My dream of going to the Outsider Art Fair in NYC finally came true last year. Amazing. The strange thing is that it’s in a high-rise office building in Manhattan. You step off an elevator into an alternative universe of paintings, drawings, structures, weavings and general hubbub. Then you wonder where to look first.

Works from every outsider artist you’ve ever read about is there – Darger, Ramirez, Bartlett, Traylor,  Zinelli, Von Bruenchenhein. Everything. (In case you’re wondering, the Dargers are going for $100,000 – $200,000. They are magnificent, but… ) And every major outsider art dealer was there, from Japan to the USA. There had been a private opening for “special guests”  (i.e., the big collectors) the night before, and I noticed some red dots and a few blank spaces on the wall where works had been carted home already.

A few things surprised me. First, there was a lot for sale by single artists (e.g., Yoakum). Why was that? Is there a super-abundance of his work, or is no one collecting it? Second, there was some pure junk. Although there wasn’t a lot of it, there was “stuff” there that made me want to avert my eyes. (Examples withheld to protect the innocent.) Third, there were some handicrafts for sale, which to me is so “folk art” (even if it is from another country), that it shouldn’t have been there. (But, I guess, you pay your money, you get a booth.) I understand that the Fair is expanding to include folk art in 2012.

Finster

I went there with some prejudices. I thought I didn’t like the work of Howard  Finster, whose religious fervour informs every piece he creates. I have to say, though, that his small wooden constructions are quite beguiling. It’s like looking into a doll house, filled with angels and shiny objects, with biblical text written everywhere.

Elvis at 3

Finster was 3 when he had his first vision, and began preaching at tent revivals at age 16. According to his website, he gave up preaching when he asked who remembered his Sunday sermon later that day, and no one did. He decided to reach out to the “congregation of the world” through his art. I note that his family still maintains an enormous commercial venture based on his work, including many items on eBay. You might be interested in buying ($349.99) a wooden statue, called “Elvis at 3.”  It is inscribed with the following message:

HOWARD FINSTER

FROM GOD MAN OF VISIONS SPEAKING TO YOU BY FOLK ART

 MY HANDS GET TIRED BUT NEVER STOP

I MEASURE YOUR SOUL FROM BOTTOM TO TOP

I CAN’T STAND TO SEE YOU LATE

JUST OUTSIDE OF GODS GATES

TO ALL OF YOU I MAY NEVER MEET

GET READY TO JOIN ME ON GODS GOLDEN STREETS

WHERE YOU AND I WITH ANGELS MEET

WHERE I WILL BOW AT JESUS FEET

GOD BLESS YOU ALL

Danielle Jacqui – She Who Paints – used to sell buttons and embroidery at flea markets in the 1970s. Her first paintings sprung from her embroidery projects, and then she turned to her house. I can only guess that she needed a bigger canvas to express herself. I wonder, 10 years later, if she has filled that canvas, too.

The painting

I have never known an artist who parts easily with his or her artwork, and those mosaics weren’t going anywhere. But I did ask about buying one of her paintings. Her answer was rather vague – somewhere between “no” and “that’s not likely to happen.”  I understood that she occasionally had pieces for sale in an art gallery in “another town” but she thought they had all sold. I left despondent, but she did agree to call the gallery on my behalf. When I called Danielle a couple of days later, she confirmed there were no works for sale, but invited me for coffee. A very positive sign of progress, in my mind. Turns out she wanted a legal opinion on an art-related matter. She did, however, invite me back to her house, and into her personal space. You guessed it – every square inch covered in mosaics. It’s like being buried in a jewellery box.

Danielle disappeared into a back room and came back with a small painting, which had been damaged. She offered to repair it and sell it to me. Halleluiah! My heart lurched when she took scissors to another painting and cut out a chunk to patch the damaged piece. Some glue and a squiggle of acrylic paint and – voila – she was done. She also handed my young son a black and white line drawing, inscribed to him. A kind, gentle, and lovely woman.

Several years after returning home, I was browsing through the sale table in an artbook shop. A beautiful book, Fantasy Worlds, caught my eye. I opened it up and there was a spread about “She Who Paints.”  Until that moment, I had no idea that anyone else had discovered Danielle Jacqui’s magical Queendom and had also fallen in love with her fantasy world. Brava, Danielle.

About 10 years ago, I was driving along a rural road in Pont-de-l’Etoille in southern France, near Marseilles. We turned a corner and whizzed past a house, completely covered in mosaics.  I shouted at my partner to stop the car and ran back to see this peculiar row house – a sparking treasure chest on the side of the road. As luck would have it, a woman was standing inside an open studio door. That’s when I met Danielle Jacqui. The top banner of this blog is posted with the deepest respect for “She Who Paints.”

