Macbeth in high school, played in the school band, and won several awards for his poetry. Most of his education was at all-Black schools but, in his senior year, he was one of 30 Black pupils sent to a formerly all-white high school. “I loved going to Southside,” he says. “They treated me nice.” He joined the school’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corp (ROTC). The programme had white sponsors who would march with the ROTC officers in parades. When Jeffery

Peace: We All Bleed the Same, 2017, poplar and paint, 14 x 22 x 2 in. / 35.5 x 56 x 5 cm, collection of Terri and Allen Johnson, photo: Terri Johnson

This carving expresses Jeffery’s hopes for racial reconciliation and brotherly love.

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“I’m not a carver; I’m a storyteller.”

Colored Regiment, 2014, oak plywood and paint, 48 x 24 x 8 x 2.5 in. / 122 x 61 x 20 x 6 cm

The soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment of the US Coloured Troops served on the Union side in the American Civil War. Their commanding officers were all white. Noted for their courage, the unit suffered a 40 per cent casualty rate during the Second Battle of Fort Wagner. The award-winning film Glory tells their story.

and one of his Black friends were promoted to officers, the sponsorship programme ended. On March 28, 1968, Jeffery joined a march organised by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr in protest of the city’s treatment of Black refuse collectors. The event was meant to be peaceful but, when Jeffery rounded a corner, he saw that violence had broken out. He was tear gassed and beaten by police. Fearing for his life, he managed to escape. A week later, on April 4, 1968, King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Jeffery remembers crying with sorrow and anger. In another incident, he got lost driving in Hernando, Mississippi, a majority-white suburb of Memphis. Three police officers surrounded and questioned him. Sensing the situation was escalating, he said, “I must have made a wrong turn.” Using racist language, the police told him to leave and never come back. Jeffery complied. After high school, Jeffery studied secondary education and history at LeMoyne-Owen College,

a historically Black college in Memphis, for three years. However, he left before graduating when he was hired by the Memphis Fire Department. Fighting fires paid more than teaching. It was 1973 and he was one of 40 or so Black firefighters out of 900 in the city. He only weighed 142 pounds, although the usual criterion was at least 150 pounds as a larger man could more easily control a pressurised hose. Jeffery was a “nozzle man”, holding the nozzle as other men held the hose behind him. This meant he was first to enter a burning building. In 1988, he was promoted to lieutenant, supervising five other firefighters. On one occasion, a member of his station revived a dying woman but, when the rescue was reported by the media, credit was given to another, all-white, station. Jeffery says he felt accepted by the other firefighters – “It’s like another family” – but he did have unsettling moments, like when a white co-worker showed him his Ku Klux Klan membership card. > page 56 Jeffery has led a quiet life. He and his wife,

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Reversed (NNN vs White Power), 2016, white oak and paint, 23 x 25 x 2 in. / 58 x 63.5 x 5 cm

An imagined history where Black people were the dominate race: a Black man in white robes, clutching a Bible, is identified with the National Negro Nation; to the left the lynching of white man; to the right, a white man, gun in waistband, raises a fist in a White Power salute, clutching money made from drugs – the jail behind his likely future.

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AN ABSURD AMBIVALENCE In her single-colour, ballpoint pen drawings, Brazilian-born Marilena Pelosi creates a suggestive, cruel, delirius world MATTHIEU PERONNET

Untitled, 2020

all artworks: ballpoint pen on A5 paper courtesy: Marilena Pelosi, unless otherwise stated

a frame, with a sure gesture, slightly undulating, like a shadow in the moonlight. It is a ritual. Similar to an internal unframing. “I am in front of a blank page. I have a vague idea to start off with, then it comes slowly and the elements assert themselves. There is no intellectual thinking. It is

verything begins in the morning. After breakfast. A time for relaxation. Still close enough to nighttime, so that day-to-day reality has not yet crushed the forming of the fragile image carried-out in the invisible. Marilena Pelosi gets hold of a Bristol sheet, and a pencil or ballpoint pen, and traces out

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“Art comes from a realm of the mind that has nothing to do with daily life.”

