Raw Vision 94 by Raw Vision

RAWVISION94 SUMMER 2017

EDITOR John Maizels

RAW NEWS Outsider events and exhibitions around the world

DIRECTORS Henry Boxer, Robert Greenberg, Audrey Heckler, Rebecca Hoffberger, Phyllis Kind, Frank Maresca, Marilyn Oshman, Richard Rosenthal, Bob Roth

OBITUARY Spanish environment builder Francisco Gonzalez

ART EDITOR Maggie Jones Maizels SENIOR EDITOR Edward M. Gómez

ART CARS OF TEXAS Houston’s annual celebration of art in motion

FEATURES EDITOR Nuala Ernest ASSOCIATE EDITORS Natasha Jaeger, Nick Petty

MICHEL NEDJAR The work of France’s leading self-taught artist

ACCOUNTS MANAGER Judith Edwards SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER Suzy Daniels

A ROAD LESS TRAVELED Spectacular exhibition of works from art environments

ADVERTISING MANAGER Michael Gormley CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Michael Bonesteel, Jenifer P. Borum, Roger Cardinal, Ted Degener, Jo Farb Hernandez, Tom Patterson, Colin Rhodes, Charles Russell PUBLISHED by Raw Vision Ltd PO Box 44, Watford WD25 8LN, UK tel +44 (0)1923 853175 email info@rawvision.com website www.rawvision.com USA 119 West 72nd Street, #414, New York, NY 10023 (Standard envelopes only) ISSN 0955-1182

CÉRÈS FRANCO International collection opens in France

THE ARTIST AT HOME Portraits of artists across America by Ted Degener

VALERIE ROUSSEAU Interview with American Folk Art Museum’s Curator

JORDAN MACLACHLAN Powerful painted clay figures and groupings

RAW REVIEWS Exhibitions and books

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

Raw Vision (ISSN 0955-1182) June 2017 is published quarterly (March, June, September, December) by Raw Vision Ltd, PO Box 44, Watford WD25 8LN, UK, and distributed in the USA by UKP Worldwide, 3390 Rand Road, South Plainfield, NJ 07080. Periodicals postage paid at South Plainfield, NJ. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Raw Vision c/o 3390 Rand Road, South Plainfield NJ 07080 and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address corrections to Raw Vision c/o UKP Worldwide, 3390 Rand Road, South Plainfield, NJ 07080.

USA subscription office: 119 72nd Street, #414, New York, NY 10023. (Standard envelopes only). Raw Vision cannot be held responsible for the return of unsolicited material. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Raw Vision.

COVER IMAGE: Michel Nedjar, wall of Travel Dolls at the exhibition “Michel Nedjar: Introspective” at LaM, Villeneuve d’Ascq (France), photo: N. Dewitte/LaM.

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM VISIONARY AWARD

WORLD’S BEST ART MAGAZINE

UTNE INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD

MEDAILLE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS

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FRANCE, GERMANY

BIZ’ART-BIZ’ART

PRINZHORN COLLECTION

until Sep 30

Jun 1 – Sep 30

until Jul 30

Biz’Art-Biz’Art present works by Vincent Crochard (France), Patrik Evereus (Sweden), La Pia (Cuba), Youwan Targo (Indonesia) and others. BIZ’ART BIZ’ART 2 chemin du Prayat 39300 Le Vaudioux FRANCE www.bizart-bizart.com

André Robillard, the last living member of Dubuffet's original art brut collection, is famous for his guns, spaceships and sputniks made from salvaged trash. This exhibition includes a large-scale installation, Robillard's depiction of La Station Spatiale Mir. LE MUSÉE ART BRUT DE MONTPELLIER, 1 rue Beau Séjour 34000 Montpellier, FRANCE www.atelier-musee.com

SERBIAN OUTSIDER ART AT HALLE SAINT PIERRE, PARIS

August Klett

André Robillard

Christopher St John

ANDRE ROBILLARD IN MONTPELLIER

A Fresh Spirit – Alfred Kubin and the Prinzhorn Collection presents 100 works. The show reconstructs Kubin’s opinion on the artists presented anonymously in his article written in 1920, in which he expressed his desire for the Heidelberg masterpieces to have a venue where they could be exhibited permanently. PRINZHORN COLLECTION Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg, GERMANY www.sammlung-prinzhorn.de

