Much to my surprise and delight, outsider art superstar Lonnie Holley was in Vancouver last week. He came with the Gees Bend quilters (more about that later) to conduct an art workshop and perform with his band. (Who knew he was also a musician?) I became aware of Lonnie’s work some years ago through my personal journey in outsider art. I mainly knew about his sculptures, but happened to see a painting of his last year in New Orleans. (Dynamite. Absolutely gorgeous.) This year I got to meet him. And here is  holding my sculptural creation.

Lonnie’s biography can be found easily on the Internet, but he is happy to share the details of his life with people he meets. Lonnie, AKA The Sand Man, was the 7^th of 27 children (!), born in Alabama in 1950. He told us that his art career sprung from a horrific event, when his sister’s two children died in a house fire. Not having enough money to buy headstones, Lonnie carved them himself from discarded material near the foundry. He says that after that he wasn’t able to stop creating and having seen him in action, I caught a glimpse of what he meant.

Lonnie showed his work to the Birmingham Museum of Art and they were immediately received by the director. Things snowballed from there – people came to see his yard full of sculptures and the outsider art world took notice. Thank heavens for those who recognized his artwork as more than bits of trash.

Like many outsider artists, Lonnie is prolific. We were asked to bring a collection of “personal things” to the workshop and without much introduction, Lonnie asked us to assemble something from the piles of material on the table. One person brought objects from her family, including old tools from her grandfather. Lonnie became absorbed in her personal story and what the objects had to tell. He spent a lot of time helping her hammer things together until a final sculpture took shape. It was obviously a collection of ‘stuff’ that struck a chord with him. I was intrigued to watch the process of a sculpture coming together and got little done on my own project. In fact, he told us that it is the process and how it feels, not the end product that matters. This is something I have heard over and over (and over) from outsider artists that I have come to know.

It is an important reminder to stop and smell the roses on your life’s journey.

I would never approach a superstar in the contemporary art world. I am intimidated in those settings and find myself shrinking into a corner, tongue-tied. (Remind me sometime to tell you about the time I thought* (*fantasized) that I saw Ai Wei Wei in an art museum in New York.) But it’s different with outsider artists. They are always approachable, interesting, and interested. So it was with Lonnie. He is talker, and likes to talk about what he is doing as he works on his art piece, tell stories about himself, and generally shoot the breeze.

Lonnie enjoys engaging with others and hearing what they have to say. He is kind, personable, and funny. Meeting him was another reminder that in the end, we are all just *people* with our own troubles, epiphanies, sorrows, triumphs, and memories. My personal story is different from yours, but we have all walked the same path at some point in our lives.

My apologies for no blogs coming from two weeks in Montreal. Shortly after I arrived I had major problems with my laptop (again) and couldn’t add photos. And, what’s the point of a blog about art if there are no photographs of art…?

As I suspected, there is a lot going on in the world of outsider art in Montreal, Quebec. At least more than the rest of Canada. For those of you outside of Canada, the province of Quebec is an eastern province that is predominantly French-speaking. It has a long history with France and is still connected by more than language to that country. To visit a city in Quebec is like visiting a city in France – the language, culture, and food would fool you into thinking you were somewhere in Europe. In short, it is an incredible city for those who enjoy history and the arts.

The purpose of my trip was to connect with artists and galleries with whom I have been corresponding through my blog. I kept a frenetic pace for two weeks, as there was a lot to see, people to meet, and much to learn. One of the things I wanted to understand is how others in Canada define outsider art. Unfortunately, I have to report that the definition is as muddled there as here. However, because Quebec is still closely aligned with France, much credence is paid to the concept of art brut as it is understood in Europe – that is, art that is outside mainstream art and (perhaps) created by disabled artists or those who are not closely aligned to art culture. It is sometimes referred to as “art singulier” or “art insubordinaire” (insubordinate art).

I did not leave with a clear definition of outsider art, but I enjoyed long hours of conversation with art colleagues and collectors there. The blogs that follow will introduce you some amazing artists. Stay tuned.

The roots of the terms “art brut” and “outsider art” can be traced back to the writings of Prinzhorn, who studied the creative output of psychiatric patients, and then Dubuffet who believed such art was unadulterated by the socio-cultural environment.
(Painting by August Natterer at right.)

