Friday 27 January 2017

Do Outsider Artists Really Exist?

MICHAIL PAULE, untitled, 1930-37, 35 x 26,5cm, Courtesy Delmes & Zander

Do Outsider Artists Really Exist?

Anthony Haden-Guest about Outsider Art
on artnet news at January 22, 2016

"Days before the Outsider Art Fair opened in New York, artist Joe Coleman was on a panel at NeueHouse, a venue on East 25th which describes itself alarmingly as a “machine for creating.” The supposed theme was Killing Time: The Chronology of Creativity, which sounded enticing, but Coleman, black-bearded and glittery-waist-coated, was in tip-top form, so the discussion—like the screen behind the panelists and the questions from the audience in front of them—focused soon enough on Outsider art.

This is a classification which Coleman went on to denounce as condescending. “I love Henry Darger and Adolf Wofli,” he told the audience. “They are great artists. They aren’t Outsider artists. There’s only good art and bad art.”

Nobody took him up on this. I admire Joe Coleman’s work enormously so I’ll engage with the thorny topic here and now.

There’s a famous story that illuminates the relationship between the Modernists and Outsider artists and it comes from the very beginnings of Modernism. Picasso reportedly bought a canvas by Henri Rousseau in a Paris flea market possibly as early as 1900. In 1908 he threw a banquet for Rousseau which has been described in sometimes hilarious detail. The coats were flung into Juan Gris’s studio, Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas were around, there was prodigious drinking; apparently Marie Laurencin got so naughty that Guillaume Apollinaire had to send her home.

It’s clear that Picasso and the young Modernists thought the retired toll-taker was somewhat a holy fool, and, yes, they were condescending, but it’s also clear that they hugely admired his work for its authenticity, its visual inventiveness. And that, as with the African masks they were also looking at, had raw energy, just the energy they needed for their project of dynamiting the salon. (The Picasso banquet was a huge boost to Rousseau’s career as well.)

Outsider art still has that special energy. You could see it, an unmistakeable difference, in the images onscreen at the NeueHouse. Artists like Darger, Wofli and yes, Coleman are different from mainstreamers, but not just because they are schizophrenics (as was Wofli) or have bizarre drives (as most certainly did Darger). Outsider artists are not ‘outside’ just in the sense of being untaught, or disadvantaged, but because they and their work operate outside the Great Game of the art world. And, most important, unlike almost all professional artists, who turn out a fair amount of product—yes, I do include you, Picasso—they mean every thing they do, every single piece they make.

Which is precisely why Outsider art is a focus of such interest right now, a time when a whole new cast of slick derivative tricksters is dominating the artscape. Yes, folks, there’s a whole new Salon out there. That is why prices of the great Outsiders are skyrocketing, and it is why Coleman is perfectly correct in his belief that they belong with the other greats. And they will, in time, join them. Which is also, by the way, why we are seeing a surge of faux, unfelt Outsiderism into the marketplace. But that is an old, old, always depressing story. (...)

Read more on artnet
news.artnet.com

Known/Unknown at MUSEUM OF SEX, NY





exhibition views "Known/Unknown" at Museum of Sex, New York, 2017 photocredits Lissa Rivera

"KNOWN/UNKNOWN"
Private Obsession and Hidden Desire in Outsider Art
at the Museum of Sex New York

January 19, 2017 – September 16, 2017

featuring works by
Morton Bartlett, Eugene von Bruenchenhein, Henry Darger, Thornton Dial, Aurie Ramirez, Miroslav Tichý, Edwin Lawson, Johann Korec, Johann Garber, Royal Robertson and many more

read more here:
www.museumofsex.com
 

Friday 20 January 2017

JESUIS CRYSTIANO at Warhus Ritterhaus, Cologne

JESUIS CRYSTIANO, untitled, pencil on paper, 2012, Courtesy Delmes & Zander

We highly recommend the exhibition "Untitled #3"
at Warhus Rittershaus featuring Bill Adams, Claus Böhmler, Jesuis Crystiano and Joe Neave

Untitled #3
January 21 – March 4, 2017
Opening Friday, January 20, 2017, 6-9pm
Warhus Rittershaus, Cologne

"As of today, no one has ever claimed that the death of drawing was here. The drawing has long enjoyed an excellent reputation. In the opinion of some, it was not born as a hardliner of art history, but certainly since the times of Leonardo da Vinci, if not before, it has been highly esteemed and may do almost anything it pleases. Imagine, if you will, a revival of the disegno colore debate: today, drawing would be the clear winner of such a contest, more than ever. Drawing is highly popular. It fulfills needs because it is direct, genuine and 'true'. Drawing is the most liberal and free of all genres, even if it has only been considered as a seperate entity in the theory of art since the modern age.

