DOCSLIB.ORG

Curating in the Age of Live Performance Allen S

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Curating in the Age of Live Performance Allen S Curating in the Age of Live Performance Allen S. Weiss Figure 1. Raimundo Borges Falcão (b. probably late 1940s near Salvador, Bahia, Brazil) in his carnival disguise at Carnival Fantasia “Blue Shark.” Near Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 2000. Color photograph 7˝ × 5˝. (Photo by Dimitri Ganzelevich; courtesy of Beate Echols and the American Folk Art Museum) A radical paradigm shift concerning the theorization of Outsider Art recently occurred with the exhibition When the Curtain Never Comes Down, shown at the American Folk Art Museum in 2015, and its accompanying catalog.1 Consideration of this event thrusts us into the ambiguities and contradictions of Art Brut and Outsider Art, as well as into the complexities of the contem- porary sense of “performance,” such that we enter a hermeneutic labyrinth where categories are confounded and ontologies destabilized. Curator Valérie Rousseau presents the project in terms 1. This text first appeared as “L’art brut au risque du musée” in Critique (Paris) 863 (April 2019), trans. Philippe Roger. — Ed. TDR 64:1 (T245) 2020 https://doi.org/10.1162/dram_a_00900 ©2020 Allen S. Weiss 145 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram_a_00900 by guest on 26 September 2021 familiar to amateurs of Art Brut, writing of the “utter self-sufficiency” of the “solitary creator” producing works with “no dependence on the Western art canon” (2015:7) and “without guides or points of reference” (17). This Romantic vestige of a certain ideal of aesthetic and existential purity finds its hyperbolic instance in Jean Dubuffet’s notion of Art Brut, the celebration of art that does not know its own name, art that is least like art. Dubuffet well knew that any attempt at a rigid definition would be antithetical to the spirit of artistic openness that he promulgated, and in his preface to Michel Thévoz’s Art Brut (1976), he claims that no common definition will fit all the works in this category, as each creation is a reflection of a different mental position, a different private world, and their only thing in common is that such art exists as far as possible outside cultural influences, marking their radical difference from what Arthur Danto will come to call the “artworld” (1964) — that intellectual, social, and economic system that determines what is deemed art. Thévoz in turn goes on to claim that Art Brut is the name of that which cannot be defined, speaking of “an upsurge of singularities and intensities of unknown origin” (1976:167), echo- ing the radical epistemology of Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus, published four years earlier ([1972] 1977). Dubuffet established this gambit in a liminary text to the firstFascicule de l’Art Brut (1949): “To define something — or even to isolate it — is already to damage it quite a bit. Almost to kill it [...] I was hardly born to make things explicit but rather as a lover of IMPLICIT languages. Art brut is art brut, and everybody well understands this” ([1947] 1967:175–76). This anti-institutional, countercultural, anti-aesthetic position remains seduc- tive — for both Art Brut and experimental art alike — thus “Art Brut” may be productively understood as less a category (though collectors and curators treat it as such), and more an instrument of discovery and self-discovery, a tool to transform consciousness, revealing a force that has no other name than life, waiting to be expressed. The paradoxes and contradictions are ineluctable: generally speaking, given marginaliza- tion as the condition sine qua non of the existence of Art Brut, every attempt to write, collect, and curate such works brings them and their creators further and further into the art world they eschew. Indeed, the two most often heard complaints among amateurs of Art Brut are antithet- ical: either that such works have been scandalously excluded from art history, but the day must come when the term Art Brut becomes obsolete, and there remains only art; or else that the art establishment is appropriating Art Brut, as it has devoured all else, an assimilation that will eventually destroy the very integrity of such works. We are thus confronted with two possible options: segregation or assimilation. Yet Art Brut had already begun to enter The Museum at the very moment of its inception. On the last page of Art Brut, Thévoz