Untitled, 2017

another way of functioning,” Pelosi says. In the meantime, impervious, dauntless creatures have appeared. A world in which everything is intricately connected, mutating, confronting. To the flows gushing from all sides, from all pores, all orifices, responds Pelosi’s fine, transparent line. Assertiveness

of the form, contradicted by a rage of intention. Ambivalent or downright suggestive situations, bonds, shackles, entanglements, more or less appetising fluids, and a forest of symbols to interpret. What to make of this eroticised, deviant, cruel, phantasmagorical and dreamlike world? This state of swaying between terror

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FROM INMATE TO ART ICON Welmon Sharlhorne’s drawings became his lifeline in prison and were already hanging in galleries when he became a free man BILL SASSER

left: Untitled (Beaked Creature), c. 1994, ink on manila envelope, 14 x 20.5 in. / 35.5 x 52 cm, courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum opposite: Sharlhorne, Oct 2021, photo: Bill Sasser

“W

hen I did my time, I had time to see how art could make me free,” says Welmon Sharlhorne, whose wild imagination took flight inside a Louisiana prison cell. Before his parole in 1996, his artwork was already prized by collectors and had been shown at museums in the US and Europe. “Yes, my art made it out into the world before I did,” Sharlhorne muses, a dapper 69-year-old who spent 22 years in Angola prison, Louisiana’s notorious state penitentiary. Since then he has taken life as an everrolling adventure. In the past year, he has endured Covid lockdown, was part of a museum show at New York’s MoMA PS1, evacuated for Hurricane Ida, and is

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currently featured in Prospect New Orleans, a citywide international art triennial. “My art comes from the heart – keep your eyes on the prize and you’ll be recognised,” Sharlhorne declares, wearing a fashionable pair of glasses missing both lenses, one of his personal trademarks. Well known for his raplike asides, his voice is transmitted through an electronic speech aid, a result of throat cancer in 2018. Though he has slowed down in recent years, Sharlhorne abides as one of New Orleans’s few remaining vernacular artists from the outsider art boom of the 1990s. Born in 1952 – the fourth of 14 children – he grew up in rural Houma, Louisiana, during an era of harsh

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above: Untitled (Church with Star), 1996, mixed media on paper, 8.5 x 14 in. / 21 x 35.5 cm, courtesy: American Primitive Gallery opposite: Don’t be a Part of an Illusion, 2002, mixed media on manila folder, 12 x 19 in. / 28.5 x 47.5 cm, courtesy: Ogden Museum of Southern Art

top: Molecule Man, c. 1990s, mixed media on paper, 12 x 18 in. / 30 x 45.5 cm, courtesy: Gordon W Bailey Collection below: Ant Man, c. 1990s, mixed media on paper, 15 x 10 in. / 38 x 25.5 cm, courtesy: Gordon W Bailey Collection

segregation. Leaving school without learning to read or write, he was convicted of robbing a grocery store in his early teens and spent several years in juvenile detention. Sharlhorne was 18 years old when he was sentenced to prison for extortion, following a dispute with a homeowner over his pay for mowing a lawn. A journalist in his hometown of Houma has noted records for some later charges, including another conviction for extortion in 1989. For that $10 crime, plus his previous convictions, Sharlhorne got another seven and a half years in prison. On the site of a former antebellum plantation, the Angola prison complex is still a working farm. Sharlhorne laboured in cotton fields under the watch of armed guards on horseback. During his years in prison, he was beaten, stabbed, and did time in solitary. He noted other inmates using their art as a currency, to trade for cigarettes and win favours from guards. With no art background, he began drawing with ink pens on manila envelopes which he had requested to write to his non-existent lawyers, and used bottle caps and tongue depressors to trace around. Lucid, Afro-centric, nearly psychedelic, Sharlhorne’s drawings create precise geometric shapes, embellished with abstract details,

