Outliers and American Vanguard Artat LACMA

but race and class? Evidently, the jungle scenes in Henri Outliers and it was me who was naïve. Rousseau’s Tropical Forest While Outliers seeks to with Monkeys (1910), in the American Vanguard broaden the art historical previous gallery—were not conversation to include so much uneducated as Art at LACMA voices previously ignored, schooled in a diferent set drowned out or conde- of folk aesthetics that they November 18, 2018– scended, Cooke is rightly each applied to contempo- March 17, 2019 careful never to blithely paper rary subjects and themes. over the divisions that have Next, we leap forward I searched and searched, but long existed, and which to the early 1970s, when nowhere could I fnd, explic- continue to exist, in the Chicago Imagists and Bay itly stated, the proposition contemporary art world as Area Funk artists such as Jim that seems to be at the heart in American society at large. Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Roy De of Lynne Cooke’s Outliers Outliers maintains Forest, and William Wiley and Vanguard American Art: focus on three periods in enthusiastically promoted that the categorical separa- the last 100 years or so when “outsiders” including Joseph tion upheld primarily by the boundaries between the Yoakum and Martín Ramírez, specialist dealers, curators, center and the margins were infuenced not only by their and historians of “outsider especially porous. (Retrench- styles but also by their art” between self-taught ment usually followed.) The aberrant relation to the artists and those with college implication is that these are mainstream. While this or university degrees is moments to be celebrated— section of the exhibition untenable, and should be and indeed the brilliance contains some of the most henceforth abandoned. of the work in the exhibition powerful work from both That idea, at this backs this up—but the sides of the academic point in time, is not even so presentation and the inter- divide—notably Ramírez’s 40 controversial, having begun pretive didactics retain the grand Untitled (Madonna) gathering steam as early as dispassion and fastidiousness (c.1948–63)—it is also not 1992, when LACMA mounted of historical analysis. without ethical unease. What Parallel Visions: Modern Cooke’s study begins were the power dynamics Artists and Outsider Art, and in the 1930s, when WPA of these relationships, arguably reaching its apothe- programs allowed a host especially when one artist osis in 2013 with Massimiliano of skilled amateurs to be could not speak for himself? Gioni’s the Encyclopedic employed in artistic pursuits. (Yoakum died in 1972; Palace exhibition for the Concurrently, Alfred H. Barr Ramírez in 1963.) Did the Venice Biennale and the 2013 was making compelling academically credentialed Carnegie International. arguments at the nascent younger artists really I, for one, had half Museum of Modern Art consider their unschooled expected—hoped for, even— for the signifcance to Ameri- colleagues to be equals? Cooke’s show to be the fnal can Modernism of what (We can never know.) word on the matter, a defni- he regrettably termed the Instead of “outsider,” tive demonstration that “modern primitive.” (His Cooke proposes the more categorizations like “outsider,” ridiculed exhibition of the sympathetic term “folk,” “visionary,” or “naïve” self-taught artist Morris “outlier”—a word implying are not only inaccurate but Hirshfeld contributed to his unexpected exceptionalism also ethically compromised. dismissal in 1943.) What is rather than inevitable What separates sculptor clear from the outset is that exclusion. My guess is that, John Flannagan, for instance, in the 1930s, “primitive” sadly, it won’t catch on, not who incorporated ancient was usually was usually because it isn’t better but Celtic references into his a euphemism for work by because it lacks the tragic stone carvings, from William African American or Latinx romance of “outsider”— Edmondson, whose motifs makers. Artists such as a romance that is especially often came from African Horace Pippin—whose Holy appealing to the “insider” American burial traditions, Mountain III (1945) recalls art world. Jonathan Grifn It is in the third section sion of this exhibition, I release stated, “Sperm of the exhibition that we was hungry for something Cult is an unabashedly become most aware that more hopeful, less arbitrary phallocentric afair,” though Outliers ofers no overarching and speculative. While far from patriarchal. thesis about the relationship Outliers might be the most The exhibition built Reviews of the artistic center to the substantive contribution of of this foundation, featur- margins—still less a model by to this debate in years, it ing six artists or pairs that which we might proceed provides no bromides, explored the nexus of queer in the future. Cooke observes no facile generalizations, sexuality, magic, ritual, that in the late 1990s and and no remediations for and community. In their early 2000s, when photo- past injustices. collaborative