Sep 7, 2017 – Jan 2018

GALERIE ART CRU BERLIN

Michael Golz

Vojislav Јakic

Jun 23 – Aug 4

Until July 30, Grand Trouble features drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations and videos by 40 artists, including Arthur Aillaud, Sinyoung Park and Tomi Ungerer. September 7 – January, Turbulences on the Balkans, organised with Museum of Naïve and Marginal Art (Serbia) will present over 100 works by 20 Serbian self-taught artists including Sava Sekulic, Vojslav Jakic and Ilija “Bosilj” Bašicevic. HALLE SAINT PIERRE, 2 Rue Ronsard, 75018 Paris, FRANCE. www.hallesaintpierre.org

To Be Aware features work by Alexander Kurfürst and Katinka Kaskeline. August 25 through September 30, see works by Michael Golz and Torsten Holzapfel. GALERIE ART CRU BERLIN im Kunsthof, Oranienburger Straße 27, 10117 Berlin-Mitte, GERMANY. www.art-cru.de

EUWARD7

Sep 21–24

until Aug 22

The 2x2 Forum for Outsider Art will take place at Kunsthaus Kannen in Münster from September 21–24, with various art studios from around Europe presenting work by their artists. KUNSTHAUS KANNEN Alexianerweg 9, 48163 Münster, GERMANY www.kunsthaus-kannen.de

Until August 22, artists with cognitive impairments may submit entries to euward, the respected art award for painting and graphic arts. See www.euward.de for information.

Helmut Feder

Dimitri Pietquin

2X2 FORUM AT KUNSTHAUS KANNEN

until Nov 7

Christine Sefolosha

COLLECTION CÉRÈS FRANCO

Jean-Hubert Martin selected 280 pieces from La Coopérative-collection Cérès Franco along with several others from the Daniel Cordier collection, for the exhibition L’Internationale des Visionnaires. LA COOPÉRATIVE-COLLECTION CÉRÈS FRANCO Route d'Alzonne, 11170 Montolieu, FRANCE www.lacooperative-collectionceresfranco.com

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USA

THE HILLIARD

CATHY WARD AT GOOD LUCK GALLERY

until Aug 12

Sep 2 – Oct 15

Spiritual Journeys: Homemade Art from the Becky & Wyatt Collins Collection presents more than 100 Southern artists, including Mary T. Smith, Howard Finster, David Butler, Sam Doyle, Jimmy Sudduth and Prophet Royal Robertson. HILLIARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 710 East Saint Mary Blvd, Lafayette, LA 70503. hilliardmuseum.org

PHANTASMATA will be an immersive panorama of work by Cathy Ward, including the intimate drawings for which Ward is known as well as largescale paintings and sculptures addressing mythology, sacred deities, socio-political and environmental issues. THE GOOD LUCK GALLERY 945 Chung Kind Road, Los Angeles, CA 90012 www.thegoodluckgallery.com

Raw Vision is delighted to welcome Marilyn Oshman to our Board of Directors. Founder of the Orange Show Foundation in Houston, Texas, which was formed to protect and conserve Jeff McKissack’s visionary environment in the city, Oshman is also one of the instigators and great supporter of the Houston Art Car Parade and the newly constructed Smither Park.

REV. ALBERT LEE WAGNER AT AVAM Jul 1, 2017 – Feb 28, 2018

MANSFIELD ART CENTER

Cathy Ward

Marilyn Oshman

Mr. Imagination

MARILYN OSHMAN JOINS RAW VISION

MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART until Sep, 2018

Curated from over 50 masterpieces by Reverend Albert Lee Wagner that have been recently gifted to the American Visionary Art Museum by Gene and Linda Kangas, Reverend Albert Lee Wagner: Miracle At Midnight will also include two of Reverend Wagner’s largest works, donated to AVAM’s permanent collection ten years ago by Pat Handal. AMERICAN VISIONARY ART MUSEUM 800 Key Highway, Baltimore, MD 21230. www.avam.org

Tramp art birdcage (US), photo Paul Hester

Matt Sesow

Reverend Albert Lee Wagner

Jun 24 – Jul 23

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Outsider or Insider? Art! will include works by over 60 outsiders including Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Howard Finster, Gayleen Aiken and Bruce New. MANSFIELD ART CENTER, 700 Marion Ave Mansfield, OH 44906 mansfieldartcenter.org

Until September 2018, No Idle Hands: The Myths & Meanings of Tramp Art presents more than 150 examples of tramp art from the US and around the world. Tramp art is a style of woodworking from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that made use of discarded cigar boxes and fruit crates, notched and layered to make a variety of domestic objects. MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART 706 Camino Lejo, On Museum Hill, Santa Fe, NM 87505 www.internationalfolkart.org