notes that in The Voices of Silence ([1951] 1953), André Malraux, cultural insider par excellence, reproduces works by two Art Brut creators, Guillaume Pujolle and Otto Stein (albeit listing the works as “anonymous lunatic drawings”) (1976:168); and in the very last sentence of Outsider Art, Roger Cardinal astutely wonders whether the makers of Art Brut will fabricate a Trojan horse to enter the cul- tural world (Cardinal 1972:180). This moment has come, with a vengeance. Not that long ago, curator Maurice Tuchman organized the exhibition Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1992), the first large grouping of Art Brut in a major museum, with the exception of works in the donation that Daniel Cordier gave to the Centre Allen S. Weiss is the author and editor of over 40 books in performance theory, landscape architecture, gastronomy, sound art, and experimental theatre, including Phantasmic Radio (1995) and Varieties of Audio Mimesis (2008), as well as a novel, Le Livre bouffon(2009). He directed Theater of the Ears(a play for electronic marionette and taped voice based on the writings of Valère Novarina; 1999–2001) and Danse Macabre (a marionette theatre for the dolls of Michel Nedjar; 2004, 2009), and most recently produced the film Dolls of Darkness (2016), about Nedjar’s dolls and the Holocaust. He is Distinguished Teacher in the Departments of Performance Studies and Cinema Studies at NYU. [email protected] Allen Weiss S. 146 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram_a_00900 by guest on 26 September 2021 Pompidou in 1989, and the inclusion of works of the mentally ill in the infamous Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition organized by the Nazis (Munich, 1937). When Tuchman was asked why he chose to do an exhibition revealing the influence of Outsider artists on modern art rather than simply organizing a show on Outsider Art, he answered that no board of trust- ees of a major museum in the USA would agree to that. This has certainly changed. Consider that today the work of Henry Darger has entered the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and that one of his works has attained an auction price of $750,000; that there have been count- less exhibitions on the subject, as well as dozens of museums, galleries, and major collections around the world dedicated to Outsider Art; and that even the chief art critic of the New York Times, Roberta Smith, has long been dedicated to this sort of art. This is all quite inside. As was the case throughout the entire history of the avantgarde, no matter how radical and conten- tious, the “art world” always manages to assimilate, normalize, and commodify art of every sort, Art Brut included. Dubuffet’s polemic in favor of these strange, eccen- tric, extraordinary works has devolved into an entire field of art history, criticism, and the- ory, at the core of which are all the paradoxes and contradic- tions that at first made for such a lively polemic, but which are now put in the service of museo- logical categories of inclu- sion and exclusion. Perhaps the greatest irony is that it was Dubuffet himself — the most anti-institutional and counter- cultural of aestheticians (if one dare use the word in this con- text) — who effectively institu- tionalized Art Brut in 1976 with Figure 2. Palmerino Sorgente (b. 1920, Castelforte, Italy; d. 2005, Montreal, the creation of the Collection Canada) in his workshop on Notre-Dame Street, Montreal, Canada, 1999. de l’art brut in Lausanne. Given Collection Société des arts indisciplinés, Montreal. (Photo by Marie-Christine Cyr the fact that “art” itself remains and Georges Aubin Jr. © Société des arts indisciplinés; courtesy of the American undefinable — one role of exper- Folk Art Museum) imental art being to belie any definition that might be proffered — the equivocations of Art Brut should not come as a sur- prise. Art Brut is a victim of its own success, and it has attained its ultimate paradox: perhaps the moment has indeed come when Art Brut is indistinguishable from art simpliciter, and we need no longer preface such discussions with parables and paradoxes of creative purity. Despite Curating in the Age of Live Performance Curating in the several obligatory bows to Dubuffet, Rousseau makes a crucial move in bringing these works into a broader and more contemporary context, insisting that, “the mnemonic qualities of such visual experiences are partly indebted to the ceremonial background in which the works origi- nated and will be subsequently perceived — and replayed. This mechanism leads us to examine the contextualization of images and their sources” (2015:21). An entire museological program unfolds: the polemic concerning sources is precisely the point where the relations between art brut and art simpliciter are to be found; broad contextualization complicates claims about the sup- posed self-sufficiency of the solitary creator; the study ofceremony suggests continuities between psychology, sociology, and ethnography; and the problematic of replay places us within the con- temporary discourse of performance and performativity. 