"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" In Detail

The Bonovitz Collection of Outsider Art at the Philadelphia Museum

Bill Traylor, 1943 (collection of Judy A. Saslow).

By Charles Kessler

You missed your chance to see this heartwarming exhibition – it closed June 9th. But don't fret. Although Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz have been complaining that museums don't exhibit outsider art, lucky for you the Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the few museums that does. As a result, some of the work that was in this exhibition – one of the most enthralling I've seen in years – will always be on view. The informative exhibition website is still active, and here's a link to excellent reproductions of almost everything in the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection. Best of all, a beautifully illustrated hardcover exhibition catalog with excellent essays about this exhibition, and outsider art in general, is still available.

Installation view, Felipe Benito Archuleta's carved animals, Philadelphia Museum of Art. To the credit of the PMA, each artist was given the respect of having their own space, often their own room. 

There's some dispute about what outsider art is, but it's safe to say that it's art made by people who are not connected to the fine art world. Outsider artists have no traditional art training (although for some reason, trained artists who become schizophrenic are sometimes considered outsider artists). And outsider artists are not engaged with the business side of the fine arts, at least when they first begin making art. 

To be clear, outsider artists are self-taught, not untaught. Nor are they anti-social – they are isolated from the fine art tradition not by choice, but by poverty, racism, geography or some other reason beyond their control. The artists in this exhibition were driven to work hard, they were prolific, and they got better at what they did. Most of them enjoyed showing their work and were pleased when they got a positive response.  

Most outsider artists that we know about began making art late in life, when they were too old to work. They were usually motivated to create art by some inner compulsion or a sign from God. Most didn't see themselves as artists or their work as art, but rather their work served some functional objective like spreading the gospel, curing illness, or documenting some current or historic event. A great deal of outsider art is inspired by popular culture, but it's stylistically very varied.

Many art professionals say that some outsider art is among the best art made in our lifetimes. I agree. And this isn't a trendy new view. Via Lynne Cooke's essay in the exhibition catalog, I learned in 1942 the legendary Alfred Barr wrote:

Just as [Henri] Rousseau now seems one of the foremost French painters of his generation, certain of our self-taught painters can hold their own in the company of their best professionally trained compatriots. [From They Taught Themselves, one of the first books on outsider art.]

Here are some of my favorite artists in the exhibition:

Felipe Benito Archuleta, born Santa Cruz, New Mexico, 1910; died Tesuque, New Mexico, 1991.

Felipe Benito Archuleta, Mule, 1975, wood, paint, sisal, sawdust and glue, 51 ¼ x 70 x 15 ½ inches (PMA, BST-68).

When he was fifty-five, Archuleta received a vision from God that he should make wood carvings, but he said he didn’t feel worthy enough to make religious art like Santos, so, using traditional Santos carving techniques, he carved animals instead.

I find it interesting that eventually Archuleta was engaged enough in the art world that he was encouraged by collectors and dealers to make larger animals. They even encouraged him to make some exotic animals like the lynx below. Unlike the earlier work of animals he saw everyday, for these he needed to refer to magazines like National Geographic. This "insider" influence didn't seem to effect the quality of his work.

Felipe Benito Archuleta, Lynx, 1977, cottonwood, paint, sisal, sawdust and glue, 37x15x29 inches (PMA, BST-67).

In spite of the stiffness and simplification of his animals, they have a disconcerting aliveness about them, as if they are real animals inside a wooden animal costume. Perhaps it has something to do with Archuleta carefully choosing logs appropriate for carving his animals, like Michelangelo did with marble.

Emery Blagdon, born Callaway, Nebraska, 1907; died Callaway, 1986.

Emery Blagdon inside his Healing Machine, 1979 (Photo copyright Sally and Richard Greenhill).

When his mother and father died of cancer, Blangdon started to construct hundreds of sculptures (more than 600 – he called them "pretties") that, according to him, channeled the electromagnetic energy of the earth and healed anyone who came into the shed where they were installed. Blangdon may have been on to something – even though he too died of cancer, he lived to be almost eighty, much older than his parents.

Installation view of Emery Blagdon's machines for healing the sick.

Blagdon's "healing machine" was made up of wire, scrap metal, beads, aluminum foil – whatever was around, and the whole thing was lit by Christmas lights. Entering the shed must have been quite an experience. Unfortunately, separating out just three of his sculptures from their context saps the magical impact they must have had. In this case, photos of Blagdon's "healing machine" may give you a better idea of what it must have been like.

