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Visionary artist appreciates Outsider Art (Part I)
What is Outsider Art and why the controversy?
The following definitions are excerpted from Raw Vision, a leading journal in the field:
Raw art, ‘raw’ in that it has not been through the ‘cooking’ process: the art world of art schools, galleries, museums. Originally art by psychotic individuals who existed almost completely outside culture and society. Strictly speaking it refers only to the Collection de l’Art Brut.
Used to describe artists who, although marginal, have some interaction with mainstream culture. They may be doing art part-time for instance. The expression was coined by Dubuffet too; strictly speaking it refers only to a special part of the Collection de l’Art Brut.
Folk art
Folk art originally suggested crafts and decorative skills associated with peasant communities in Europe - though presumably it could equally apply to any indigenous culture. It has broadened to include any product of practical craftsmanship and decorative skill - everything from chain-saw animals to hub-cap buildings. A key distinction between folk and outsider art is that folk art typically embodies traditional forms and social values, where outsider art stands in some marginal relationship to society’s mainstream.
Marginal Art/Art Singulier
Essentially the same as Neue Invention; refers to artists on the margins of the art world.
Raw Vision Magazine’s preferred general terms for Outsider Art. It describes them as deliberate umbrella terms. However Visionary Art unlike other definitions here can often refer to the subject matter of the works, which includes images of a spiritual or religious nature. Intuitive art is probably the most general term available. The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland is dedicated to the collection and display of such artwork.
Visionary art is art that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences.
Both trained and self-taught (or outsider) artists have, and continue to create visionary works. Many visionary artists are actively engaged in spiritual practices, and some have drawn inspiration from psychedelic drug experiences. Walter Schurian, professor at the University of Munster, is quick to point out the difficulties in describing visionary art as if it were a discrete genre, since “it is difficult to know where to start and where to stop. Recognized trends have all had their fantastic component, so demarcation is apt to be fuzzy.”
Despite this ambiguity, there does seem to be emerging some definition to what constitutes the contemporary visionary art ’scene’ and which artists can be considered especially influential. Contemporary visionary artists count Hieronymous Bosch, William Blake, Morris Graves (of the Pacific Northwest School of Visionary Art), Emil Bisttram, and Gustave Moreau amongst their antecedents. Symbolism, Surrealism and Psychedelic art are also direct precursors to contemporary visionary art. The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, which includes Ernst Fuchs and Arik Brauer, is also to be considered an important technical and philosophical catalyst in its strong influence upon the contemporary visionary culture.
Another grey area. Untrained artists who aspire to “normal” artistic status, i.e. they have a much more conscious interaction with the mainstream art world than do Outsider Artists.
Describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other California subcultures. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism.
Most lowbrow artworks are paintings, but there are also toys, and sculptures.
Stuckism is an art movement that was founded in 1999 in Britain by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art. The Stuckists formed as an alternative to the Charles Saatchi-patronised Young British Artists (also known as Brit Art). The original group of thirteen artists has since expanded to over 120 groups around the world. Childish left the group in 2001.
What is the Outsider Art Controversy?Joe Coleman (controversy)
What is an “artist-appreciator” of Outsider art?
I would define myself as an artist-appreciator of Outsider Art, and though I understand the positions of people like Joe Coleman who claim, “Hey, I got kicked out of art school, I should be able to show…” I also understand the importance of keeping some kind of boundary on what most people in this community are doing: protecting, enjoying, marketing, and loving the “Outsider Artist” as he or she has been traditionally defined. [No need to go into that, let’s just say Wolfii and Darger, etc.]
As an artist-appreciator I find myself in a rather unique and somewhat confusing place. I know that Outsider Art (Haitian, Dia de los Muertos, Darger, just for starters) is a source of inspiration to me, both “literally” (i.e. I look at it and it makes me want to make art) and “spiritually” (for lack of a better word). To me the spiritual component goes something like this: like an outsider, I seek to “access” something in me that wants to come out, wants to manifest in an image. Sometimes it is a directly spiritual symbol (like the Sacred Heart from my Catholic education), sometimes a “New Age-ish” sort of symbol (like a spiral, an aura, a halo, a swirl of DNA), sometimes it’s from a language of imagery that seems to have chosen me (ants in burrows, UFOs, pyramids, Masonic symbolism, arabic calligraphy). These elements come together in a painting that I in no way pretend is “outsider” however there is a problem. I also don’t feel I belong to the world of “fine art” as manifested by our competent Walker Art Center (where my brother happens to work) or the Weisman Museum (housed in a wonderful Frank Gehry building on the Mississippi, where my sister-in-law just did the Dylan show).
I didn’t go to art school, but I don’t claim that as a credential. I am aware of modern art from Picasso to Neo Rauch. However, I often find “modern art” coming from a place that (a) I don’t like; (b) that turns me off to art; (c) that doesn’t make me want to do more art; (d) repulses me; (e) offends me by it’s “preachiness” or “shock value”; and (f) I could go on. So I don’t read anything like Artforum or Art in America for the same reasons. Instead, I read RAW magazine and Juxtapoz. Now Juxtapoz represents an interesting “movement” and there are many artists I like (say the Clayton Brothers) who would be revered under this somewhat “punky” grouping sometimes called pop surrealism. However, again, much of it (the whole “Jetson-look” thing, the S&Mish sexist thing, the sloppiness of much “street art”, the stretch to include car graphics and tattoos, etc.) So, while I enjoy their feisty approach, I “relate” to only about 20% of it. Partly it’s too “modern” for me (not “outsider” enough, I guess).
I don’t associate Outsider Art is cynicism, snide-ism, in-your-face-ism. I was going to say know-it-all-ism but many outsiders, being evangelicals, etc, are sort of know-it-alls, so that one doesn’t apply. There’s never a shortage of know-it-alls. I often wish someone within their movement would split off and group some contemporary artists as neo-symbolists (only because I like the sound of that) or something that calls forth respect of themselves as conduits for “messages” from some “other” (ie. outside) place, a place that is NOT about (at least not mainly about) their petty egos and careers, but about messages that just have to be sent (ie. recorded as art). For all I know there may be “movements” like this already in existence but since I find the “mainstream” art press distasteful and uninspiring I wouldn’t really know about them.
There will be probably more and more people in this category as time marches along. There are generations graduating from (and getting kicked out of) art schools who learned about Wolfii in grade school. (I have a friend who is an art educator in Wisconsin and I attended a small conference of art teachers who were learning about how to use outsider art in art programs in schools.)
So how does all this figure in to the outsider art world? The good news is that there may be more people respecting it, collecting it and coming to shows. The bad news—there will be more and more artists inspired by the outsiders who don’t have a real home in the traditional mainstream of art who may irritate the “classic outsider” community by trying to “crash the party.”
Some of them may even be good.