147 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram_a_00900 by guest on 26 September 2021 Of hermeneutic import is the insistence on the “excess of energy” (Rousseau 2015:22) at the origin of these works, a thematic traversing modernism via Nietzsche, Freud, Bataille, Artaud, Lyotard, Deleuze, Guattari, et al.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Outsider to Insider: the Art of the Socially Excluded
    Derleme Makale YAZ 2020/SAYI 24 Review Article SUMMER 2020/ISSUE 24 Kartal, B. (2020). Outsider to insider: The art of the socially excluded. yedi: Journal of Art, Design & Science, 24, 141-149. doi: 10.17484/yedi.649932 Outsider to Insider: The Art of the Socially Excluded Dışarıdan İçeriye: Sosyal Dışlanmışların Sanatı Burcu Kartal, Department of Cartoon and Animation, İstanbul Aydın University Abstract Özet The term outsider art was coined by the art historian Roger Cardinal Toplum dışı sanat olarak da tanımlanan Outsider Art terimi ilk kez in 1972. Outsider art includes the art of the ‘unquiet minds,’ self- 1972 yılında Roger Cardinal tarafından kullanılmıştır. Toplum dışı taught and non-academic work. Outsider art is not a movement like sanat, akademik eğitim almamış, kendisini bu alanda geliştirmiş, Cubism or Expressionism with guidelines and traditions, rather it is a toplumun ‘normal’ olarak sınıflandırdığı grubun dışında kalan reflection of the social and mental status of the artist. The bireylerin yaptığı sanattır. Toplum dışı sanatın, kübizm veya classification relies more on the artist than the art. Due to such dışavurumculuk gibi belirli kuralları, çizgisi yoktur; sanatçının akli ve characteristics of the term, like wide range of freedom and urge to sosyal statüsü üzerinden sınıflandırılır. Bu nedenle toplum dışı sanat create, social discrimination, creating without the intention of profit, sınıflandırması sanat değil sanatçı üzerindendir. Toplum dışı sanatın people with Autism Spectrum Disorder also considered as Outsiders. ana özellikleri içerisinde önüne geçilemez yaratma isteği, sosyal However, not all people with Autism Spectrum Disorder has the dışlanma, kazanç sağlama hedefi olmadan üretme olduğu skillset to be an artist.
    [Show full text]
  • Outsider Art in Contemporary Museums: the Celebration of Politics Or Artistry?
    L A R A O T A N U K E | T 2 0 1 S 8 I D E R A LET M E SAY THI S ABOUT THAT R T ANARTI STICCEL LETS EBRATIO NORAPO LITICALT RIUMPH TALK OUTSIDER ART IN CONTEMPORARY MUSEUMS: THE CELEBRATION OF POLITICS OR ARTISTRY? Student Name: Lara Tanke Student Number: 455457 Supervisor: B. Boross Master Art, Culture & Society Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication Erasmus University Rotterdam ACS Master Thesis June, 2018 2 ABSTRACT Outsider Art is booming in the legitimate, contemporary art world (Tansella, 2007; Chapin, 2009). Contrary to Insider Art -objects that are created by trained artists on the basis of accepted, pre-existing concepts, frameworks or representations-, Outsider Art is made by untrained artists who create for no-one but themselves by reacting to internal, not external, prerequisites. It is their individual quirkiness and idiosyncrasy that stands out and for that reason, Outsider Art is celebrated because of the authentic autobiography of the maker. As Outsider Art is not based on a goldmine of traditions” (Tansella, 2007, p. 134) such as a predetermined vision and a stylistic framework -as it is the case with Insider Art-, gatekeepers want to make sure that audiences are aware of the difference between the oppositional categories: they deconstruct the aesthetic system by justifying the objects on the basis of the artist’s biography. The art evaluation of audience is affected by the authority that cultural institutions and the cultural elite enjoy when it comes to their legitimizing power to turn objects in to art (Becker, 1982; Bourdieu, 1984).