Emery Blagdon inside his Healing Machine, 1979 (Photo copyright Sally and Richard Greenhill).

James Castle, born Garden Valley, Idaho, 1899; died Boise, Idaho, 1977.

James Castle, Gray Bowl, n.d., dark gray paper (from a Sears shopping bag) tied with cotton string; green wax crayon,
3 ¼ x 7 ¾ inches (PMA, BST-15).

James Castle was born deaf and had no language. He wasn't able to work on the farm like his brothers and sisters, so he spent his time making art from things he salvaged in his everyday life – things such as flattened food cartons and cigarette packs, packaging of all types, shopping bags and envelopes; and he made his ink from soot. He produced an enormous amount of work which he carefully stored in his house. He was particularly fascinated with making books and invented his own secret code of symbolic pictographs.

James Castle, Abstract Construction, n.d., cardboard, string, wiped soot wash, 8 x 6 inches (PMA, BST-11).

I find the exquisite sensitivity of the work and meticulous care he took with it very touching. They remind me of Tantra Paintings in that respect.

Sam Doyle, born St. Helena Island, South Carolina, 1906; died Beaufort, South Carolina, 1985.

Sam Doyle in his yard, c.1983 (photo by Roger Manley).

Sam Doyle dabbled in art his whole life, but in his early sixties he decided he needed to document significant people and events in his Gullah island community, and important African Americans in general, and he went at it with great intensity. In the tradition of African American yard art, these were displayed in his yard – what he called "The St. Helena Out Door Gallery."

Sam Doyle, Dr. Boles Hi Blood, c.1985, reused corrugated and galvanized iron sheet and paint,  26 x 34 1/2  inches
(PMA,  BST-168).

What I believe to be his best painting, Dr. Boles Hi Blood, c.1985, is inexplicably missing from the PMA website, but fortunately I took a pretty good photo of it. I have no idea what's going on in the painting – perhaps it illustrates a Gullah spirit myth or a medical procedure. But the physicality of the work, the aggressive colors, the bold placement of the figures, the reduction down to bare essentials, and of course the lurid subject, result in an astoundingly powerful and dramatic work. 

Martín Ramírez, born Rincón de Velázquez, Mexico, 1895; died Auburn, California, 1963.

Martin Ramírez, Verticle Tunnel with Cars, wax crayon, graphite, water-based paint on papers, 58 x 23 ¾ inches
(PMA, BST-43).

Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1931, Ramírez was committed to a mental hospital where fortunately they encouraged his drawing. Like many of the other outsider artists, he preferred to draw on found papers pasted together from smaller sheets. His subjects are mostly cars or trains entering or leaving a tunnel, Madonnas, horses and riders, and landscapes, and sometimes he would include images from magazines like the Saturday Evening Post.

Martin Ramírez, Train, Cars, Tunnels, and Windows, 1953, graphite, wax crayon, water-based paint and ink on paper,
23 ¾ x 90 inches (PMA, BST-40).

In 1968, Jim Nutt, one of the Chicago "Hairy Who" artist, discovered Ramírez's work and told Chicago art dealer Phyllis Kind about it. Together they bought hundreds of his drawings, and she exhibited them in her gallery as early as 1973. As a result, Ramírez (along with Traylor, below) is probably the most well-known of these outsider artists, and he became an important influence on the Chicago art scene in the 1970s.

Bill Traylor, born near Benton, Alabama, c. 1853; died Montgomery, Alabama, 1949.

Bill Traylor, Runaway Goat Cart, c. 1939-42, opaque watercolor and graphite on cream card,
14 x 22 inches (PMA, BST-52).

Bill Traylor was born a slave on a plantation and remained on the land as a farmhand for most of his life. In his mid-seventies, when he could no longer farm, he moved to Montgomery where he became essentially homeless. In his mid-eighties, stimulated by the teeming street life and its raucous characters, he suddenly began to make drawings of animals, household objects, and what he called "exciting events." He produced an astounding 1200 drawings in four years. One interesting note: the young artist Charles Shannon tried promoting Traylor's work and occasionally bought him art supplies, but Traylor preferred to work on the rough, irregularly-shaped cardboard he found.

Bill Traylor, Men Drinking, Boys Tormenting, Dogs Barking, c. 1939-42, opaque watercolor on card with dark gray prepared surface, 14 ¼ x 21 ¾ inches (PMA, BST-48).

He was a master story-teller, getting down to the bare essentials of his subjects and animating his zany vignettes in a direct and visceral way.

