Random
THE OUTSIDERS
Have you been to/do you know about the American Visionary Art Museum? It’s in Baltimore. It features art by outsider artists. In cavalier/casual conversation one might say “art by the insane.” (edit: To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that everyone whose art is exhibited at AVAM was actually insane.) I went there once, a while ago. It came up in conversation the other day–I had forgotten. They have Darger stuff in their permanent collection, I believe. If you’re anywhere near there, go there.
some sort of god or tendril
And then think about whether it changes your appreciation of the art if you are told that the people who made it were in some cases mentally unbalanced. (How different is that from MoMA or LACMA?) Is it fucked-up/exploitative to be kind of especially interested in art created by the psychological disturbed? Is that different from collecting the clown paintings of John Wayne Gacy? Hey look, here’s a picture of Gacy with Rosalynn Carter.
image by Eugene Von Bruenchenhein
Tags: art by the insane
AVAM is an awesome place. Find: Where Am I, Who Am I, Why Am I? By Canadian artist William Kurelek.
http://www.amazon.com/DisabilityLand-Alan-Brightman/dp/159079124X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275932088&sr=1-1
I spend one day a week volunteering at NIAD (source of the artwork in the above book).
I have also worked with dementia patients.
Have also spent some time with “dual-diagnosed” (mental illness & substance abuse).
Fascinating stuff going on, work being produced. “Visions” “filtered” “other-ly”.
Please do be especially interested, it is definitely not fucked-up, but don’t be exploitive, be respectful.
The Visionary is a great museum. The art there is by people who are generally self-taught, but who are somehow inspired to create their art. A visionary (or folk or outsider) artist doesn’t necessarily suffer from a mental illness.
Nick, I like you but I find it really off, actually, that you’re basically suggesting here that an interest in the art of mental illness equates to a hard-on for serial killer art. That’s a pretty shitty abridgement. And it’s really uninformed about how outsider art is only about insanity in one of its modes; more accurately, it’s about artists who are unestablishable, who cannot assimilate to the contortionist logics of the art industry (or ‘art world’, as it likes to call itself, a world that outsider art shows the limits of). Part of the fascination with outsider art is precisely the fact it marks the end of the world of art. Although it is an institution set up to rescue found outsider art, and so tries to recuperate outsider art into the art world, the Visionary Museum is really more of an archive than a museum. A sort of repository of fragments of evidence of how unbalanced the art world is in itself.
One other thing: I also think there’s nothing morally suspect in collecting the clown paintings of Gacy or any serial killer art for that matter. Or at least not a sliver of a difference between that and any other artistic interest, which inevitably involves looking to some object that traces an evocative line between history and aesthetics, and being seduced by it in specific, ‘perverse’ ways.
Eugene Von Bruenchenhein is one of my favorites.
And there was absolutely nothing insane about him.
AVAM is an awesome place. Find: Where Am I, Who Am I, Why Am I? By Canadian artist William Kurelek.
http://www.amazon.com/DisabilityLand-Alan-Brightman/dp/159079124X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275932088&sr=1-1
I spend one day a week volunteering at NIAD (source of the artwork in the above book).
I have also worked with dementia patients.
Have also spent some time with “dual-diagnosed” (mental illness & substance abuse).
Fascinating stuff going on, work being produced. “Visions” “filtered” “other-ly”.
Please do be especially interested, it is definitely not fucked-up, but don’t be exploitive, be respectful.
The Visionary is a great museum. The art there is by people who are generally self-taught, but who are somehow inspired to create their art. A visionary (or folk or outsider) artist doesn’t necessarily suffer from a mental illness.
Nick, I like you but I find it really off, actually, that you’re basically suggesting here that an interest in the art of mental illness equates to a hard-on for serial killer art. That’s a pretty shitty abridgement. And it’s really uninformed about how outsider art is only about insanity in one of its modes; more accurately, it’s about artists who are unestablishable, who cannot assimilate to the contortionist logics of the art industry (or ‘art world’, as it likes to call itself, a world that outsider art shows the limits of). Part of the fascination with outsider art is precisely the fact it marks the end of the world of art. Although it is an institution set up to rescue found outsider art, and so tries to recuperate outsider art into the art world, the Visionary Museum is really more of an archive than a museum. A sort of repository of fragments of evidence of how unbalanced the art world is in itself.
One other thing: I also think there’s nothing morally suspect in collecting the clown paintings of Gacy or any serial killer art for that matter. Or at least not a sliver of a difference between that and any other artistic interest, which inevitably involves looking to some object that traces an evocative line between history and aesthetics, and being seduced by it in specific, ‘perverse’ ways.
I know someone who owns a John Wayne Gacy clown painting, and I’ve always found the pleasure she takes in this kind of “transgression” rather disgusting. One factor that I just don’t like to look at, to even glance at, fucking clowns.
But I have liked a great deal of Outsider and socalled Folk Art, from taking some interest in Darger way back when to ominous paintings of Pennsylvania sheep.
I also possess a book of Thrift Store Art as collected by Jim Shaw. (He also has an interesting book of drawings from his dreams.)
I also sometimes find fascinating the paintings on the walls of motel rooms or homes in which pornographic tableaux are staged.
sam pink does really good art i think.
Eugene Von Bruenchenhein is one of my favorites.
And there was absolutely nothing insane about him.
I know someone who owns a John Wayne Gacy clown painting, and I’ve always found the pleasure she takes in this kind of “transgression” rather disgusting. One factor that I just don’t like to look at, to even glance at, fucking clowns.
But I have liked a great deal of Outsider and socalled Folk Art, from taking some interest in Darger way back when to ominous paintings of Pennsylvania sheep.
I also possess a book of Thrift Store Art as collected by Jim Shaw. (He also has an interesting book of drawings from his dreams.)
I also sometimes find fascinating the paintings on the walls of motel rooms or homes in which pornographic tableaux are staged.
sam pink does really good art i think.
AVAM is an incredibly inspiring and vertigo-inducing place. I highly recommend to all – great reminder. When I was there they had a special Post-Secret special exhibit all the way up those incredible wide spiral stairs. Then I stared for a long time at the massive mirror-mosaic egg… and fell in love.
Thanks for this post. I just moved to Baltimore, so I’m really glad to know about this.
AVAM is an incredibly inspiring and vertigo-inducing place. I highly recommend to all – great reminder. When I was there they had a special Post-Secret special exhibit all the way up those incredible wide spiral stairs. Then I stared for a long time at the massive mirror-mosaic egg… and fell in love.
Thanks for this post. I just moved to Baltimore, so I’m really glad to know about this.
Whoa–that sounds awesome. I love this place and wish I could go see every exhibit there.
Whoa–that sounds awesome. I love this place and wish I could go see every exhibit there.