    [Show full text]
  • Lack of Irony
    1 L a c k o f i r o n y Note: you are reading an excerpt from: James Elkins, “Failure in Twentieth-Century Painting” (unpublished MS) Revised 9.2001 This page was originally posted on: www.jameselkins.com Send all comments to: [email protected] Part Two – 2 – 3: Lack of irony I cannot tell you who told me or in what footnote it sat hidden. This and other disjecta membra, the abused here drawn together with pain for their further dis- memberment, I offer to the presiding judge of our art, self-pleasured Ironia. — Geoffrey Hill1 There are only a few times I have laughed out loud in an art gallery. When I saw Hofbauer’s Poutnik (Pilgrim, 1905) in the Veletriní Palác, Prague, I took in the rounded grassy hillside topped by a prehistoric dolmen, and I noticed the little fire burning in its passageway. I saw the bowed figure in the purple cape walking slowly up toward the dolmen. He looked intent on his druidical mysteries. That would have been enough, but then I focused on what was behind just behind him: a black panther, following along like an overfed housecat. That is when I laughed—it was just too much. Hofbauer (1869-1944) was the same generation as Frantisek Kupka (1871- 1951), and the two of them shared a humorlessness that has vanished from more recent Czech painting: but that fact doesn’t help me see druids (or religion, or painting) as Hofbauer did. I also laughed (though not so loudly) at the Bulgarian painter Boris Georgiev (1888-1962), who painted Eternal Road (1925, National Museum of Art, Sofia), where a semi-nude hero rests, adopting Hippolyte Flandrin’s famous pose, on a clifftop in an exotic arctic panorama that looks like a Fredrick Church composition painted by Puvis de Chavannes.
    [Show full text]
  • Outsider Art Preview: Blurred Categories and Fairs Big and Small by Edward M
    Outsider Art Preview: Blurred Categories and Fairs Big and Small by Edward M. Gómez on May 3, 2014 Mehrdad Rashidi, “Untitled” (circa 2009), ballpoint pen ink on found paper (courtesy of Henry Boxer Gallery, London) Has the outsider art field become a victim of its own success? If so, it is a peculiar “victim,” and its success must be measured by standards that go beyond the money-obsessed art world’s primary criterion for determining aesthetic value — the price tag that any specific work happens to sport at any given time. “This was the year that outsider art came in from the cold,” the New York Times reported last December in a year-end, art-news summary, with late-to-the-party breathlessness. That observation packed a loaded assumption. From exactly which “cold” precincts did outsider art supposedly emerge? As the Times pointed out, offering a rationale for its assertion, outsider 1/11 Outsider Art Preview: Blurred Categories and Fairs Big and Small art had been featured “most prominently in the centerpiece exhibition of the [2013] Venice Biennale.” That big show at the Biennale, which was titled The Encyclopedic Palace, placed outsider art right alongside the products of academically trained artists (among them: Bruce Nauman, Charles Ray, Cindy Sherman and other big-brand-name contemporaries). In fact, for a long time now, the market for the creations of the best self-taught artists has been hot, hot, hot — increasingly visible in the mainstream media, more and more popular among general-interest audiences, and, yes, ever more costly in gallery, art fair and auction sales.
    [Show full text]
  • Sternberg Press / Style Sheet
    STERNBERG PRESS / STYLE SHEET • Titles: First and all significant words in text/essay titles are capitalized • Titles of books, artworks, films, musical albums etc. are italicized • Titles of exhibitions, essays, poems, songs, short stories, etc. appear within double quotation marks (“ ”) • Punctuation: following American standards, punctuation appears within the quotation marks (with the exception of colons or semi-colons, i.e. “free speech”:). Also consistent with American standards, a serial comma is used in a phrase with three or more elements, preceding an “and,” “or,” etc.: “There were lectures, performances, and screenings.” • Quoted material: All quotes appear within double (“ ”) quotation marks. The same is the case with words used by an author in a pejorative (critical/disbelieving/sardonic) way, i.e. I became a “serious” artist. Single quotations appear only when there is a quotation within a quotation. Quotations within block quotations should be contained with double quotation marks. • Foreign words and words that need special emphasis are italicized, although the use of italics for emphasis should be done sparingly. • Artistic/Architectural styles: Names of specific artistic styles are uppercased unless they are used in a context that does not refer to their specific art-historical meaning, however “modernism” is always lowercase. Example 1: “Her piece was characteristically minimalistic.” Example 2: “This sculpture bears all the markings of the Minimalist movement.” • Dates/Years: Consistent with American format: February 6, 2005 / 1960s / 1990 / centuries are spelled out, i.e. the twentieth century, and hyphenated when used as an adjective, i.e. twentieth-century architecture. Abbreviated decades are written with an apostrophe (not single quotation mark) (i.e., ’60s).