biomorphic forms and otherworldly faces. “I used art as an escape from the reality of prison,” Sharlhorne told David Houston, curator of Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi. “It helped me survive and do my time. I became better minded and had thinking better.” Inmates and prison staff shared his art with relatives outside the prison, and it soon caught the attention of the art world. Aarne Anton, owner of American Primitive Gallery in New York City, first saw Sharlhorne’s work while in Louisiana in the 1990s: “I visited a collector’s home and was blown away, and I got obsessed with finding him.” He tracked the artist down in Angola and began buying pieces by post, with Sharlhorne asking for payment in advance. “I’d have no idea what I’d get, unfolding these manilla envelopes that he used for drawing paper.” Sharlhorne often draws buildings, buses and surreal creatures, which Anton says reflect his life in prison: “His buildings are these elaborate fantasies, like he’s having a blast being an architect, but also have a prisonlike quality, with those high walls and sometimes no windows. With his buses, they delivered him to prison and also would finally take him back to freedom, and became another object for fantasy.” Clocks feature in nearly all of

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EXHIBITIONS

Makoto Okawa

left and centre: Misleidys Castillo Pedroso

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PRISMATIC MINDS Flowers Gallery, London July 21 – August 28, 2021

Keisuke Ishino, Untitled, 2018

Occupying a prominent spot on the well-known art thoroughfare Cork Street, in London’s West End, Flowers Gallery boldly opened their doors to “Prismatic Minds”, an exhibition where the merging of margin and mainstream has never seemed so seamless. Gallerist and curator Jennifer Gilbert, along with actor and art influencer Russell Tovey, were given free reign to demonstrate their passion for self-taught art. This groundbreaking event immediately caused a sensation on the street when artist Misleidys Francisca Castillo Pedroso’s lifesize cut-out figure of a bodybuilder was placed in the gallery window. Its flexed muscles stood proud and commanded attention whilst hinting at the discoveries that awaited visitors inside. Pedroso was born with a severe hearing impairment and does not speak, but has certainly found a powerful voice through her art. The same can be said for another artist whose work is included in the show: Susan Te Kahurangi King stopped speaking at a young age, but shares her world so richly and joyfully through

the skillful draftsmanship that she employs in her brightly coloured drawings. Colour is a strong theme in “Prismatic Minds” and is expressed brilliantly in the heartwarming little Makoots or felt dolls by Japanese artist Makoto Okawa, who also has on display a group of his two dimensional figures in vibrant oil pastels. They are accompanied by the work of fellow Japanese artist Keisuke Ishino whose animesque origami figures, which he has made since childhood, never fail to evoke a joyful response in the viewer. Further flashes of colour can be seen in the painted figures of Edward Dutkiewicz, one of which is perfectly placed staring up from the lower level gallery. You can feel its aura, a palpable energy, enticing the visitor to descend the stairs to discover the compelling and kaleidoscopic drawings of Rachel Heller. Born with Down’s syndrome, Heller has created outstanding art from a young age and, as a regular attendee of Slade's summer school, she is the show’s only trained artist. The venture of “Prismatic Minds” into the artworld’s stronghold of Cork Street is undoubtedly a resounding success and will hopefully set the scene for similar exhibitions in the future. VIVIENNE ROBERTS

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EXHIBITIONS

Alma Rumball, Automatic drawing, c. 1960

Mary Bligh Bond, Pastel drawing, c. 1920 Ethel Le Rossignol, from “A Goodly Company” series, 1920–33

William Hope, Spirit photograph, c. 1920

Donald Pass, Visionary painting, c. 2010

STRANGE THINGS AMONG US The College of Psychic Studies, London June 5 – August 6, 2021 A new exhibition and a complete makeover, including a full re-hang, was more than enough to entice me along to the College of Psychic Studies in west London. After months of closure, what curators Vivienne Roberts and Gill Matini have created is nothing short of spectacular. Six floors and 14 themed rooms – each taking its title from the College’s books – sit alongside a library area in which to become fully immersed, and a calming sanctuary space for quiet reflection and contemplation. “Strange Things Among Us” allows the audience to embark on a journey into a parallel world, to ponder the ectoplasmic apparitions in spirit photography, and mediumistic and psychic drawings that pulsate with otherworldly energies, ouija boards, spirit trumpets and planchettes from darkened séance rooms. It was the rich selection of mediumistic and visionary art that took my breath away. Enhanced by the backdrop of the newly refurbished rooms, each piece grabs your attention and lures you in. Strategically placed seating provides an opportunity to reflect on, and become totally absorbed in, the works. Highlights include a wall of automatic monochrome drawings from Ethel Annie Weir and anonymous drawings from 1917–1918 by EW. The latter – finely executed, highly detailed works – and Weir’s whimsical drawings featuring delicate lines of faces emerging from patterned shapes, seamlessly occupy the space next to a cabinet full