OBITUARY

FRANCISCO GONZÁLEZ GRAGERA (1925-2016) Francisco González Gragera, creator of the spectacular Capricho de Cotrina in western Spain, died suddenly on September 19, 2016. He was 90 years old. González’s development into one of Spain’s most inventive and driven art environment builders could never have been predicted. Born on Christmas Day, 1925 to a poor family of subsistence farmers, Francisco left school at age 13 to work fulltime in the fields, and then, by age 17, to work in construction. After 11 years in the Basque city of Bilbao, he moved back to Extremadura, near the village of his birth, where he and his brother opened a stonework business, cutting marble and limestone for walls, floors, counters and tombstones. While actively involved in this business, González dreamt about constructing a country home on adjacent land to explore his increasing interest in sculpting natural forms. Beginning in 1988, basing his work only on a few simple pencil or pen outlines drawn in single perspective, he framed and assembled a two-story structure characterised by sinuous lines and organic contours. Despite some obvious congruencies, González staunchly resisted any comparison between his work and the trencadís-ornamented fluid forms of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí: “I didn’t ever visit Barcelona [before I started building]”, he noted, “and I couldn’t copy any plans from television”, where he first saw images of Gaudí’s works. Besides, he said, “that man made Pharaonic works and this is just a simple house that I thought up in order to leave to my children”.

González’s Capricho is linked to aesthetic fantasy and personal dreams but also to the natural and man-made worlds. His architectural whimsy is also tinged with painful memories, marked by images representing the postwar years of starvation across Spain and the deprivations of the Civil War. His personal campaign to prove to others that he was worthy, that he was special, also underlay his impetus for construction. Yet over the course of his years of building he was obstructed again and again: on a personal level, as he periodically ran out of funds to spend on building materials, but also due to municipal mandates to stop work, given his lack of certification as an engineer or architect, and to his disregard of the inflexible urban codes that allowed no variant for unusual construction. He lost some eight to ten years as he waited, chafing; finally, in 2011 the administration changed, and he joyously returned to work, completing a master bedroom area connected by an undulating hallway to the main house, and undertaking separate projects to enhance other areas of the site, such as an elaborate outdoor cooking area. Although he did not realise his dream, his son Roberto has pledged to bring the Capricho to completion. Powerful and compelling with its sinuous forms, otherworldly plants, and imaginary animals, Francisco González Gragera did, indeed, evolve from poor unknown farmer into renowned artist, as he created one of the most spectacular art environments in all of Spain. Jo Farb Hernández RAW VISION 94

ART CARS OF TEXAS Houston’s annual celebration of art on wheels

JOHN MAIZELS Photographs by Morris Malakoff above: Art car pioneer Harrod Blank leads the parade with his famous Camera Van

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ver 250,000 cheering spectators witnessed Houston’s largest ever art car parade, as the city’s Mayor and the Texas Southern University marching band led over 250 vehicles in the annual celebration of art in motion. Organised by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art and with guest of honour Cheech Marin, the parade was celebrating its 30th

This yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overall winner, Purple Reign, by Heights High School Art Car Class

Green Goblet with the Tribal Lillies by Mitchell Clemons

NEDJAR One of the world’s leading self-taught artists is celebrated with a retrospective at LaM ALLA CHERNETSKA

ichel Nedjar was born in 1947 near Paris, at Soisy-sous-Montmorency (Val d’Oise). His father was a Sephardi and his mother an Ashkenazi, but he became aware of his Jewish origins and the horrors suffered by the Jewish people only after watching Alain Resnais’s film Nuit et Brouillard (1956). Half of the Nedjar family were killed in deportation. It was a crucial moment in Nedjar’s future life: he made his first painting in oils, representing a deportee surrounded by flames and burning bodies. His father ran a tailor’s shop and Nedjar was expected to continue the business. He learnt to sew, and even earned a Certificate of Professional Competence, but in 1969 he discovered another universe that absorbed him for his whole life. His sister owned a book on the history of art, and in it Nedjar discovered prehistoric cave paintings as well as the work of Aloïse Corbaz, which changed his perception of reality. The same year, Nedjar started a relationship with Teo Hernandez, who introduced him to experimental cinema, literature and 18