    [Show full text]
  • Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations” Episode Guide (1996 - 2010)
    “RARE VISIONS AND ROADSIDE REVELATIONS” EPISODE GUIDE (1996 - 2010) NOTE: Main titles refer to specific DVD collection ”Who Says Kansas is Dull”? (1995) - First episode, only issued on VHS MILES & MILES... #201 (1996) - Warrensburg, MO to Sikeston, MO Stops in Missouri include J.C. Carter's metal sculptures and singing dogs near Warrensburg; the world's second-largest collection of farm implement seats in Iona; Larry Bagget's stonework, including a monument to the Trail of Tears outside Rolla; and Lambert's Restaurant, "home of the throwed rolls," in Sikeston. MILES & MILES... #202 (1996) - Hornersville, MO to Fulton, MO Stops include the gravesite of Major Ray, real-life inspiration for Buster Brown, in Hornersville, MO; the workshop of whirligig artist John North in Alton, IL; the Shrine of the Black Madonna in Eureka, MO; and the Elvis Is Alive Museum off I-70 at Wright City. / Ken and Kate Anderson Collection MILES & MILES... #203 (1996) - Springfield, MO to Conway, AK Stops include a visit with painter Robert E. Smith in Springfield, MO; Ralph Lanning's Roadside Sculpture Park in Republic, MO; Quigley's Castle and a giant Ozark shoe tree outside Eureka Springs, AR; and Tiny Town and the bathhouses of Hot Springs, AR. Michael Brewer, half of the musical duo Brewer and Shipley, sings "I Hate Country" on Highway 76 in Branson, MO. PROWLINʼ THE PRAIRIE #204 (1996) - Catoosa, OK to Erie, KS Sights include a 300-foot fence sculpted from tools and appliances in Collinsville, OK; Ed Galloway's Totem Pole Park near Foyil, OK; Big Brutus, the electric mining shovel in West Mineral, KS; the Dinosaur Not-So-National Park near Erie, KS; and "the Flying Nun House" in Pittsburg, KS.
    [Show full text]
  • Word Play, Outsider Art, and Drawing the Line
    June 2013 Page 1 of 3 Gallery Picks of the Month: Word play, outsider art, and drawing the line "World Play: Simeen Farhat," at Cris Worley Fine Arts June 29-August 3. Photo courtesy of Cris Worley Fine Arts A fresh exploration of outsider art, a three-dimensional artist’s statement in colorful resin, and drawings that line up some top contemporary talent: These are just a few of the reasons to visit our top art gallery picks in the coming month. THOMAS KENNAUGH: Solo Exhibition at Photographs Do Not Bend Opening reception: June 29, 5-8 pm Exhibition dates: June 29-August 3 Generally defined as art created outside the boundaries of official culture, outsider art encompasses works from the naïve, the untrained, the visionary, June 2013 Page 2 of 3 and the mentally or emotionally challenged. Having curated artists of this genre in Columbus, Ohio, Thomas Kennaugh was inspired to create his own compelling collages and sculptures. A buyer and seller of fine art and photography since 1974, Kennaugh draws on his vast archives to make each of his multilayered pieces, which have more than a little in common with the likes of Joseph Cornell and Peter Blake. Now based in Denton, he reveals his latest collages in his first Texan exhibition at PNDB. The “Victorian futurism” explored in the steampunk movement also has an influence on Kennaugh, who cites sources such as Norman Brosterman’s Out of Time: Designs for the Twentieth-Century Future — featuring visions of the flying cities and bubble-topped cars from the 19th and 20th centuries — as an ongoing inspiration.
