Three Correlations:
OUT & / or IN

Otomo  –  Hughes –  Silv
February 2015

Outsider Art
Yuko Otomo

1. terminology

What makes “in?” What makes “out?” Outside of something & inside of the “same” something. What separates something into the two? Inside of some framed/circled/segregated/fenced condition or space seen from the outside & outside of the same something seen or not seen from the inside. In & Out & Out & In. Outer Space. Insider trading. Inside jokes which are not funny. Something tragic, out-worldly & out of place. Is that what we call “innocence” or “naivety?” Remember one thing clearly when you think of the terminology. Being “innocent & naïve” does not mean being “stupid or dumb.” Another thing to remember, from “Art Brut” to “Outsider Art,” the terminology was not invented by the artists themselves.

2. conditions

“Let me in!”

“Get out!”

“Come in!”

“I’m going out…”
“I’m coming in…”
“You can come in…”
“You can’t come in…”
“You stay inside…”
“You stay outside…”
“You should go out…”
“They should not come in…”
“I let them come in…”

“Don’t come in!”

“You are out of your mind!”

“Yes, I’m out.”

3. fair

It’s a fair day.
It’s a fair deal.
It’s a fair.
It’s fair.

My fair lady, she is so fair.

4. theory

There is no “up” or “down” in the universe. Then, what about “inside” & “outside” of matter/non-matter?

5. category

group 1; group 2; group 3; group 4; group 5; group 6… & a non-categorized group

Which one do I belong to? What about you?

6. hipkiss

Q: how do you interpret “Luck of My Suck?”
A: lack of luck? Or my luck sucks? I’m not sure.

Q: what about “Long Your Crack”?
A: not sure, either.

Q: “Fly The Fly’s It”?
A: that means “graphite on paper”.

Q: why “Yes/No”, not “No/Yes”?
A: because “Yes” closes & “No” opens.

Q: isn’t that the opposite?
A: what do you mean?

Q: how do you live in tree buildings?
A: it’s the same as floating on the water in tree trunk boats.

Q: which is you? & which is not you?
A: I don’t remember. I don’t remember.

7. so-called

Breaking my own promise to never go back to an art fair again after the first & the last experience last year, I did go to one fair. Outsider Art Fair. I gave myself a righteous excuse, saying that it’s extremely rare to be able to see this much of  “so-called” outsider art in one space since the mainstream institutions don’t carry them too often. “So-called” outsider art; art created by people who live “outside” of the normality of the society is still considered art of oddities, but it keeps challenging us to re-examine our ideas on “what is normal” & “what is not,” “what is art?” & “why art?” The main points of arguments always fall on the same few things. They are self-taught, with no formal training or education; they are a bit “off” & they do what they do only because they cannot not do it. Extremely self-centric, not necessarily egocentric, un-relating to the history or lineage of art, their purposes of creation are undoubtedly purer than the ones by most of insider artists.

Going through the fair, I kept wondering why this ambiguous, euphemistic & tip-toeing preposition: “so-called” precedes outsider art & artists. If not having formal training or a self-centric motivation for creation makes such an impactful distinction between the “so-called” outsider artists and the insider artists, then why doesn’t this “so-called” stigma get attached to artists in other fields? Nobody calls Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane “outsider” musicians. Or, do we call Cecil Taylor an insider  musician because of his conservatory education? Shall we call university-educated Sun Ra an “outsider” musician because he looks like one from the other planet? No. Nobody calls Kafka an outsider writer. Or do we call Rimbaud an outsider poet? Not really. And Emily Dickinson? What about Vincent? What about Rousseau? … Then, why is this segregation set for outsider visual art considered normal? Why are we so overly discreet dealing with this “category?” All the unanswered questions kept circling inside me as I moved from a booth to another booth.