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poetry. Together they travelled to Spain, Morocco and Portugal in 1972, where Nedjar took LSD, and after that to Mexico in 1973 to 1975, where he was introduced to hallucinogenic mushrooms by a local shaman. During his stay in Mexico, he saw the magical Hopi kachina dolls, made from cottonwood root and symbolising the immortal god-like beings that control the weather and bridge the gap between the human and the spirit world. When Nedjar returned from Mexico to Paris, he created his first dolls, which were exhibited at Atelier Jacob, Paris. In 1978, after a terrible depression, Nedjar created a series of dolls using fabrics, rags, feathers and ropes. He put

above: Untitled (Présence), 1994, acrylic and wax on paper, 41.3 x 29.5 ins. / 105 x 75 cm opposite: Michael Nedjar working in his apartment in Paris, 2017, photo: Pierre Emmanuel Rastoin

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED The world’s largest holding of work from visionary environments displays its collection in a series of exhibitions IAIN JACKSON

he John Michael Kohler Arts Center, with its enviable collections and prestigious exhibition spaces, could relax and enjoy its well-earned reputation – but that’s not how it does things. Instead, it likes to set the standards, challenge itself and its visitors, and create extraordinary exhibitions that capture and reveal the innate qualities and moving stories contained within its collections. As part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, the Center has bravely decided to install 15 exhibitions incorporating the works of 17 environment builders, taking place over the course of the year. The curator, Karen Patterson, also allocated each exhibition a “responder”, charged with producing a reflective output based on the environment or artist in question. Made up of writers, curators, artists, scholars and theorists, the responders eagerly delivered a host of offerings including

maps, creative pieces, new writing, music and artworks. This additional layer of display and interaction enriched the exhibitions and, far from competing with the collections, the responders’ works offered a new portal for understanding and thinking about the environments. The responders were in some way offering an homage to the works, as well as opening up new vistas of insight and intrigue, based on personal reflections. A conversation is started, a dialogue emerges, bland descriptions are banished, and a creative investigation and discussion flows. There is a rolling programme throughout the year, and not all of the exhibitions will be on display at the same time. This curatorial move will continue to spark new discourse between the works as different pieces are removed, and new installations and responders inhabit the spaces and fill in the gaps.

below: Nek Chand (1924–2015) figures from the Rock Garden, Chandigarh, India

In the narrow gallery is an extraordinary exhibition devoted to Eddie Owen Martin’s work at Pasaquan. “Pasaquoyanism”, it contains various articles of clothing and ephemera belonging to Martin, as well as texts by responder Jonathan Frederick Walz and an installation by artist Gê Orthof. The installation was produced following extensive site visits and the result is a series of works suspended on fishing wire and flimsy, almost nonfunctional shelves. It is a very site specific installation – there are no ropes or barriers protecting the work, and one feels slightly on edge. One false move or stumble, and the entire thing would be destroyed. There is real vulnerability coupled with light-hearted humour in this show (such as instructions on how to fix a turban in the style of Martin). It is delicate, exposed, playful, precise, and almost missable if you’re not careful – the installation includes tiny objects, such as a false eyelash stuck to the

wall, plastic human figures and miniature clay bricks. It invokes so many qualities of Martin’s environment and life, and, in that sense, addresses the problem of exhibiting visionary environments: unlike a painting or sculpture, environments are incredibly difficult if not impossible to transport and successfully exhibit. Rather than pursuing the implausible and inauthentic attempts at recreating Pasaquan, Walz and Orthof have successfully, and rather cleverly, invoked something of the place and its spirit. This corridor leads through to “An Encounter with Presence” and Emery Blagdon’s Healing Machine comes into view. It is a work that never fails to captivate, and it demands complete attention. The modest timber cabin is filled with suspended wire embellished with foil and metal sheets. Last exhibited at the “Sublime Spaces” exhibition in 2007, it is wonderful to see this work on

COLLECTION CÉRÈS FRANCO New arts centre in France houses international collection RAPHAEL KOENIG

“V

isionaries of the world, unite!” is the implicit message of the exhibition “L’Internationale des Visionnaires”, now showing in Montolieu, Southern France. Works by over 130 international artists

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have been gathered, in a dizzying array of techniques. The majority of these works are part of the collection of the Paris-based Brazilian collector Cérès Franco, who has amassed nearly 1,500 works of naive, art singulier and

below: Daniel Simon Faure, 1789, n.d., acrylic on cloth, 60.2 x 149.6 ins. / 153 x 380 cm

contemporary art since the 1950s. The aim of La Cooperative – Collection Cérès Franco is to make her collection accessible to a wider audience, and eventually to constitute a permanent museum.