    [Show full text]
  • The New York Times the Outsider Fair Made Art 'Big' Again
    The Outsider Fair Made Art ‘Big’ Again By ROBERTA SMITH JAN. 19, 2017 ​ One of Morton Bartlett’s half-size anatomically correct prepubescent girls from 1950. Morton Bartlett, Marion Harris New York’s Outsider Art Fair, which opened Thursday, is celebrating its 25th anniversary. It made its debut in 1993 in the 19th-century Puck Building in SoHo’s northeast corner. I saw the first iteration, reviewed the second and wrote about it many times after that. I enjoy most art fairs for their marathon-like density of visual experience and information, but the Outsider fair quickly became my favorite. It helped make art big again. An untitled painting by Henry Darger of his intrepid Vivian Girls. 2017 Henry Darger/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Andrew Edlin Gallery The focus of the fair, according to its founder, Sanford L. Smith, known as Sandy, was the work of outsider artists, a catchall phrase for many kinds of self-taught creators. (Mr. Smith credited the phrase to Roger Cardinal, the art historian and author of “Outsider ​ ​ Art,” published in 1972.) Outsider work connoted a certain purity — an unstoppable need to make art that was unsullied by the “insider” art world, with its fine-art degrees and commercial machinations that always struck me as rather hoity-toity. Distinct from folk artists who usually evolved within familiar conventions, outsider artists often worked without precedent in relative isolation. They could be developmentally disabled, visionary, institutionalized, reclusive or simply retirees whose hobbies developed an unexpected intensity and originality. The term has long been the subject of debate, and its meaning has become elastic and inclusive.
    [Show full text]
  • Toward the Automatic Retrieval and Annotation of Outsider Art Images: a Preliminary Statement
    Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Historical Image Enrichment and Access (AI4HI-2020), pages 16–22 Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2020), Marseille, 11–16 May 2020 c European Language Resources Association (ELRA), licensed under CC-BY-NC Toward the Automatic Retrieval and Annotation of Outsider Art images: A Preliminary Statement John Roberto, Diego Ortegoz, Brian Davis ADAPT Centre, zINSIGHT Centre Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin 9, Ireland fjohn.roberto, [email protected], [email protected] Abstract The aim of this position paper is to establish an initial approach to the automatic classification of digital images about the Outsider Art style of painting. Specifically, we explore whether is it possible to classify non-traditional artistic styles by using the same features that are used for classifying traditional styles? Our research question is motivated by two facts. First, art historians state that non-traditional styles are influenced by factors “outside” of the world of art. Second, some studies have shown that several artistic styles confound certain classification techniques. Following current approaches to style prediction, this paper utilises Deep Learning methods to encode image features. Our preliminary experiments have provided motivation to think that, as is the case with traditional styles, Outsider Art can be computationally modelled with objective means by using training datasets and CNN models. Nevertheless, our results are not conclusive due to the lack of a large available dataset on Outsider Art. Therefore, at the end of the paper, we have mapped future lines of action, which include the compilation of a large dataset of Outsider Art images and the creation of an ontology of Outsider Art.