***

The breathtaking quality of the work in this exhibition gives pause. How can such great art be made without art training? Are art schools useless or, worse, can they be harmful?  Can art training extinguish the drive to express oneself and substitute instead a necessity to make work that's tired, super-refined and empty, the way the Academy did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? I suppose it depends. Some people some time do well in some art schools; others are destroyed by them. Some people are helped by schooling; others are gifted enough to not need it. 

Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes

By Charles Kessler

In the last few weeks I saw two great shows that sadly will not be traveling to New York or anywhere else. Unfortunately, one closed last week (you were warned): Great and Mighty Things: Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; but the other, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909–1929: When Art Danced with Music at the National Gallery in Washington, you can see until September 2nd. I'll report on the Diaghilev show now because there's obviously no rush on the Outsider Art show.

Serge Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky, Spain, 1921. (Photo: Victoria & Albert Museum, London.)

A case can be made that the great Russian ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929) has had a longer-lasting influence than Picasso. Cubism isn't a factor in the art world any more, and neither is its progeny, Greenbergian reduction of each art form to its innate essence. But, for better or worse, Diaghilev's multi-media, collaborative approach prevails more than ever in today's art world, particularly with performance, conceptual and installation art.

And no one has ever been as great at discovering, choosing and guiding collaborators as Diaghilev: Picasso, Matisse, de Chirico and Leon Bakst all made sets and costumes for his dances; Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Satie wrote scores; and his choreographers were among the greatest ever – Mikhail Fokine, Vaslav Nijinsky, Léonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska, and George Balanchine.

Dancers from the Ballets Russes in costume for the first ever production of The Rite of Spring in 1913. Choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky, score by Igor Stravinsky. (From the Guardian.)

While he produced unorthodox dances in Paris earlier (The Firebird in 1910 and Petrushka in 1911 – both with a score by the young Igor Stravinsky), Diaghilev's real revolution in dance began in Paris in 1913 with his Rite of Spring, a dance that combined dissonant, rhythmically complicated music by Stravinsky; colorful, exotic stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich; and strange, jerky, jumping up and down choreography by the greatest dancer of his time, Vaslav Nijinski – movement so radically different from the prevailing tutu/toe-shoe ballet that people were scandalized and, feeling insulted, actually rioted. Rupert Christiansen in the London Telegraph describes the impact well when he writes: For a generation struggling under the inherited weight of Victorian mahogany and gilt, the sensuality, brilliance and physicality of the Ballets Russes was seen as a liberation, always sensational and often scandalous, suggesting a new code of erotic possibilities (with Nijinsky’s bisexual appeal at its heart) and establishing the avant-garde as exuberantly glamorous rather than seedily bohemian.

Here is a video of the Joffrey Ballet 1989 Rite of Spring. Imagine what it was like 100 years ago.

(To put in a plug for the under-recognized Isadora Duncan as a precursor, Diaghilev saw her dance in St. Petersburg in 1902 and was impressed by her natural, fluid movements – so different from the moribund imperial court ballet of the time.)

The exhibition at the National Gallery (adapted from the original 2010 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum) is impressively inclusive, containing 130 original costumes,

Henri Matisse, costume for a mourner from The Song of the Nightingale, 1920. Wool felt and velvet. (Photos: Victoria and Albert Museum, London.)

Costume for the Buffoon in Larionov and Slavinsky's ballet Chout, designed by Mikhail Larionov, Diaghilev Ballet, 1921.

Pablo Picasso, costume for the Chinese Conjuror from Parade, c. 1917; and Sonia Delaunay, costume for title role from Cleopatra, 1918.

many original and replicas of the stage sets, and also paintings, sculptures and archival photographs. (The NGA provides an invaluable free "digital companion" to the exhibition here.)

The installations are marvels of color, animation and invention, but unfortunately the NGA doesn't allow photographing the exhibition and I couldn't find anything on the web; but I did manage to sneak a photo (below) that somewhat captures what the installations are like.

Surreptitious photo of the installation of Mikhail Larionov's costumes for the ballet Buffoons Wife (Chout) from The Tale of the Buffoon, 1921, music by Sergei Prokofiev. 

Installing Picasso's front cloth for The Blue Train, 1924 (with a story by Jean Cocteau and costumes by Coco Chanel). 

As exciting as the costumes and sets are, I found them kind of static. For a better understanding of how everything worked together, the NGA provides film clips of many of the dances, most of them shown in their theatrical context.

Don't miss this enchanting exhibition.

Taking a break!

Back to work in mid-June. 

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