The works selected by curator Jean-Hubert Martin for “L’Internationale des Visionnaires” illustrate the eclecticism and global nature of the collection. They also reflect Cérès Franco’s personal and aesthetic priorities: a

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THE ARTIST AT HOME Ted Degener travelled the length and breadth of America documenting folk and outsider artists TED DEGENER

George Williams, Mississippi, 1993

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Leonard Knight, California, 2006

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WEAVING CULTURAL STRANDS Raw Vision editor John Maizels talks with Valérie Rousseau, the American Folk Art Museum’s Curator of 20th Century and Contemporary Art, to discuss her role and the museum’s future

Valérie Rousseau in New York, 2017, photo: Ted Degener

The interview took place in New York, January 21, 2017

John Maizels: What is your background and how did you first become aware of the world of self-taught art? Valérie Rousseau: My long time interest in self-taught art has been nourished from childhood, where science, art and nature were deeply intertwined: my paternal grandfather Jacques Rousseau was a well-known ethnobotanist and professor who led many explorations to the far north of Québec, to study Inuit and Native American cultures. Our house was filled with artifacts and selftaught creations that he brought back from his trips. My maternal grandfather was Jean-Julien Bourgault, a celebrated, self-taught wood carver and storyteller known throughout the region – his house always welcomed collectors and passersby. My parents – lovers of fauna and flora – cultivated my interest in the arts and traditional knowledge without discrimination. This environment defined my approach to the arts and made me aware of the importance of looking at things with an open mind

and a 360-degree perspective. I eventually completed a PhD in art history and a master’s degree in art theory, both from Université du Québec à Montréal, and a masters degree in Anthropology from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

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How did the Société des Arts Indisciplinés (SAI) in Canada come about? In 1996 I became aware of two self-taught art environments in Québec, those of Léonce Durette and Richard Greaves whose work was later exhibited internationally. I then decided to change the subject of my master’s degree to study the conservation of such practices within a larger art historical perspective. I visited environments in California, meeting and travelling with Seymour Rosen, the founder of SPACES in Los Angeles. This trip was game changing. Upon my return, I founded the SAI in 1998, with art brut veteran Eric Mattson and

Bill Traylor (c. 1854–1949), Untitled (Bent Man Smoking), 1939–42, Conté crayon and coloured pencil on cardboard, 15.5 x 12.5 ins. / 39.4 x 31.8 cm, Louis-Dreyfus Family Collection

ethnologist Pascale Galipeau, with the goals of leading projects towards the recognition for this material in Canada, initiating scholarship, discovering new artists and building an archive. Since working at the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM), you’ve been instrumental in mounting some historic

exhibitions. Do you think that your Canadian bilingual background helped you to see beyond the American folk art arena and become more able to be involved with the international roots of art brut? One aspect that got AFAM’s director Anne-Imelda Radice specifically interested in my profile was the international perspective I was bringing to these art practices, and the RAW VISION 94

JORDAN MACLACHLAN The Stuff of Life LINDA RAINALDI

ordan MacLachlan is a storyteller, describing to us what is, what was, and what could be. Sometimes the stories are a Grimms’ fairy tale of horror; others are benevolent and quirky propositions that ask, what if this happened? MacLachlan’s collection of clay figures, called “Unexpected Subway Living”, is one example of her invented world. Contemplating a catastrophe that forces people and animals into the underworld of subways, her 300 sculptures populate a 24-foot surface, doing ordinary and extraordinary things, from a man smoking a cigarette to a headless woman walking a sounder of swine. In the midst of this chaos are MacLachlan’s ubiquitous animals, behaving as unpredictably as creatures often do. “Unexpected Subway Living” is part of a larger collection called “Ways of Living”. They both touch upon things that are difficult to articulate because they are ohso-familiar, painful, or cringe-worthy. “Condo Living” opens a window into the lives of its inhabitants, who are engaged in activities from the mundane to the private and intensely personal. They stretch their tired muscles after a day of work, share a drink with friends, or indulge in intimate acts of passion. As we examine their lives, one of them peers back at us with binoculars: the voyeur encounters the voyeur. “Zoo Living” examines the complex relationship between humans and animals, where the inhabitants occupy an unrestrained world and boundaries between species begin to blur. A fine tension holds these inhabitants together. Creatures spew golden locks of hair; some are hybrids, like the “rhinelephant”; others are attacked by poachers or attack humans who cross their path. An exhausted kangaroo lies sleeping on a knitted, fur-fringed robe, having perhaps been too exhausted to remove her boxing gloves before blessed sleep arrives. There would be no world in which MacLachlan did not feature animals. Her kinship with them runs deep. Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1959, from a very young age she felt a deep affinity with animals. She wove a fantasy family story for herself, choosing to believe she was an abandoned mountain lion cub whose mother had been shot, leaving her to be raised by an adoptive human family. With the tacit acceptance of her parents, she crawled around on all fours, not wanting to speak, and eating from a dish on the floor. Going to school 56