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of the Framing of the Paradoxical Position of Outsider Art
    Outsider Art, In or Outside the World of Art? A study of the framing of the paradoxical position of outsider art Student Name: Rasmus Van Heddeghem Student Number: 437072 Supervisor: Nataliya Komarova Master Arts, Culture & Society Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication Erasmus University Rotterdam Master Thesis June 2016 Outsider Art, In or Outside the World of Art? A study of the framing of the paradoxical position of outsider art ABSTRACT Outsider art has been receiving increasing attention and appreciation within the art world, as the successful annual Outsider Art Fairs in Paris and New York and, closer to home, the recent opening the Outsider Art Museum in Heritage Amsterdam show and The Museum of Everything exhibition in Kunsthal Rotterdam indicate. Nevertheless, this art form is usually defined as the art made by artists outside the mainstream art world that could be self-taught, psychiatric patients or other persons who don’t form part of the leading art historical discourse. In this study, I research how curators, museum directors, gallery owners and museum visitors deal with this apparent paradox of the contemporary position of outsider art: needing to be “out”’ to be “in”. Can outsider artists who enter the museum walls and the market place still be called outsider? And how and why would certain of the actors of the art field do this? Departing from the sociological and aesthetic paradoxical position and nature of this art, this thesis uses the data obtained in semi-structured interview sessions with the aforementioned art professionals from Belgium and the Netherlands. By considering the different framing strategies they use, I argue that their framing strategies are manifold and often used in contradictory ways by one and the same person according to the outcomes aimed at.
    [Show full text]
  • Outsider Art and Its Paradoxes for Art Educators Jan Jagodzinski the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education; 2005; 25; Arts Module Pg
    In the Realm of the "Real": Outsider Art and its Paradoxes for Art Educators Jan Jagodzinski The Journal of Social Theory in Art Education; 2005; 25; Arts Module pg. 225 jagodzinski 225 In the Realm of the "Real": Outsider Art and its Paradoxes for Art Educators jan jagodzinski In this essay I want to argue that un (becoming) is a word much like Freud's (1919) discussion of the word unheimlich (uncanny), which reveals a secretive and clandestine aspect of art that art educators must and should concern themselves with, since it identifies a "realm of the Real" whose abjection legitimates our very practice at its expense. It marks a return of the repressed. Un (becoming), like Freud's uncanny is visual art's non-reflected double as I attempt to show. This is the issue I wish to raise when it comes to the question of so-called "Outsider art," sometimes referred to as l'art brut (raw art) in the French context singularly because of the influence of Jean Dubuffet, but this is a somewhat misleading representation. Roger Cardinal published a book in 1972 with this title. Cardinal struggled to find the "right" term for such art. Many terms alluded to the creator's social or mental status such as isolate art, maverick art, folk art, visionary art, inspired art, and schizophrenic art; or to the eccentricity or oddness of the artist as being independently taught, hence, self-taught art, autodidact art, untutored art, idiosyncratic art, and original art. Other categorical candidates had been outlaw aesthetics, estranged art, anti-cultural art, unfettered art, the art of the artless, unmediated art, breakaway art, and art without precedent or tradition.
    [Show full text]
  • Outsider Art: from the Margins to the Center?
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2238-38752015v527 article | vera l. zolberg i New School for Social Research, United States 501 [email protected] Vera L. Zolberg i OUTSIDER ART: FROM THE MARGINS TO THE CENTER? INTRODUCTION When I attended the Venice Biennale two years ago, I knew little more than the fact that it took place in a lovely park and that it was bound to be crowded. I had visited Venice a number of times previously, but only once during the sum- mer of a Biennale. Already by this time, its success had inspired a proliferation of similar events in many other major cities aspiring to global prominence. 514, august, 2015 august, 514, – São Paulo was among the first in the immediate post-World War II era. Regu- lar major art events, usually referred to as ‘Biennales’ (even if they meet less frequently – as, for example, Dokumenta in Kassel) have burgeoned. In many ways, these events have joined the worlds’ most prominent art museums in providing the ‘frame’ that legitimizes contemporary art works and the artists responsible for making them. Unlike purely commercial art fairs, which are simply marketplaces for art dealers, the Biennale phenomenon has a more serious aim, intellectually attractive and adventurous, even displaying works that are virtually impossible to collect because their existence is so tenuous. Almost from the outset, the Venice Biennale acquired a reputation as one of the most important venues for the contemporary arts, exhibiting a broad range of forms and genres. Among these, the genre that has become known as ‘outsider art’ is of particular interest because of its divergence from sociologia&antropologia | rio de janeiro, v.05.02: 501 sociologia&antropologia | rio de janeiro, outsider art: from the margins to the center? 502 conventional patterns of art works.
    [Show full text]