Dubuffet’s original art brut collection was ultimately housed in the Collection de L’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland and remains there today. As Dubuffet’s collection grew, it became clear to him that some artwork did not quite “fit” into the narrowly defined category of art brut. Although the work was powerful and inventive, the artists’ contact with society and their awareness of their own work precluded their inclusion in the art brut category.

These artworks were moved to the Annex Collection, and re-named neuve invention. Dubuffet described these as works which, though not characterized by the same radical distancing of mind as art brut, are never the less sufficiently independent of the fine-art system to constitute a challenge to the cultural institutions.

It is said that Dubuffet created a paradox he hoped to avoid. In deciding what should be included in the art brut collection he had to exclude artists whom he admired. Without intending to do so, he created a new orthodoxy of inclusion. Beginning with a subversive attitude towards art, he ended up establishing a new set of rigid criteria. So, in respecting the parameters of art brut, he undermined its fundamental principles and housed it in a tight box.

Dubuffet  added to the problems of taxonomy in setting up a two-tier and elitist distinction between first and second class outsiders. Some works have been moved back and forth between the art brut and neuve invention collections. The margins of art brut began to blur as soon as the genre was named.

Art brut continued to exist, for the most part recognizing the two categories that Dubuffet defined: art brut and neuve invention. In 1972, Roger Cardinal, a professor at the University of Kent, set out to write about art brut. His publisher insisted on a catchier title, and so Outsider Art went to press.  Cardinal explains:

Well, it all happened when I produced this book. I wanted to call it ‘Art Brut’, and I had studied the Dubuffet collection, and had a lot of examples from the collection and some that I’d chosen myself, but fitting into the general rubric of Art Brut. And with that, with Dubuffet as the coiner of that particular concept, and his definitions fairly clearly in mind, I showed the publisher what I wanted to do, and I said, ‘Well, you’ve got Art Nouveau, and you’ve got Art Deco, now you’ve got Art Brut and everybody will get on with it.’ But the publisher was very worried about this particular title and wanted something more easy to get on with for the English ear and said, ‘Well, shouldn’t we call it something else?’ And we went through hundreds of titles: ‘The Art of the Artless’, I remember was one of them…

This was where the terminology problems started. Although the term “outsider art” was not used in the text of the book, Cardinal intended it to be synonymous with art brut, and from the outset it encompassed the categories of both art brut and neuve invention. Cardinal defined outsider art (and art brut) as strictly un-tutored and exists outside of the normal concept of art. “Not hooked up to galleries and certain expectations. It should be more or less inwards-turning and imaginative – self-contained as it were.”

At this point, the narrowly-defined and closely-guarded world of art brut was turned upside down. In the years that followed, European scholars loosened the parameters of art brut but Americans took the concept much further. The term “outsider” was taken literally and begged the question: outside of what?

The definition of outsider art unravelled from this point on.

I am on another writing retreat in the mountains (it’s snowing here!) and I have been silent, not because I am goofing off, but because I have been completely absorbed by the task before me. In other words, I am blissed out.

The sad truth is that I have no idea what I think about something until I write it. I know some well-known writers have expressed this same feeling, but I have lost track of those quotations. Anyway, that’s my reality.

In the process of exploring the topic of what “self-taught” means, I wrote myself to the edge of a cliff. This is not to say that I felt like jumping off a cliff, but that I had nowhere to go from there.  I became so disenchanted with the multitude of definitions of outsider art, and their *reasons (*excuses) for defining it so, that I thought I might have to throw this entire  project in the garbage. Egad. What now?

No matter how we define outsider art, it has grown from Dubuffet’s plea to look at art in a new way, to yet another power-dominated field of art. How can I write about this without it turning into a hysterical rant? This is, after all, an academic exercise, not an opinion piece for a rag newspaper…

But, when all is said and done, and in spite of the headaches it causes me, I absolutely love the art that I encounter in my research. It never fails to punch me in the gut. And I always say to myself, “so this is another way to look at the world…” It leaves me with a sense of awe.  And really, what more could you ask of art?

I have always believed that outsider artists – in the process of creation – are in the midst of a soliloquy, as opposed to a dialogue with others. That soliloquy takes them to a deeper place and a deeper truth. Filmmaker, Werner Herzog, calls this the ecstatic truth. As he says, one can reach a deeper stratum of truth in the arts – a poetic, ecstatic truth, which is mysterious and can only be grasped with effort. One attains it through vision, craft and style. By engaging in the art-making process, sometimes obsessively, I think these artists find their own deep truths. It’s not about the product. It’s about the process.