of monochrome postcards from Madge Gill – a firm favourite within this field. Gill’s postcards are accompanied by an original copy of “Myrninerest the Spheres”, a 1926 article by her son on her inspirations. This room also features works from the College’s 2020 online exhibition “Inspiration from Isolation”. Emma Schultz’s winning monochrome pen drawing sits alongside finalist o2o’s haunting drawing of a dark face appearing from a series of automatic lines and rubbings. The Ethel Le Rossignol series of circular and rectangular paintings from the 1920s has been re-hung in a room of its own, providing the necessary space to stand back and admire the incredible detail and composition within the work. The warm blue hue of the freshly painted walls allows the colours to pop, and – although I have seen these works on numerous occasions – I felt I was viewing them with fresh eyes, noticing painted details in the figures and the texture of the gold paint like never before. Other rooms dedicated to Ionel Talpazan’s 2D and 3D works and to Austin Osman Spare, including a self-portrait with a penetrating gaze, do not disappoint. Neither do three phenomenal paintings from Donald Pass which feature winged figures in the sky, and sit perfectly against a mauve backdrop in “The Land of Mist” room. This exhibition leaves you feeling inspired and, if you are anything like me, with pages of notes of things you would like to research further. The College of Psychic Studies is a real gem in the heart of South Kensington, and the dedication and skill of the staff deserves wider recognition. JENNIFER GILBERT RAW VISION 109

EXHIBITIONS

Ben Wilson, Mosaic Tile, 2020

Agatha Wojciechowsky, Untitled, 1974

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Ben Wilson, Minibeast, 2019

A BEN WILSON RETROSPECTIVE: CORRESPONDENCES Hoxton Gallery, London 22 – 30 September, 2021 Curated by Chiara Famengo, Ben Wilson’s first retrospective show, presented by the Hoxton Gallery in East London’s Shoreditch, celebrates the life work of the artist who is familiar to many as “The Chewing Gum Man”. Famengo met Wilson whilst reading anthropologist Tim Ingold’s book, Correspondences, which contains a series of essays and conversations that express Ingold’s acute sensitivity to his surroundings. Famengo recognised a similarity with Wilson’s views of his own community and environment and how his art responded to it. This show is the outcome of that chance meeting and the title was chosen to reflect both men’s outlook on life. Selections from each of Wilson’s creative periods stand proud against the stark white gallery walls. Photographs of his huge sculptures from the 1980s, which he left in woods for unsuspecting ramblers to chance upon, are displayed next to assemblages that he made from discarded objects including broken furniture. Works from debris that once littered the streets, such as the painted cigarette butts and chewing gum pictures on bricks, have a compelling quality and are complemented by the more traditional techniques of the paintings on mosaic tiles and canvases nearby. Most striking is the montage of Wilson’s thousands of street chewing gum pictures, an ongoing series which began in 2004 and for which the artist, lying on the ground in all weathers, paints on the discarded blobs of gum that blight London’s pavements. By working on litter, Wilson circumvents graffiti laws and in the process transforms the uncouth into something meaningful. The work is born from the requests of strangers wanting to see their personal stories depicted and shared. The photographs provide important documentation of the ever-changing social landscape, taken against the backdrop of the different seasons, and will exist long after the chewing gum pictures themselves have succumbed to the wear and tear of city life. The white cube of a gallery space offers the visitor the chance to examine each 74