8. tendencies

Fear of void consumed in an occupation called “human life” de-touches itself from its own linage in the history. Focusing on the maniacal dots, lines & colors, we mirror ourselves on the liquefied surface of our cosmic consciousness. Self-loving, self-hating, self-negating, self-affirming, self-comforting, self-destructive, self-indulging, self-absorbed, self-serving, self-fooling, self-investigating, self-mocking, self-creating…

There surely are some common tendencies in this particular type of art. Obsessive details, intensity of psyche, repetitious renderings, lack of broader purposes beside the action of creation itself, solitariness, secrecy, urgency, creepiness, crazy-ness, pains, anger, ecstasy… but don’t “insider artists” share these tendencies too?

9. marketplace

 Now, people are talking that the boundary between “outside” & “inside” is blurring further since the mainstream institutions have started to make acquisitions of these non-mainstream works created by people living outside of the normality of the society. Monetary values and shared interests in the field of marketplace put some works “on the map” next to the insider art. They, the insiders, opened the door slightly to let the outsiders into their circle only because their social/capital values went up high enough to make profits out of them in “their” system. Money, you have lots of friends… God bless the child…

10. enigma

Dark streets looked wet with the winter enigma when we got out of the fair. A red plastic cup left next to the tree trunk outside made the darkness further intense. Night started to deepen itself further. Neurotic? Obsessive? Autistic? Schizophrenic? Suicidal? & Insane? Who is not? Even the “insider” artists go through the same anxiety of being human. Some went through too much & even killed themselves.

Wolfli, Castle, Traylor, Pippin, Darger, Philadelphia Wireman, Hawkins, Yoakum, Ramirez, Palsson, Miller, Maier, anonymous Tantra artists & more…, regardless to what they are called,  we keep circling ‘round & ‘round them…to come back to the origin of art…and to go beyond what it all means…

Outsider Art Fair 2015
Christine Hughes

There is something so special about this fair. It’s a wonderful way to get an overview of the field of outsider art, to see gems by masters old and new, find familiar faces and meet new dealers.

We think of outsiders as monastic in their endeavors. Creating a world of their own as either a way of communicating or an intimate, passionate act of self absorption. The way a conventional artist works in some sense, but without maybe the goal of fame or fortune.  If one ever has a chance to see the film Roger Ricco made of Williams Hawkins or the film of Jon Serl, there is not a word of explanation needed. This work is often visionary. By this I don’t mean fairies or outer space but a vision into a different kind of life right here. An intimacy in the work, missing the layer of academic gloss on most of what we find in conventional art. One feels as though they are breathing the same air as James Castle when standing in front of his work.

I am not a big believer in categories of art. I think all art is contemporary and that whatever is good, or great, will seek its own level regardless of categorization. It is wonderful to see the masters in this field crossing over and being incorporated into major museum collections. James Castle’s work has been acquired by dozens of museums, only some of which are folk art or outsider oriented. MoMA was just gifted by Kiyoko Lerner 13 double sided Henry Darger’s from her collection, which were shown at PS1 a few years back. Stunning work. The Metropolitan Museum of Art just acquired 57 pieces from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.

Any artist’s job is to take a pile of materials and spin them into an object which then imparts an idea or feeling which is intense enough or important enough that we want to view or own the object. It is alchemical, or academic, or some of both. In corporate America, a masters from Yale may mean more than it should. Those who can see art, really see it, can easily sort through. Who would think that an African American “cleaning lady” from the 1940’s south would have less knowledge, sensibilities or artistic chops than a Yale grad? Pluralism and the opening of the field of contemporary art has enabled us to see the work of the “outsider” and judge all art with the same criteria.

The more homogeneous the world becomes the more precious this work becomes. It would be as impossible to build a Printzhorn Collection today as it would be for a modern Alan Lomax to find 100s of hours of regional music to record in the back roads of America. Art schools and colleges are training more and more “taught” artists, but as time goes on it becomes more difficult to find new “outsider” artists. There are fewer nooks and crannies for these artists to hole up in. Folks who are institutionalized are (thankfully) on much better meds and may spend many hours in front of tv sets instead of working out their internal stuff by creating art.

I wonder how many more masters I will see in my lifetime.

