Looking at Outsider Art
Looking at Outsider Art
Thinking art differently
Looking at Outsider Art
Looking at Outsider Art
Thinking art differently
At a recent meeting of our Look Club, we had lots of questions...and possibly some answers! Find out more here...
When we look at “outsider art”, what are we looking at? Why are we looking? What, if anything, do the answers to these questions tell us about why and how we engage more generally with art?
Thanks to the generosity of Monika Kinley who gifted over 1,000 works to the Whitworth, and to Kinley and her partner, the film maker and curator, Victor Musgrave who built the collection, the Whitworth is now home to one of the largest collections of “outsider art” in Britain. With the help of Holly Grange, the Whitworth’s curator of this outstanding and fascinating collection, and Graham Ash, a member of the Look Club team, we recently spent a fascinating few hours-well over the time allocated for our meeting-exploring these questions.
So what is Outsider Art?
It is fairly easy to trace a history of how the term has developed. It was first used by Roger Cardinal in 1972 as a title for his book on the subject. It was a substitute for the French term Art Brut. This might be roughly translated as raw art. The term was considered unappealing to the British public by the book’s publishers, although it had some currency in France where the artist, Jean Dubuffet used it to categorise art produced by untrained artists working outside widely accepted aesthetic norms and having no contact with the commercial art world. Putting a label on such a diverse set of practices and products, however, seems to beg more questions than it answers.
Not all artists considered within this category are completely untrained, although their lives may have not conformed to the usual pattern, either because of illness or some other traumatic event. But the same could be said for Van Gogh, to name the most obvious example. Similarly, “aesthetic norms” are a shifting category. The work of many artists who are now thought of as canonical-that of the French Impressionists, for instance- was regarded as odd, and even ugly or scandalous, at the time. As for links with the commercial art world, there appear, on inspection, to be no absolutely firm rules. Scottie Wilson, an outsider artist, was untrained, owned and ran a second hand shop for years, discovered his talent later in life and never completely lost touch with his roots. He enjoyed modest commercial success, however, and was courted by Dubuffet and even Picasso. Lee Godie, the Chicago artist whose work was the main focus of our discussion, was not indifferent to commercial success, although she continued to sell on the streets of Chicago, and enjoyed the friendship, if not exactly the patronage, of the Director of the Art Institute of Chicago. There is even, in the Gugging House of Artists near Vienna, an establishment that combines therapeutic and social care of artists, with a Gallery and an agency promoting the work of some of the resident artists.
Perhaps it is easier to say why we continue to be fascinated by these works? It would be disingenuous to deny that at least part of the fascination comes from the life stories of the artists, but we were reluctant to accept that we were simply voyeurs of the eccentric. Outsider Art, to use the term for convenience, and as an umbrella for many different practices, may not have had a manifesto. In fact its individualism is perhaps one of the features which makes it so intriguing. There does seem to be, however, a common set of characteristics which draw us to it. It use of unconventional materials (although not exclusive to outsider art-Chris Ofili and elephant dung!) is one of them. So too is its “horror vacui”, the tendency to cover the entire surface with detail. Above all, the words that surface again and again in our discussion were “obsessive”,”repetitive” and “visceral.” We feel drawn to this work, in other words, because it speaks to our search for unfettered individuality and expressive freedom in an age of globalised homogeneity.
Just a final thought, though. The American art critic, Jerry Saltz has argued that all great art is about rethinking what we mean by skill, and that the term, Outsider Art, is discriminatory, a boundary that excludes some artists from recognition for their work and achievement. Why should we not, for example, consider Lee Godie’s photographic self-portraits alongside the work of Cindy Sherman or Claude Cahun? What can we learn from putting the work of some Outsider Artists alongside that of more accepted artists whose work is usually categorised as surrealist? The decision by the Whitworth to display works from the Musgrave Kinley Collection in the context of more general exhibitions acknowledges that this may be the way in which we can look again, at all kinds of art.
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If you want to find out more about Outsider Art, take a look at this youtube video of a discussion between Jarvis Cocker (Pulp frontman and self-proclaimed Outsider Art fanatic), James Brett (Director of the Museum of Everything, a peripatetic museum showing the work of marginalised artists) and David Maclagan (one of the most interesting critical voices writing on Outsider Art today- former art therapist and author of from the Margins to the Marketplace): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk0PndXxSoQ. It’s a talk that was held at the ICA in 2010 called ‘Don’t call me crazy: How I fell in love with Outsider Art’.
To discover more about the Musgrave Kinley Collection and the work being done at the Whitworth by Holly Grange: https://musgravekinleycollection.wordpress.com/
You can also follow Holly on Twitter at https://twitter.com/hollygrange
You may be interested in ceramics and Outsider Art. If so The Gallery of Everything is hosting an exhibition of George Ohr’s ceramics at Frieze Masters this year. George Edgar Ohr (July 12, 1857 – April 7, 1918) was a self-taught American ceramic artist and the self-proclaimed "Mad Potter of Biloxi" in Mississippi. He was collected and championed by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In recognition of his innovative experimentation with modern clay forms from 1880–1910, some consider him a precursor to the American Abstract-Expressionism movement. More on Wikipedia here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_E._Ohr
If you are interested in learning more about the Look Club, contact the Friends of the Whitworth at [email protected]
At a recent meeting of our Look Club, we had lots of questions...and possibly some answers! Find out more here...