The mosaic house

Danielle was somewhat wary as I approached, no doubt wondering who this unannounced stranger was. Using my partner as a translator, I babbled on about the magnificence of her house, nearly genuflecting at the front door. Still reserved but gracious, she invited us into her studio. To describe it as a studio is not really accurate – her whole house, inside and out, is a work of art. The “studio” double doors open onto the narrow sidewalk and let light into the grotto-like space. A work table was covered with the tools of her trade – paints, buttons, ceramic pieces, a collection of colourful bits and pieces. Hanging on the wall were heavily textured paintings, hand-made cloth dolls, and over-sized white shirts, which she embroiders with patterns and decorates with vintage buttons.

Nothing could prepare me for the magnitude of Danielle Jacqui’s project. When I say that the entire house is covered with a colourful mosaic of mirror pieces and ceramic chips, I mean the entire house. Every wall, inside and outside, every ceiling, every surface, tables, chairs… you name it – it’s covered with mosaic. It’s breathtaking and dazzling. Some of the patterns are decorative, some are faces, animals, or fantasy themes.  Every single inch of it is gorgeous.

Danielle's button

I stopped to look at her pile of vintage buttons. My mother had a metal box of buttons that I used to play with as a child. It is a battered blue metal box, labelled “Edgeworth extra high grade sliced pipe tobacco.” I assume that it belonged to her father, a pipe smoker, who died before I was born.  I would dump the buttons onto the floor, examine the shapes and colours, and marvel how something so ordinary could be so beautiful. That box of buttons is a treasure that I still keep in my closet. It is a container of personal history. Danielle  offered me one of her buttons. I picked out my favourite and promised to send one of my own to her in return – a strange, but meaningful acceptance ritual. I suppose one of my  mother’s old buttons has been sewn onto one of Danielle’s creations and a happy collector is oblivious to its origin. What an extraordinary fate for a simple button.

The distinction between folk art and outsider art is somewhat vague.  I often see folk art and outsider art grouped together in books, galleries, and museums.  Although many folk artists are self-taught, they are usually instructed in traditional skills by someone in their community. Their work is an expression of their cultural identity. In other words, folk art is tied to a particular culture. Again, I am referencing Roger Cardinal’s analysis on who’s in and who’s out.

folk art: ladybug whirligig (?)

Outsider artists do not include:

– folk artists (tend towards a cultural stereotype, with little variation among artists)

– Sunday painters (who hope to reach the status of professional artists)

– from an underdeveloped country (fortunately, the discussion about so-called “primitive” art has gone the way of the do-do bird)

– children (who are attempting to integrate into society under the guidance of adults (who should know better than to tell children that the sun must be painted yellow…)

– prisoners (who, arguably, are trapped in a different culture)

– engaged in art therapy (under the direction of trained staff)

 (In drafting this list, I am acknowledging that although my father spent a lot of time puttering in his workshop making strange things, he was definitely not an outsider artist. He falls into the unknown category of “Italian handyman-who-liked-to-saw-up-found-pieces-of-wood-to-make-whirligigs-and-donkey-cart-planters.”  But I digress.)

The distinguishing feature of outsider artists is that they are utterly compelled to create their art. They are radically different from each other, each forming a discrete, autonomous reality with a rich expressive richness.  Roger Cardinal sums it up perfectly as “a teaming archipelago rather than a continent crossed by disputed borders. The only connection between each island of sensibility is that they are all distinct from the cultural mainland.”

(The second distinguishing feature of outsider artists is that they don’t whine that their work isn’t selling. Being “an artist” and making their work for public consumption is antithetical to their motivation for creating art. But I digress again.)

Darger

French philosopher Michael Foucault writes about an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia that Jorge Luis Borges claims to have found. In this tome, animals are divided into bizarre categories, such as: belonging to the Emperor; embalmed; tame; suckling pigs; fabulous; innumerable; that from a long way off look like flies, and so on. Foucault notes that the thing we understand in one great leap when reading this list is the exotic charm of another system of thought and, in our own limited system of thought, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

Accepting another system of thought is, I believe, the key to approaching outsider art. It is us, not the outsider artists, who are trapped on the outside, looking in. It is our responsibility to accept another system of thought. It is, indeed, possible to think that.

There are as many definitions of outsider art as there are recipes for bouillabaisse. There is also a growing discomfort with labelling the artists as “marginalized” and separating their art into a category of its own. This is a discussion that I will leave for the academics to punch out at a conference in Florida.

I know an outsider artist (Kevin House) who attended the Outsider Art Fair in NYC. I asked him if he met any other artists there, to which he replied, “No. They’re all insane or dead.”  (I didn’t point out the obvious to him – that he wasn’t dead, so therefore… well, nevermind.) I’ll try to shed a bit more light on who gets on the list (with great deference for Roger Cardinal’s analysis):

Outsider artists are:                                                                                      

– self-taught (learning to draw from your mother doesn’t count)

– unaware of or indifferent to the work of other artists (Picasso who?)

– creating art that is outside the cultural norm (i.e., it may not look like something  you’ve seen before)

– compelled to create art

– not creating art for profit or for others to admire

– not concerned with public opinion of their art

– not necessarily dealing with a mental disability

– sometimes well educated (lack of education is not the same as minimal cultural conditioning)

Next blog: so who’s not on the list?