One rarely realizes the halcyon of an era when it is happening. So true for outsider art. Thinking back not so many years ago when Phyllis Kind was still at the fair and exhibiting the likes of Wolfli and Joseph Yoakum, and Darger, the latter 2 natives of her home base Chicago.

Jennifer Pinto Safian, a private dealer, who at the fair always had grand “new” works from the European artists Aloise, Wolfli, Madge Gill and other pieces of Art Brut worthy of inclusion in the Lausanne collection.

Carl Hammer, also from Chicago, would bring Frank Jones’ Devil Houses and Dargers, which were magnificent.

Roger Ricco and Frank Maresca who wrote “the books” (American Self Taught and American Vernacular) and who exhibited incredible material, including William Hawkins drawings and paintings, Thornton Dial, Herman Bridgers, Judith Scott, and Americana of all sorts. They worked with the Mendlesons to build a grand collection and gave a gala party to show it the night before the OAF opened. Take a look at the catalogue The Intuitive Eye to see some of collection’s highlights.

Cavin-Morris used to have a brunch in their gallery on the morning of the fair’s opening day. I remember Jon Serls that were breathtaking and mediumistic drawings, tantric Vyakuls, work from Haiti. Fantastic work. They would have the gallery show going and a booth at the fair. Phillis Kind would give a huge party on the Saturday night of the fair in her gallery with a full blown show up as well.

There were 3 wonderful Carlo’s at this year’s fair. A couple of small but great Wolfli’s, two incredible pieces by Martin Ramirez, a Scottie Wilson here and there, same with the Traylors. But, remember when there would have been 20 or so Traylors throughout the show, half of them in Luise Ross’ booth with Minnie Evans as well. And 10s of Dargers? Remember when Jacquie Crist had a booth of just James Castle’s work?

Back in the day there was also much to sort through. Lots of dross from the south, not to mention any names.

The fair itself has gone through its own ups and downs. For many years it was run by Sanford Smith and held in the Puck building. Some folks complained that the vetting was a bit dodgy and set up camp in other venues outside the Puck Building during fair week – in hotel rooms, or in other galleries.

Andrew Edlin now runs the OAF and it is a wonderfully orchestrated affair. The old DIA building is the perfect size, 3 floors of gallery spaces for the 50 or so dealers who participate.

All of this is not to say there is a dearth of work. This year’s fair included some of the best James Castles I have ever seen. There were a dozen or so drawings and constructions at Fleisher/Ollman along with a magnificent Justin McCarthy Last Supper where Jesus and the Apostles’ bare feet protruded under the table. An Edmondson double bird carving. Classic.

Scott Ogden, who came here from Texas and worked with Phyllis Kind in the day, now runs his own space, Shine. He has championed Royal Robertson’s work for years and had two signs from RR’s yard environment which were fine.

Cavin-Morris Gallery offered a wall of Czech art, including Anna Zemankova and a very interesting new artist, Angkasapura, whose work is already in the Lausanne Collection. They travel the world in search of visionary, self taught work.

Hervé Perdriolle presented contemporary tantric paintings from the Franck André Jamme book called Tantra Song, which were powerfully fresh.

Huffington Post is not alone in sensationalizing art, reporting things like “this drawing took 2,000 pencils to make,” and so on. The contemporary art market relies too heavily on what Robert Hughes called “the shock of the new.” Once the newness settles back into the sea of already forgotten images, what are we left with? We go looking for something to sustain us. Something which is a talisman we can refer back to to get our spiritual bearings, vision or some glimpse of the authentic. All the academic training in the world is no substitution for it, nor is a lack of education or knowledge going to get us closer to it.

Shouting Shouts
Randee Silv

I watched the film clip for the documentary Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts, written and directed by Jeffrey Wolf, who also produced James Castle: Portrait of an Artist (2008). There’s clearly a strong commitment to pull together the scattered pieces of what little is actually known about Bill Traylor. “Curiosity” almost seems to act as a lure as you enter into the filmmaker’s journey as he begins to decipher Traylor’s gifted talent and vivid truth telling. This project acknowledging Traylor’s contributions to African-American art is still in progress and slated to be completed for a 2018 retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. From the few photos of Traylor seen drawing intensely, sitting on a wooden box under the awning of a pool hall, you can immediately sense his deepness in calling the spirit into image.