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interrupted that dream, but she spent her after-school hours absorbed in making clay sculptures of animals. Fitting in with her peers became increasingly difficult as she progressed through school. It was a sad moment when she had to stop “being an animal”, around the age of 12. Still preoccupied with animals, she drew pictures of them, watched nature programmes on television and taught herself how to shape them out of clay. Making clay animals became her refuge as she grew older and life fell apart around her. They were her darlings. That obsession with animals never ended, and a significant portion of MacLachlan’s work still features them in one way or another. They leave you with the uncomfortable reminder that we are, indeed, animals by nature. MacLachlan’s clay exploration of the animal world continued until she felt she had exhausted the possibilities: hoofed animals, horned animals, farm animals, work animals, primates, every breed of dog, and so on. Maturity and adulthood led to creating “situations” – groups of people engaged in ordinary and extraordinary activities – that allowed her to explore emotionally-charged subjects and challenges from her own life. She was never able to negotiate the demands of the outside world very well, but the clay was always there to shape as she wished. The kiln was always there, to concretise her ideas. As MacLachlan says, she didn’t make a choice to be a sculptor, but rather succumbed to it. It has been a hard life. MacLachlan’s creations are masterworks of detail, depicting life in all its gruesome and gory truth. They suggest parallel universes where possibilities become reality in another dimension. Every decision made, every action taken, ripples through the universe, leading to sometimes bizarre and often unforeseen consequences. MacLachlan is unflinching in her narration of what she describes as the endless unexpected ways of unexpected subway living. A man wrestles with a giant rat, a woman gives birth on the subway floor, primates couple in complete oblivion to the swirl of life around them. Pigeons strut around and observe, passing no judgment on the disorder they inhabit.

right: “Unexpected Subway Living” series installation

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EXHIBITIONS

Unknown African-American artist, Noah’s Ark, late 19th–early 20th C, wood, paint, Just Folk, CA

NO IDLE HANDS: THE MYTHS & MEANINGS OF TRAMP ART The Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico March 12, 2017 – September 16, 2018 In her exhibition, curator Laura M. Addison offers a lesserknown perspective on the history of an American art form. For decades it has been generally thought that “tramps and hobos” wandering the United States created art to generate a modest income by selling their hand-crafted boxes and picture frames. As Addison explains in the book that accompanies the exhibition, this was not the case. What we now call “tramp art”, which flourished from the mid 1870s and disappeared in the mid 1940s, was in fact a domestic woodworking tradition made by men primarily for the homes of their families and friends. This art, constructed mostly from recycled cigar boxes, provided a creative outlet for provincial American men. Most Tramp art-makers had no formal art training, yet the objects in this show are robust, confident and intensely focused. There is a remarkable range of aesthetic sensibilities expressed in the

works Addison has assembled, a testament to the imaginative spirit of ordinary men. While many of the works exhibited are from the museum’s own holdings, the majority have been borrowed from private collections. There are several exceptional masterpieces presented that make it clear that tramp art was much more than just simple frames and boxes. Some pieces reflect the eccentric orientation of the late Victorian era, while others are as minimal and restrained as a Donald Judd sculpture. Heartfelt religious objects and meticulously built crosses as well as niches to house saints and carvings of Christ also are included in the galleries. The publication, No Idle Hands: The Myths & Meanings of Tramp Art, has several essays with astute insights, and includes photographs of most of the objects in the show. This wellresearched and carefully designed 264-page book enhances the gallery experience. There have been few comprehensive tramp art exhibitions or books in recent years. No Idle Hands provides a fresh opportunity to experience this inspired and visionary American tradition. Scott Rothstein RAW VISION 94