works, Ryan M graphy, performance, and Pfeifer and Rebecca Walz text-based work was promi- drew on art historical and nent in American contempo- Sperm Cult erotic sources, layering black, rary art, self-taught artists brown, and blue line draw- working in those media, at LAXART ings of ancient sculptures, such as Lee Godie or Eugene November 11, 2018– architectural elements, von Bruenchenhein, were Renaissance portraits, and championed by the vanguard. January 6, 2019 gay porn. In one drawing, Separately, the quilters of a nude youth strikes an Gee’s Bend, Alabama, were Sperm Cult, a group show elegant pose next to another celebrated thanks in part at LAXART, took its inspira- male attempting auto- to their afnity with textile tion and its name from a 2017 fellatio, both rendered with artists and abstract painters book collaboration between the same delicate hand. In like Mary Heilmann, whose artists Richard Hawkins doing so, they inserted these gorgeous Orchid Lady (1994) and Elijah Burgher. The libidinous images into a more features here. In the fnal publication is a celebration traditional pictorial lineage gallery, Cooke enacts what of queer, male transgression going back to fertility icons 41 in her catalog essay she calls that combines photographs like the Venus of Willendorf. “curatorial fabulations,” in of nude men enacting On the foor, Burgher which artists who may not unknown sexual rites—some laid down drop cloths onto have been aware of each wearing crude, cartoon-like which he painted sigils, or other’s work are placed masks, their bodies painted— occult symbols related to together, such as Nancy with Burgher’s drawings desire. The geometric forms Shaver, Jessica Stockholder, of mysterious symbols, and resembled letters, but were and Judith Scott. a text which reads like essentially unreadable. Curatorial fabulations an orgiastic Lord of the Flies. Still, we didn’t need to be may be the most honest and An updated PDF supplement able to decipher the glyphs least objectionable means released to coincide with to recognize an attempt to of bringing together the the show adds homoerotic conjure. A large red and black schooled and the unschooled, collaged images from pop canvas was titled The Forrest but they are nevertheless culture (a shirtless Nick of the Poets (2018), presum- somewhat unsatisfying. Is Jonas), art history (St. ably a reference to Forrest there anything more than Thomas fngering Christ’s Bess, the abstract painter a coincidental relationship wound), and pornography. who was obsessed with the between the severely handi- Photos of a man ejaculating idea that hermaphroditism capped Scott, who created onto a bowl of fruit was the key to immortality. her bound yarn and fabric (literally spilling his seed) Bess went so far as to perform totems at the Creative wryly counter the notion self-surgery, creating an Growth Art Center in of non-normative sex as opening where the penis Oakland, and Stockholder, fruitless. Through the lens meets the scrotum, which he who graduated with an MFA of the sperm cult, the well- believed could result in the from Yale and is currently spring of creative energy is ultimate form of intercourse a professor at the University located outside of traditional if penetrated. Elsewhere, of Chicago? By the conclu- procreation. As the press Pfeifer and Walz also paid Matt Stromberg homage to Bess, titling one of of living outside the bounds of drawings implied some sort their works The Mystery Cult the homogenous, capitalist of dance as the two moved of Forrest Bess (2016). status quo, being guided by around each other in a furry Pushed to one corner, “insurrectionary magick, of mark-making. Viewers also resting on the foor—in radicalism, nomadism, sexual could certainly glean the a rejection of conventional, & social diversity.” It’s a world process implicit in these hierarchical presentation— where romantic libertine works, but absent a partici- were ektor garcia’s sinuous Arthur Rimbaud, occultist patory invitation, it was ceramic pieces, collectively Aleister Crowley, and grunge harder to locate themselves titled desechos (2018), or rockers Mudhoney exist side within the ceremonial “waste.” These shiny, black by side. As the zine’s title bacchanal. Perhaps that glazed objects were wound suggests, bodily fuids are distance between the object and woven into vulva-like seen as the lubrication for this and its origin was simply forms, interlocking hooks, or liberation, and although a function of the gallery looping snakes that ended in cocks are cut and pasted setting, in the sense that all a tangle, ofering a less literal throughout the issues, gender artworks are remnants of interpretation of hedonistic is less important than radical- their making. But an accom- coupling. Given the title, ity. (Treleaven implores in panying dose of performative these coils of clay couldn’t one, “More GRRRLS Should drama would have gone help but take on an abject, Send Stuf In!”) a long way in juicing up this scatological reference.

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