I found myself getting entangled in the art world’s “romance” with Charles Shannon’s 1939 discovery of Bill Traylor, who had been born into slavery in 1854. Accounts vary, but he was said to have been close to 85, when, with the fall of cotton prices and family either dead or gone, he left the plantation where he’d been a sharecropper and moved to Montgomery. It was there that he picked up a pencil and began drawing striking silhouettes of animals and people. Many had white, rounded eyes with a centered black dot that seemed to jump right out at you. These animated constructions depicted events gathered from recollections of what he had already lived through and what he was now witnessing on Monroe Street.

If you listen to the sounds in Traylor’s work, you can hear field hollers, power writing on the ground, circle dances, chases, disputes, the blues, secrets, yearnings, rhythm, more rhythm, mules plowing, Jim Crow, rage, distances and attractions, fingers, staffs pointing, humor, tints of Vodou and elongated lips tingling from booze.

In Merchal Sobel’s book, Painting a Hidden Life, he wrote that he was certain that the lynching of Traylor’s son Will had “forced him to find a way to break through his wall of silence. He painted out of pain, and painted to conjure as a way for black people to overcome a message that white people never understood.” Sobel also thought that “conjurers and their clients believed that drawings could alter reality and that Traylor was likely to have drawn conjuration figures long before he began painting on a Montgomery street.”

Fame was the farthest thing from Traylor’s mind. Charles Shannon, an artist himself who was also involved in organizing the Black Sharecroppers Union, became fascinated by Traylor’s paintings that were done on found cardboard scraps with poster paint, mostly red, blue, black or brown right from the jar. Marvelled by Traylor, Shannon saw him as being “calm and right with himself, beautiful to see,” and felt that he should “protect” him as “it would have been wrong to show him a single picture which might have influenced him.” He collected over 1,200 of his drawings, some in exchange for much needed art supplies and others for nickels and dimes.

In 1992, Shannon found himself in the middle of a lawsuit when Traylor’s great-granddaughter, having known little about Traylor “the artist,” had heard about a museum show that was being planned in Detroit. The family either wanted all Traylor’s work returned to them or the money that had been made from it. An out of court settlement awarded more than 40 descendants 12 pieces.

From his collection, Shannon had been able to arrange a 1942 exhibition in New York, Bill Traylor: American Primitive (Work of an old Negro) at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in hopes of attracting galleries and museums. Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art, was said to have praised the work and sent a check for the purchase of over 16 pieces. But Shannon refused to sell since he hadn’t been consulted about the price, one dollar for each of the small pieces and two for larger ones. Traylor wasn’t really interested in Shannon’s pursuits, and according to Sobel, Traylor knew that his paintings had “a life of their own, apart from himself and could help others unmask themselves.” Bill Traylor died in 1947. After having seen the films Middle of Nowhere & Selma by African-American director Ava Du Vernay,  I’ve began wondering how she might envision Bill Traylor.

Tennessee’s William Edmondson, born to former slaves in 1874, a hospital orderly and tombstone cutter, started carving stone sculptures later in his life from visions that only he could see in the sky. A fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, who’d discovered his work, contacted Alfred Barr. MoMA then organized a solo exhibition, its first given to an African-American. In the 1937 press release, Barr said “Recognition of the achievements of naive or self-taught artists is one of the discoveries of contemporary taste.”

Still, not much attention had been given to Traylor until the late 70s when Shannon felt that the debate as to whether or not self-taught art could be considered “serious” was changing and the time ripe. He was able to get Traylor included in the 1982 exhibition Black Folk Art in America” 1930 – 1980 at the Corcoran Gallery.  Traylor’s popularity began to soar.