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EXHIBITIONS

Untitled figure studies, pencil on toilet paper, found paper, AFAM, New York

Untitled, mid twentieth century, Robert A. Roth Collection

BETWIXT AND BETWEEN: HENRY DARGER’S VIVIAN GIRLS Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art Chicago, Illinois April 12 – September 4, 2017 Founded in 1991, Intuit is a museum whose programming focuses on the work of art brut, outsider and self-taught artists. This exhibition is one of the highlights of its 2017 schedule, whose offerings commemorate the 125th anniversary of the birth of Henry Darger (1892–1973), the local, reclusive, legendary outsider artist whose remarkable oeuvre long ago earned a central place in outsider art’s canon. Organised by guest curator Leisa Rundquist, an associate professor in the art and art history department of the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Betwixt and Between: Henry Darger’s Vivian Girls examines, to use a contemporary buzzword, the “gender-fluid” character of the Victorian-era little girls who are the protagonists of Darger’s epic tale of good versus evil, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. Darger’s grand narrative filled more than 15,000 typewritten manuscript pages, for which he created some 300 watercolour-and-collage illustrations. The exhibition addresses a puzzling aspect of Darger’s pictures, which can strike some viewers as curiously puerile or provocatively perverse. That is the fact that, in them, his Vivian Girls often appear naked or nearly naked, with male genitals. 66

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Did Darger, who grew up in orphanages run by the Catholic Church and was a lifelong, devout Catholic, know little or nothing about sex or female anatomy? Or were his portrayals of such intersex children purposeful? In the exhibition’s catalogue, Rundquist describes a Vivian Girl’s body as “a rich and effusive fictional representation”. She notes, “Darger’s art appears to embrace a non-binary vision of gender even though he gleaned his imagery from conventional, gender/sex-conforming resources”, such as advertisements for girls’ fashions or children’s colouring books, which reinforced “mainstream society’s representations of girlhood”. The exhibition includes several of Darger’s large, doublesided pictures, depicting multitudes of little girls, or the Vivian sisters in idyllic or perilous settings; his portraits of the individual Vivian Girls; and sketches of girls with male genitals. (A wall label suggests that Darger might have equipped them as males in preparation for the dangerous episodes of In the Realms of the Unreal in which bravery and defensive skills were especially required.) Also on view are photos of girls from newspapers and magazines that Darger clipped and used for reference in creating his pictures. While inviting visitors to embrace Darger’s peculiar visual representation of his heroines’ bodies and the ambiguous view of sex and gender it implies, this exhibition celebrates his art’s mysteries. Its inclusion of Darger’s source materials enriches the curatorial theme it explores and helps deepen understanding of the richness of his great artistic accomplishment. Edward M. Gómez

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FRANK JONES: A BICHROMATIC WORLD Carl Hammer Gallery Chicago, Illinois May 5 – June 30, 2017 Frank Jones (1900–1969) was born in rural Texas, near the border with Oklahoma, where his ancestors, who were slaves, had worked on cotton plantations. Jones, who never learned to read or write, was born with a caul (part of the fetal membrane covering his left eye). In the African-American society in which he grew up, it was referred to as a “veil,” and babies born with one were believed to be able to “see spirits” and communicate with the spirit world. Jones claimed that he could see supernatural beings, which he referred to as “haints” (“haunts”), “devils” or “haint devils.” He survived by working as a farm labourer and doing odd jobs, but over a period of about two decades, he spent time in and out of jail and finally was sent to a large, state-run prison in Huntsville, Texas, to serve a life sentence for a murder he claimed he had not committed. There, in the 1960s, he began making drawings on found pieces of paper with the stubs of blue-and-red accountants’ pencils. He drew cross-sections of what he called his “devils’ houses”, in which his horned “haints” lived – or perhaps by pictorially containing them in such structures, Jones imagined that he could harness their mischievous, harmful energy. This was the first solo presentation of Jones’s works in a commercial gallery in the United States in many years. It included numerous drawings from the collection of the painter and former art dealer Chapman Kelley that had 68

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rarely or never been publicly exhibited before. (It was Kelley who, at his former gallery in Dallas, first brought Jones’s works to market.) Of special interest were images featuring additional hues, including green and orange, that are not often seen in Jones’s coloured-pencil palette, and gridded compositions filled with his grinning, sprightly creatures, whose apparent jocularity belies the menace he saw in them. This exhibition served as a reminder that, with their sophisticated compositions and imaginative use of pattern and symbolism, Jones’s drawings constitute a body of work that merits in-depth, critical attention. Edward M. Gómez

MR A MOVES IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS Selected Artists from the Adamson Collection, Pelz Gallery, Birkbeck College, London May 15 – July 25 2017 Edward Adamson (1911–1996), himself an artist, was a pioneer of art therapy who encouraged patients to be creative and to express themselves through art. This new approach was born out of Adamson's pioneering research into the relationship between mental illness and creativity. His findings were that the creative process itself was in fact therapeutic and that artistic expression could be used to help patients. The collection, one of the world’s largest of its kind, consists of approximately 6,000 pieces, all produced by psychiatric inpatients at Nertherne Hospital in Surrey between 1946 and 1981. The exhibition showcases eight