When we look at “outsider art”, what are we looking at? Why are we looking? What, if anything, do the answers to these questions tell us about why and how we engage more generally with art?
Thanks to the generosity of Monika Kinley who gifted over 1,000 works to the Whitworth, and to Kinley and her partner, the film maker and curator, Victor Musgrave who built the collection, the Whitworth is now home to one of the largest collections of “outsider art” in Britain. With the help of Holly Grange, the Whitworth’s curator of this outstanding and fascinating collection, and Graham Ash, a member of the Look Club team, we recently spent a fascinating few hours-well over the time allocated for our meeting-exploring these questions.
So what is Outsider Art?
It is fairly easy to trace a history of how the term has developed. It was first used by Roger Cardinal in 1972 as a title for his book on the subject. It was a substitute for the French term Art Brut. This might be roughly translated as raw art. The term was considered unappealing to the British public by the book’s publishers, although it had some currency in France where the artist, Jean Dubuffet used it to categorise art produced by untrained artists working outside widely accepted aesthetic norms and having no contact with the commercial art world. Putting a label on such a diverse set of practices and products, however, seems to beg more questions than it answers.
Not all artists considered within this category are completely untrained, although their lives may have not conformed to the usual pattern, either because of illness or some other traumatic event. But the same could be said for Van Gogh, to name the most obvious example. Similarly, “aesthetic norms” are a shifting category. The work of many artists who are now thought of as canonical-that of the French Impressionists, for instance- was regarded as odd, and even ugly or scandalous, at the time. As for links with the commercial art world, there appear, on inspection, to be no absolutely firm rules. Scottie Wilson, an outsider artist, was untrained, owned and ran a second hand shop for years, discovered his talent later in life and never completely lost touch with his roots. He enjoyed modest commercial success, however, and was courted by Dubuffet and even Picasso. Lee Godie, the Chicago artist whose work was the main focus of our discussion, was not indifferent to commercial success, although she continued to sell on the streets of Chicago, and enjoyed the friendship, if not exactly the patronage, of the Director of the Art Institute of Chicago. There is even, in the Gugging House of Artists near Vienna, an establishment that combines therapeutic and social care of artists, with a Gallery and an agency promoting the work of some of the resident artists.
Perhaps it is easier to say why we continue to be fascinated by these works? It would be disingenuous to deny that at least part of the fascination comes from the life stories of the artists, but we were reluctant to accept that we were simply voyeurs of the eccentric. Outsider Art, to use the term for convenience, and as an umbrella for many different practices, may not have had a manifesto. In fact its individualism is perhaps one of the features which makes it so intriguing. There does seem to be, however, a common set of characteristics which draw us to it. It use of unconventional materials (although not exclusive to outsider art-Chris Ofili and elephant dung!) is one of them. So too is its “horror vacui”, the tendency to cover the entire surface with detail. Above all, the words that surface again and again in our discussion were “obsessive”,”repetitive” and “visceral.” We feel drawn to this work, in other words, because it speaks to our search for unfettered individuality and expressive freedom in an age of globalised homogeneity.
Just a final thought, though. The American art critic, Jerry Saltz has argued that all great art is about rethinking what we mean by skill, and that the term, Outsider Art, is discriminatory, a boundary that excludes some artists from recognition for their work and achievement. Why should we not, for example, consider Lee Godie’s photographic self-portraits alongside the work of Cindy Sherman or Claude Cahun? What can we learn from putting the work of some Outsider Artists alongside that of more accepted artists whose work is usually categorised as surrealist? The decision by the Whitworth to display works from the Musgrave Kinley Collection in the context of more general exhibitions acknowledges that this may be the way in which we can look again, at all kinds of art.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
If you want to find out more about Outsider Art, take a look at this youtube video of a discussion between Jarvis Cocker (Pulp frontman and self-proclaimed Outsider Art fanatic), James Brett (Director of the Museum of Everything, a peripatetic museum showing the work of marginalised artists) and David Maclagan (one of the most interesting critical voices writing on Outsider Art today- former art therapist and author of from the Margins to the Marketplace): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk0PndXxSoQ. It’s a talk that was held at the ICA in 2010 called ‘Don’t call me crazy: How I fell in love with Outsider Art’.
To discover more about the Musgrave Kinley Collection and the work being done at the Whitworth by Holly Grange: https://musgravekinleycollection.wordpress.com/
You can also follow Holly on Twitter at https://twitter.com/hollygrange
You may be interested in ceramics and Outsider Art. If so The Gallery of Everything is hosting an exhibition of George Ohr’s ceramics at Frieze Masters this year. George Edgar Ohr (July 12, 1857 – April 7, 1918) was a self-taught American ceramic artist and the self-proclaimed "Mad Potter of Biloxi" in Mississippi. He was collected and championed by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In recognition of his innovative experimentation with modern clay forms from 1880–1910, some consider him a precursor to the American Abstract-Expressionism movement. More on Wikipedia here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_E._Ohr
If you are interested in learning more about the Look Club, contact the Friends of the Whitworth at [email protected]
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