Documentation of the paintings and poetry of Scipio Moorhead, who was born 100 years before Traylor, is even more scarce. His work never was saved by an advocate or art patron. The only surviving evidence is an etching made from an ink drawing he’d done of Phillis Wheatley sitting at her desk, gazing outward, the frontispiece of her book Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), which was the first issued volume of poetry by an African-American. She’d written that Scipio was a “Negro servant to the Rev. Moorhead of Boston, whose genius inclined him that way.” The Reverend’s signature was listed in the book’s preface among the 18 prominent Massachusetts Colony leaders who had been assembled to verify that Phillis was indeed, the “real Author.”

Phillis had been taken at the age of 7 from West Africa to Boston with a shipment of captives in 1761 and purchased by John Wheatley as his wife’s companion. Impressed by how quickly she learned, they raised her more like a daughter, teaching her to read and write. Hungry for intellectual challenges, Phillis absorbed herself in a well versed literary atmosphere. At 13, the Newport Mercury printed her first poem, and four years later her elegy for the English Reverend George Whitefield was published in London, spurring international admiration.

Mrs. Wheatley, in hoping to find an audience for Phillis’s manuscript of poems, ran an ad in the Boston Censor seeking 300 subscribers. Unable to secure commitments,  inquiries in London were then made which led to Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, who agreed to finance the book while suggesting that a portrait of the “young enslaved woman” would be an asset to sales. Phillis Wheatley included the poem To S.M. a young African Painter, on seeing his Works in honor of Scipio Moorhead.

To S. M. a young African Painter, on seeing his Works
TO show the lab’ring bosom’s deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint,
When first thy pencil did those beauties give,
And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,
How did those prospects give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight?
Still, wond’rous youth! each noble path pursue,
On deathless glories fix thine ardent view:
Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire
To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire!
And may the charms of each seraphic theme
Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame!
High to the blissful wonders of the skies
Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes.
Thrice happy, when exalted to survey
That splendid city, crown’d with endless day,
Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring:
Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring.
Calm and serene thy moments glide along,
And may the muse inspire each future song!
Still, with the sweets of contemplation bless’d,
May peace with balmy wings your soul invest!
But when these shades of time are chas’d away,
And darkness ends in everlasting day,
On what seraphic pinions shall we move,
And view the landscapes in the realms above?
There shall thy tongue in heav’nly murmurs flow,
And there my muse with heav’nly transport glow:
No more to tell of Damon’s tender sighs,
Or rising radiance of Aurora’s eyes,
For nobler themes demand a nobler strain,
And purer language on th’ ethereal plain.
Cease, gentle muse! the solemn gloom of night
Now seals the fair creation from my sight.

For Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects was a “political and moral statement intended to incite controversy.”  In one of the eight articles in London magazines, the Critical Review commented that:

“The Negroes of Africa are generally treated as a dull, ignorant, and ignoble race of men, fit only to be slaves, and incapable of any considerable attainments in the liberal arts and sciences. A poet or a poetess amongst them, of any tolerable genius, would be a prodigy in literature. – Phillis Wheatley, the author of these poems, is that literary phaenomenon.”

The Caribbean- American poet & activist, June Jordon wrote in 1986:

“Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Miracle Wheatley”
Girl from the realm of birds florid and fleet
flying full feather in far or near weather
Who fell to a dollar lust coffled like meat
Captured by avarice and hate spit together
Trembling asthmatic alone on the slave block
built by a savagery travelling by carriage
viewed like a species of flaw in the livestock
A child without safety of mother or marriage
Chosen by whimsy but born to surprise
They taught you to read but you learned how to write
Begging the universe into your eyes:
They dressed you in light but you dreamed with the night.
From Africa singing of justice and grace,
Your early verse sweetens the fame of our Race.



One response to “Three Correlations:
OUT & / or IN”

  1. john reilly says:

    IT is a shame that the institutionalization of artists and the need for academic pedigree are the standards of being legitimate in the official art world woe to the OUTSIDER!
    However the Outsider toils for the spirituality and the need to produce or conduct the art. Good writing as usual, enjoyed this very much.
    Thanx,
    JR