Mary Bishop, Cri de Coeur, 1959

Frank Jones, Hullalyah House, c. 1964–69

Gwyneth Rowlands, Man with Baby, painted flint, 1970s

EXHIBITIONS

artists from The Adamson Collection, curated by Dr Heather Tilley. It begins with J.P. Sennett, whose painting Christmas Party is a simplistic and naive piece. Adamson's narrative points us to the isolated figures within the work, indicating how this could reflect how the artist felt. Gwyneth Rowlands’ astonishing works are a highlight of the exhibition. She collected pebbles and flints, and, fascinated by their different shapes and hidden personalities, painted directly on to them, creating visually vibrant and completely unique pieces. This exhibition reflects on the delicacies of these beautiful works which could have been tragically overlooked. None of the patients could ever have imagined how important their involvement was to be in this groundbreaking discovery of art as therapy. The exhibition highlights the value of displaying artists’ works and stories to the public, so their voices can be heard and recognised. This is a lasting legacy of these unheard and misunderstood artists. Hannah Whitlock

GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS AUSTRIA

B R I TA I N

CANADA

FRANCE

GALERIE GUGGING Am campus 2 - A3400 Maria Gugging t: +43 676 841181 200 gallery@gugging.org www.gugging.org "curated by johann garber" May – Sep 2017

PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY 9 North Pallant, chichester, West Sussex PO19 1TJ t: +44 (0)1243 774557 info@pallant.org.uk, www.pallant.org.uk

LA GALERIE DES NANAS 85 Daniel-Johnson cP669, Danville Qc, J0A 1A0 www.galeriedesnanas.ca www.facebook.com/GaleriedesNanas Hors-les-normes, outsider & insubordinate

HALLE SAINT PIERRE 2 Rue Ronsard, 75018 Paris t: +33 1 42 58 72 89 www.hallesaintpierre.org

GERMANY

SERBIA

SWITZERLAND

kUNSTHAUS kANNEN Alexianerweg 9, 48163 Münster, Germany www.kunsthaus-kannen.de A public museum, collection and studios. 2x2 Outsider Art Forum September 21–24, 2017

PRINZHORN cOLLEcTION Voss strasse 2, Heidelberg 69115 t: +49 (0)6221 564492 prinzhorn@uni-heidelberg.de http://prinzhorn.ukl-hd.de

MUSEUM OF NAIVE AND MARGINAL ART Jagodina, Serbia International and Balkan outsider and naive art at leading museum www.mnmu.rs

cOLLEcTION DE L’ART BRUT 11, av. des Bergières, cH - 1004 Lausanne t: +41 21 315 25 70 art.brut@lausanne.ch www.artbrut.ch

SWITZERLAND

CALIFORNIA

MUSÉE VISIONNAIRE ZÜRIcH Predigerplatz 10, 8001 Zürich t: +41 (0)44 251 66 57 info@museevisionnaire.ch www.museevisionnaire.ch

MUSEUM IM LAGERHAUS Davidstrasse 44, 9000, St. Gallen www.museumimlagerhaus.ch t: +41 (0)71 223 58 57 The Rolf Röthlisberger Collection, April 4 – July 9

INSIDE OUT PRODUcTIONS AT LA GOAL www.Etsy.com/shop/lagoal 4911 Overland Ave., culver city, cA 90230 310.838.5274 | www.InsideOutProductions.com Artists with developmental disabilities

JUST FOLk www.justfolk.com 805 969 7118 American folk and outsider art

ILLINOIS

LOUISIANA

MARYLAND

NEW YORK

INTUIT: THE cENTER FOR INTUITIVE AND OUTSIDER ART, 756 North Milwaukee Avenue, chicago, IL 60622 t: 312 243 9088 intuit@art.org www.art.org Home of the Henry Darger Room Collection

ANTON HAARDT GALLERY 2858 Magazine Street, New Orleans, LA 70115 t: 504 8919080 anton3@earthlink.net www.antonart.com Tolliver, Finster, Sudduth, Gibson

AMERIcAN VISIONARY ART MUSEUM 800 key Highway, Inner Harbour Baltimore, MD 21230 www.avam.org

AMERIcAN FOLk ART MUSEUM 2 Lincoln Square, New York NY 10021 www.folkartmuseum.org

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