So, I am signing off tonight with a promise to get down to details in a future blog.

I am now writing about one of the most difficult subjects and it’s about self-taught artists. *Self-taught* is such a simple and common word, yet it takes on a whole new meaning in the world of outsider art.

I tried to create a pictorial representation of how the various labels overlap in the United States: folk art, contemporary folk art, outsider art, art brut, and the work of African-American Southern artists. It gets confusing. I have concluded that the best tactic is to use any one of these terms, say it with confidence, and wait to see if you are challenged.  (Not likely.)

The first thing that comes to mind are the amateur painters who you may see at the park with an easel. They take their endeavors seriously and may actually be quite good at it, but they are not the self-taught group of artists that we talk about in the world of outsider art. These hobbyists are aware of the world of cultural art and may attempt to mimic their favourite styles.

I like the way one writer described the distinction between artists. An artist who is part of the contemporary art scene is called *an artist.* He or she has studied in an art school, is aware of art trends, and may explore  the limits of known art genres. However, a  *[fill in the blank] artist* is outside of that art world. They may be called a self-taught artist, an outsider artist, a folk artist, etc.  I stumbled upon a photo of a interesting painting recently. The local artist called himself a *working class artist* – a term I had not heard before. I tried to contact him to see more of his work, but sadly he has not responded. Very frustrating.

In the United States, a self-taught artist can be a folk artist, a contemporary folk artist, an outsider artist, a visionary artist, or an African American Southern artist. To complicate matters, the term *outsider artist* has fallen out of use because it is felt to be a derogatory term. Instead, outsider artists are now called self-taught artists. You see what I’m saying, right?  It might be easier to use a tangled ball of string as a pictorial representation instead of overlapping circles. (Outsider artist Scottie Wilson photo above.)

So, here is a warning that a long discussion about self-taught artists is about to begin. I am trekking back to the mountain top tomorrow for another focussed writing session. Stay posted.

My niece recently gave me a book by Jeanette Winterson, called “Why be Happy When You Could be Normal?” I wonder what she meant by giving it to me???

But I digress.  This blog is about outsider art.

I happened to see a film called Marwencol last night. I had seen it before, but it was good timing to bump into it again. Mark Hogencamp was badly beaten up some years ago by five men leaving a bar. It left him in a coma and severely brain damaged; his mother said it was like watching her son grow up again – taking his first steps and learning how to do everything for the second time. Mark said he had every memory kicked out of his head. He doesn’t remember anything prior to the attack. He only has a photograph album that shows his childhood, his wedding, his friends, his life.

Obviously, Mark was traumatized by the incident and has since avoided contact with the outside world. Instead, he built his own fantasy town, called Marwencol, in his back yard.

Marwencol is a 1/6 scale town where events from World War II take place. It is populated by soldiers (himself included) and some women who do heroic acts and have relationships with the soldiers.

The Nazis appear from time to time and are inevitably beaten and killed. His real-life friends appear as doll-characters in the town, and he takes great comfort from having them participate in his adventures. When Mark sets up a scenario in Marwencol, he photographs the scene. Over the years he has collected boxes of his own photographs.

As often happens in the world of outsider art, Mark and Marwencol were “discovered” quite by accident. He was pulling a mini-jeep, filled with his action figures, along the road, something he did every afternoon. A neighbour, who happened to be a professional photographer, eventually asked Mark what he was doing.  He learned about Marwencol and felt compelled to document Mark’s incredible world and bring the photographs to the attention of the public. He explained how the photographs were beautifully staged and shot; he marvelled that an “amateur” could create such remarkable work. The film ends with Mark’s exhibit in a New York gallery. To tell you any more would spoil the film should you happen to see it.

Mark is candid about his loneliness and his wish for a wife. He puts people he knows in Marwencol so he can control the story and how they will behave. He prefers to be in Marwencol – life is predictable and safe there.

The photographer-neighbour explained why he was so captivated by Mark’s photographs. In particular, he noted there was no sense of irony, like you might see in a contemporary art piece. It struck him that Mark’s photographs were “authentic” and served no purpose other than to help Mark fight “Mark’s war.” He poses a poignant question: what if your therapy became art?