In the Renaissance it was considered the origin, the source, the mother and the father of painting, sculpture and architecture. Not for nothing were these three titans of artistic genres called the "arti del disegno" ("the arts of drawing"). Right up until the advent of the modern period, the drawing served as the base of the 'actual' work of art, and hovered in the atmosphere of the practical result as it's "transcendental principle" [Friedrich Teja Bach, Wolfram Pichler (eds.), Öffnungen. Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Zeichnung, Munich 2009, p.16.]. It was only in the modern age that the drawing became established as an unconditional and self-sufficient purpose in itself. Drawing therefore was and is always present, it is exempt from the progress of time and not subject to fashions. It is always justified, does not have to assert itself and does not constantly reinvent itself. It's initial rawness makes it even more seductive, in line with sentimental desires. Only paper and pen are necesseary to the genius, the talented hand can show it's virtuosity in a streak on the white. It is in this romaticised form in which drawing is usually consumed by the viewer: as the genius, magical trace through which we feel close to the draftsman, as if he had just 'finished'.

However, the real achievement of drawing is the mark of the figure of thought as the actualized idea! With infantile ease, drawing can formulate any kind of criticism, theory, humor, hypocrisy, and absurdity so clearly, all without necessarily making a commitment or even actually submitting to form. With radical frankness, drawing speaks a direct language, which constructs nonchalantly invented, reinterpreted, and paraphrased worlds. The drawing communicates virtually without any restraint, as if the drawn interpretation of what is seen and / or imagined were completely self-evident. It is therefore hardly surprising that drawing has always played such a fundamental role in times of artistic departure, such as can be seen in the examples of Paul Klee, Lee Lozano or Robert Crumb. Or to express it in the words of Vincent Van Gogh: "What does drawing mean? How does one start? It is nothing more than to pave the way through an invisible steel wall." [Antonin Artaud, quoted from a letter from Vincent Van Gogh in: Antonin Artaud, Śuvres complčtes, Vol. 30, p. 40, quoted from: Jaques Derrida, Aufzeichnungen eines Blinden, Munich 2008, p. 49 (Notes)]
With this in mind, we are looking forward to the latest results of perforated steel walls by Bill Adams, Claus Böhmler, Jesuis Crystiano and Joe Neave.(...)"

Text Inci Yilmaz
www.warhusrittershaus.com

Thursday 19 January 2017

TODAY Book Launch "Revolt of Savage" BlainISouthern, London

HORST ADEMEIT, untitled, 15.11.1995, inscribed polaroid, Copyright Delmes & Zander

Book launch of the exhibition catalogue "Revolt of the Sage"
Edited by Simon Moretti and Craig Burnett
at Blain|Southern London

Thursday 19 January 2017
6.30-8.30pm, Readings from 7pm

REVOLT OF THE SAGE
Edited by Simon Moretti and Craig Burnett, the publication of Revolt of the Sage acts as an extension of the exhibition, featuring a compendium of texts and artworks that serve to expand the show’s themes of time, ruptures in history, and Giorgio de Chirico’s ‘Metaphysical aesthetics’.

Reproductions of pictures by historical artists Alfred Böcklin and Nicolas Poussin complement the artists in Revolt of the Sage, with images of work both from the show and exclusively in the book, extending the exhibition into the space of the publication. Poems and texts by Guillaume Apollinaire, John Ashbery, William Blake, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Giorgio de Chirico, Lydia Davis, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, A.W. Moore, Carol Rumens, Wallace Stevens and Alfred, Lord Tennyson contribute to the conversation about, in de Chirico’s words, ‘the great curve of eternity’.

The book also features a newly commissioned text on de Chirico’s painting The Revolt of the Sage (1916) by art historian Ara H. Merjian, as well as a lively, wide-ranging dialogue between Merjian and philosopher Jesse Prinz on de Chirico’s relevance to contemporary artists.
 
 

Wednesday 18 January 2017

Delmes & Zander at INDEPENDENT, Brussels 2017

WESLEY WILLIS, UNION PACIFIC RAIL ACTION, mixed media on paper, 1985, Courtesy Delmes & Zander

We are delighted to participate at the second edition of
INDEPENDENT BRUSSELS during April 19-23, 2017!