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facet of Wilson’s oeuvre, but it is on the nearby streets that the exhibition really packs a punch. From Arnold Circus to the top of Rimmington Street, a trail of chewing gum pictures and tiny mosaic tiles await discovery by eagle-eyed passers-by. These joyful treasures, fixed in the crevices of the urban landscape, are small rebellious victories that reclaim their environment from suffocating corporate blandness and the bombardment of garish adverts. It is a trail of tales expressed through art by an artist who lives to make a difference to his community. VIVIENNE ROBERTS

AGATHA WOJCIECHOWSKY: SPIRITS AMONG US Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York September 8 – October 23, 2021 On entering Andrew Edlin Gallery for “Agatha Wojciechowsky: Spirits Among Us”, you saw a small dresser just to the left illuminated by an antique lamp, a framed photograph of a woman with an arresting gaze catching your eye. Alongside was another photo – this one of a morning glory flower, a representation of one of her spirit guides who revealed that the dead were not gone but all around us, all you had to do to see them was to allow an unseen hand to take over yours. Once Agatha Wojciechowsky let the spirits in, she drew and painted the endless faces that were unveiled, creating clouds of them in rapid lines of pencil or landscapes where visages were obscured below vivid fields of colour. The recreation of a place where she conducted séances through these personal artefacts set the tone for the first exhibition of her art in New York since 1972. While the vibrant works on paper on the gallery’s white walls allowed a close examination of the incredible details, the faces emerging from rich layers of watercolour and pastel, the context of her deep involvement with Spiritualism as a respected medium was emphasised by curator Aurélie Bernard Wortsman as essential for understanding why and how she created. Wojciechowsky was born in 1896 in Germany, and moved to the USA in 1923 with no intention of being an artist. She had experienced visions since childhood, but

suddenly her hands would not stay still. A medium urged her to try automatic drawing and – with a pencil strapped to her hand with a rubber band – she waited, and the visages manifested through her on to the paper. She described looking out her window at a bare wall and witnessing “thousands of faces and heads. Nothing but faces. Nothing but heads.” Like other spiritualist artists, she did not claim the art as her own but a collaboration with another realm. Years after her death in 1986, there is now a reconsideration of artists who had these powerful artistic practices yet were mostly ignored by art institutions, and recently there have been retrospectives on Georgiana Houghton and Agnes Pelton who similarly used their work to try to access meaning beyond the physical world. (Wojciechowsky is featured in the touring “Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art”.) There are elements of abstraction in Wojciechowsky’s work, and in her lifetime she was sometimes considered a Surrealist. Recognising the spiritual influence in her work is crucial to not just viewing her art but also to recalling that there are many artists like her, some still waiting to be remembered, who approached art from a desire to visualise the intangible. ALLISON C MEIER

BOSILJ: TALES FROM PARALLEL UNIVERSES Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York June 3 – September 8, 2021 The dreamlike scenes in the paintings by Ilija Bosilj Bašičević – where winged beings soar alongside rocket ships, and birds with fantastic foliage perch on the heads of twofaced figures – are so evocative of a fully formed universe that it is surprising to learn that he came to art late in life. Born in 1895 in Šid in what is now Serbia, he spent most of his years as a hardworking farmer before he turned that tireless energy to painting. It was then that he took on the pseudonym “Bosilj” and mined the vibrant imagery of myth, Biblical stories, nature and folklore. “Bosilj: Tales From Parallel Universes” was the first exhibition to be presented by Cavin-Morris in the gallery’s new space. The compact show surrounded viewers with art