It has been a difficult exercise for me to unravel the myths of outsider art, so much so that I had begun to question the premise for my entire thesis. Was there really something “different” about outsider art? Is it just something we have labelled for our own purposes?

Watching Marwencol brought me back to where I started. Outsider art is different. The creators do not set out to be artists, but instead create worlds for their own personal and particular reasons. I have blogged about other artists who did this:  Morton Bartlett, Henry Darger, and Renaldo Kuhler. (See earlier blogs.) They are remarkable individuals who have found their own creative way to navigate a painful and disillusioning world. Kudos to them.

A discussion of outsider art must (to me) include social issues. When the term “outsider art” was introduced in 1972, it was intended to be synonymous with art brut, but many took the term literally. They asked: outside of what? Many thought it meant outside the world of commercial art (i.e., outside the canon of art history), while others said it meant outside of society (i.e., it was created by marginalized artists). This triggered an ongoing – and still unresolved debate – about who is “in” and who is “out”.

(It’s interesting that in the United States, “outsider artist” was felt to be a pejorative label and was recently replaced by the term, “self-taught”. That’s an entire chapter in itself. More on this later.)

In the past, outsider art (art brut) focussed on artists who suffered from a mental illness (see previous blogs). When I visited Galerie Art Cru in Berlin several years ago, I had the opportunity to learn about the German perspective on outsider art. Like many cities in Europe and North America, Berlin has ateliers (art studios) for people with mental disabilities. Although I did not have the opportunity to visit one, I think they operate like Creative Growth art center in San Francisco. (It provides art studio space to adults with developmental, mental and physical disabilities.)

Galerie Art Cru exhibits the work of artists connected with these kinds of studios. (One of their artists is Joseph Hofer, whose artwork is pictured at right.) I explained that not all outsider artists in the United States suffer from a mental disability. I was thinking of reclusive and eccentric artists like Henry Darger. The gallery staff was shocked. If this were so, they questioned, how could a collector or gallerist ever determine who was a real outsider artist and where would you find artwork to exhibit? I had no answer to that. We clearly did not have a meeting of minds.

There has been an international move towards social inclusion, a topic that comes up frequently in Europe, particularly France and Germany. In fact, the EU has led the movement, striving to raise the standard of living and strengthen communities by providing opportunities for all European citizens. As I understood it, social inclusion in every facet of life, was the mantra of all Berliners. Hence, the desire to include those with mental disabilities in the art world. So now, in Europe generally, the category of outsider artists includes those with mental health issues (like schizophrenia), and also those who have mental or intellectual disabilities, like autism, developmental delays, or Down Syndrome.

This development puzzles me and led to an exploration of the issue of social inclusion and exclusion. Social inclusion is a laudable objective and should not be scorned. But for me, the issue of social inclusion/exclusion is inextricably linked to power.  How can one include people and groups into structured systems that have systematically excluded them in the first place? One author calls this the dance of the dialectic.

Shouldn’t we be challenging the hierarchies that create this dialectic instead of bringing (allowing?) people into “our” social group? Without reflecting on our acts of social inclusion are we, unwittingly, participating in the use and abuse of power? It’s still the ones who have power who decide who is allowed into the art world and who remains barred!

As for Joseph Hofer,  a German artist  with a significant intellectual disability, I would collect his work regardless of knowing his biography. So it’s not that I think it’s the “wrong” decision to re-define outsider art, but I struggle to understand the reasons behind the decisions. Are the decisions based on evolving views of art or are we simply responding to the imperative of social inclusion?

Howdy. I’m back (almost). Drove into the big city today to get new glasses. I hate to break the news to you, but glasses are getting bigger again. My computer will be ready tomorrow; it seems it was down with a virus. So much for the writing retreat. For the amount I’ve had to pay for all these fixes, I could have flown to Paris and sat, drinking absinthe on the Left Bank, will all the other writers.  Ah well.

The biggest news in the outsider art world (if you haven’t heard) is that the US Postal Service is going to issue 5 stamps honouring one of the *BIGGEST* American outsider artists, Martin Ramirez!

Like many outsider artists, Ramirez had a sad, sad life. He travelled to the USA from Mexico in 1925 and worked as a miner and railroad worker. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1930s and was institutionalized in a psychatric hospital in California until his death in 1963. Thirty + years in a psychiateric hospital…  Need we say more?

You cannot have picked up a book on outsider art without seeing a Ramirez drawing. They are often for sale at Outsider Art fairs at more than (probably) you or I could afford. His images often include a caballero (cowboy) on horseback, in a scene of tunnels. Much speculation on the significance of the caballero (obvious image from his life in Mexico)  and the tunnels. They are typically smallish aboutt 18 inches x 24 inches, although he produced some 20 ft scrolls. The stamp images are shown above.

Like every other outsider artist, Ramirez’s work only became celebrated after his death. The American Folk Art Museum held a retrospective of his work in 2007. It bothers me that the greatest outsider artists are celebrated only after their deaths. (More to say about that later. None of it respectful.)

Here’s to Mr. Ramirez.  Long live the cabellero.

My mother passed away two months ago today. Taking some personal  time this morning to reflect on that.

Dubuffet’s original art brut collection was ultimately housed in the Collection de L’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland and remains there today. As Dubuffet’s collection grew, it became clear to him that some artwork did not quite “fit” into the narrowly defined category of art brut. Although the work was powerful and inventive, the artists’ contact with society and their awareness of their own work precluded their inclusion in the art brut category .

These artworks were moved to the Annex Collection, and re-named neuve invention. Dubuffet described these as “works which, though not characterized by the same radical distancing of mind as art brut, are never the less sufficiently independent of the fine-art system to constitute a challenge to the cultural institutions.

It is said that Dubuffet created a paradox he hoped to avoid. In deciding who was “in” the art brut collection he had to exclude artists whom he admired. Without intending to do so, he created a new orthodoxy of inclusion. Beginning with a subversive attitude towards art, he ended up establishing a new set of rigid criteria. Thus, in respecting the parameters of art brut, he undermined its fundamental principles and housed it in a tight box. He set up a two-tier and elitist distinction between first and second class outsiders.

Here’s where things started going sideways:

In 1972, Roger Cardinal, a professor at the University of Kent, set out to write about art brut. His publisher insisted on a catchier title, and so Outsider Art went to press. Although the term “outsider art” was not used in the text of the book, Cardinal intended it to be synonymous with art brut, and from the outset it encompassed the categories of both art brut and neuve invention.

Cardinal defined outsider art (and art brut) as “strictly un-tutored and exists outside the normal concept of art. Not hooked up to galleries and certain expectations. It should be more or less inwards-turning and imaginative – self-contained as it were.” Although it was not Cardinal’s intention, the narrowly-defined and closely-guarded world of art brut was turned upside down. Consequently, in recent years, outsider art is an umbrella term used to describe art brut and many other artistic styles, particularly in North America. It often refers to “any artist who is untrained or with disabilities or suffering social exclusion, whatever the nature of their work”.  Here is a list of new terminology that is now used in describing outsider art (or similar artwork):

• self-taught
• naïve art
• visionary
• Folk art and contemporary folk art
• Marginal art
• Art singulier (French marginal artists)

So, here we are, seven decades after Dubuffet exposed the self-serving biases of the established art world. We may have accepted the “otherness” of non-traditional art, but cannot agree whether it should be lumped into one category or distinguished by markers that reference stylistic features or the characteristics of its maker. It is called “term warfare.”

In an effort to define outsider art, some have suggested the term “art brut” should refer only to Dubuffet’s original collection in Lausanne. (I have been advised, however, that the term “art brut” is still frequently used in France.) Others, like Cardinal, have proposed a spectrum of “outsiderness” that references the position of the artist along a spectrum of psychological experience. In the USA, the term outsider art has been declared prejudicial, suggesting the artist is on the outer limits of society. Instead, the preferred term “self-taught”. Others refer to stylistic indicators. Another group points to class issues and marginalization as defining factors.

All struggle with the problems inherent in a collection of art that runs parallel to established art history and shares few common characteristics within the category itself. Cardinal himself warns that applying a set of outdated rules may result in one of two outcomes: either setting up an elitist distinction between classes of outsider artists or having the category crumble completely under the strain. He calls for a looser definition, even though it may decrease our ability to discriminate among creators and their creations.

Why does all this matter? Terminology is important because it is more than a mere descriptor; it carries a set of criteria used for classifying the artwork. Is it outsider art or not? When I began researching outsider art in Canada, I discovered there is no history or established criteria to rely on in this country. For me to introduce outsider art to Canadians, I had to understand how others in the art world defined outsider art. That has not been an easy task.