R AW R E V I E W S photo: Horace Perry

BOOKS / FILMS

CREATIVITY AND ART: NEUROSCIENTIFIC AND PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES by Andreas Steck and Barbara Steck EPFL Press, 2021 ISBN: 978-2-88915-423-4 Andreas Steck is a Swiss professor of neurology, and his co-author and partner, Barbara Steck, a psychoanalyst and lecturer in child and adolescent psychiatry, yet this book is that rare thing – a scientifically grounded study that does not seek to explain art. It might be situated in a lineage deriving from Hans Prinzhorn – who combined art history and psychiatry and become a psychotherapist – but even more relevant is Andreas Steck’s father, Hans Steck, professor of psychiatry at the University of Lausanne, who played a major role in discovering the work of Aloïse Corbaz at the psychiatric hospital in Cery. It was Hans Steck who encouraged his supervisee, Jacqueline Porret-Forel, to devote her medical thesis to Corbaz’s work and, as a result, Andreas Steck was exposed to art brut early on. In the book, neuroscience and the psychoanalysis are included sensitively as part of a complex panorama of brain processes, life histories and emotional worlds. The volume’s 20 chapters range from “Hierarchies of Consciousness” and “The Visual Brain” to “Music”,“Grief” and “Artists’ Expressions of their Childhood Experiences” – but ultimately the discussion focuses on artists’ testimonies about their creative experiences. The sections of particular interest to readers of Raw Vision will be those on “Creativity and Psychopathology”and “Psychopathological Art and Modern Art”. The latter contains lengthy descriptions of Adolf Wölfli and Corbaz, taking off from the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s judgment that “The Wölfli case will help us some day to gain

new insights about the origins of creativity.” If any general idea emerges in the book, it concerns the role of loss in galvanising artistic responses. Thus, in Wölfli’s case they note how early in his hospitalisation at Waldau he would cry for hours in a corner thinking about his dead mother, while at times Corbaz was agitated, “seized by states of erotic excitement involving obscene speech, aggressiveness and physical violence”. However, Wölfli became calmer when drawing, composing and writing poems, and Corbaz appeared less anxious when working quickly on her art, “often mixing the colour of her crayon with saliva”. These portraits sit alongside numerous other vignettes of artists, composers and writers – including Vincent Van Gogh, Camille Claudel and Edvard Munch – struggling to cope with illness, grief or trauma, and responding creatively. On this front, they draw on psychoanalyst Hannah Segal’s insight that, “It is when the world within us is destroyed, when it is dead and loveless, when our loved ones are in fragments... it is then that we must recreate our world anew”. MATT FFYTCHE

BILL TRAYLOR: CHASING GHOSTS Directed by Jeffrey Wolf Breakaway Films, 2021 Like so many others, filmmaker Jeffrey Wolf first encountered the work of Bill Traylor (1853–1949) in the iconic 1982 exhibition, “Black Folk Art in America 1930-1980”. Since that time Traylor’s work has become increasingly well known and celebrated as a key oeuvre in twentieth-century American art. His imagery stands witness to AfricanAmerican experience through slavery and Jim Crow, in a visual language that is both formally direct and conceptually sophisticated and multilayered. Yet Traylor came to art late, after a lifetime of physically

demanding work, mostly on farms in the rural south. He became, for a while, a feature on Monroe Street, the prosperous busy thoroughfare in the traditionally Black neighbourhood of Montgomery, Alabama, where he could be found perched in front of a store drawing assiduously. During his lifetime, his art was neither well known nor widely valued, although a large collection was purchased over the course of a few years by Charles and Blanche Shannon which now constitutes the largest part of Traylor’s surviving output. In 75 minutes, Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts brilliantly evokes an individual life lived meaningfully, and the times and culture that Traylor and his family inhabited and negotiated. It is a story of the mundane and also the transformative possibilities of creativity. At the film’s core is a notion that Traylor’s art collectively represents a visual history of period and place; at once personal, objective, incisive and witty. Wolf’s task, then, was to help these artworks to reveal their content through the documentary medium without losing sight of their centrality, or that of their creator. Around the ever-present fulcrum of Traylor’s artworks, Wolf therefore sets in motion a carefully chosen comparative collage of historical photographic stills, stock moving image footage and even jazz dance, overlaid with an almost omnipresent soundtrack of jazz, blues and southern folk music. The inevitable talking heads sequences (including Traylor descendants, artists, scholars, and actors speaking the written words of past figures) are refreshingly short on the didactic and mostly richly conversational, so that they rarely jar. Everything spins around and back to Traylor and his art in a way that feels completely real and natural. This is a mustsee film for anyone interested in art and the African-American culture and history since the mid nineteenth century. COLIN RHODES RAW VISION 109

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BARBARA DENYER