Check out the full list of participants:

1857, Oslo
Galerie 1900 – 2000, Paris*
A Palazzo Gallery, Brescia*
Air de Paris, Paris
Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm
Annex 14, Zurich*
The Approach, London
Michael Benevento, Los Angeles
Galerie Sébastien Bertrand, Geneva*
Brennan & Griffin, New York
CANADA, New York
Capitain Petzel, Berlin*
Carlier Gebauer, Berlin
Galería Marta Cervera, Madrid*
C L E A R I N G, New York/Brussels
Ellen de Bruijne, Projects Amsterdam
Erika Deák Gallery, Budapest*
Elizabeth Dee, New York
Delmes & Zander, Berlin
Dürst Britt & Mayhew, The Hague
EXILE, Berlin*
Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris
gb agency, Paris
Gladstone Gallery, New York/Brussels
Green Art Gallery, Dubai
Nina Johnson, Miami*
Jan Kaps, Cologne*
Wilfried Lentz, Rotterdam
Levy.Delval, Brussels*
Ludion, Antwerp
MAGNIN-A, Paris
Mary Mary, Glasgow
Martos Gallery, New York
Galerie Maubert, Paris*
Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo/Brussels*
Meyohas, New York*
Jan Mot, Brussels
Mulier Mulier Gallery, Knokk-Heist
Múrias Centeno, Porto / Lisbon
Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt
Off Vendome, New York
Office Baroque, Brussels
Galerie Pact, Paris*
Maureen Paley, London
Galería Parra & Romero, Madrid/Ibiza*
Peres Projects, Berlin
Tatjana Pieters, Ghent*
Praz-Delavallade, Paris/Los Angeles
Projecte SD, Barcelona*
Aurel Scheibler, Berlin
Tommy Simoens, Antwerp
Sprüth Magers, Berlin/London/Los Angeles*
Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich
Stems Gallery, Brussels
Sultana, Paris*
Super Dakota, Brussels*
Temnikova & Kasela Gallery, Tallinn*
Travesía Cuatro, Madrid / Guadalajara
Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp*
trampoline, Antwerp*
Truth and Consequences, Geneva
UntilThen, Paris*
White Columns, New York
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris
David Zwirner, New York / London

Independent
VANDERBORGHT BUILDING
Schildknaapstraat
50 Rue de l’Ecuyer,
1000 Brussels

www.independenthq.com

Tuesday 17 January 2017

ONE/OTHER Self-Portraits and Portraits /// Stadtzauber

Stadtzauber, Jan I Februar 2017, p.60.

STADTZAUBER about our current exhibition ONE/ OTHER Self-portraits and Portraits
on view till February 4th, 2017

Thanks to the positive resonance of ONE/ other presented earlier this year at the Independent New York and OTHER/ one featured at the Independent in Brussels,

Delmes & Zander are merging the two exhibition concepts into one show featuring a selection of portraits and self-portraits simultaneously in both their Berlin and Cologne galleries. ONE / OTHER will show how the portrait as well as the self-portrait unabashedly mirrors the artist behind the work no matter if he portrays himself or whether he is portraying the other. Independently of their subject, the photographs and drawings reveal everything about their authors and their yearnings for a romanticised identity, no matter on which side of the camera or canvas. Evident in the works is a serialized, obsessive impulse to repeatedly pin down an image or identity that is manifestly idealized.

www.stadtzauber.de 


MIROSLAV TICHY /// Known/Unknown on FORBES

MIROSLAV TICHY, untitled, undated, 18 x 12,5cm, Courtesy Delmes & Zander

/// The exhibition "Known/Unknown" recommended on FORBES ///

"The Five Most Anticipated New York Art Museum Exhibits of Winter 2017" by Adam Lehrer 

"When the subject of human sexuality is explored by visual artists, a certain contradiction always lies beneath the surface of the work. Artists generally create work to eventually show an audience. Because of that, a conceptual conceit will always muddle the portrayal of sex in the work. Either the work will be deliberately provocative as in the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, or it will be examining the gaze or media portrayals of sex itself, as in the work of Marilyn Minter. For this upcoming Museum of Sex show, curator Frank Maresca sought to show art that directly reflected the inner sexual worlds of its creators. To avoid the conceptual dilemma, he chose to select work solely by outsider artists. The artwork in the exhibition is all reflective of its respective creators' inner-most sexual desires and fantasies and was made without the hope that it would be shown to a public. By removing the element of exhibitionism, the show offers a deeply private look into artists' sexualities. The work in the show ranges from what society would deem "normal" sexuality such as Eugene Von Bruenchenheim loving nude portraits of his wife, to the voyeuristic and lurid. Numerous photographs by the Czech artist Miroslav Tichý, for example, are grainy and deconstructed images taken of women by the artist with his own homemade cameras. Like great Hitchcock cinema, Tichý's photographs implicate himself and the viewer in the sexual act of watching. And then, there is the illustrations of Henry Darger. Darger was a custodian in a Chicago hospital in the 20th Century, and when he passed coroners found a 15,000 page book entitled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion along with hundreds of illustrations. Some of those illustrations depict acts of sexual violence and depravity against children, often thought to be influenced by the abuse Darger suffered as a child. All of the sex in the exhibition is depicted without judgment, placing the viewer in the position of intuitively understanding their own feelings towards the different manifestations of sexual desire. (...)"

"Known/Unknown"
at the Museum of Sex, NY
January 19, 2017 – September 16, 2017

Miroslav Tichy in "Known/Unkown" at MUSEUM OF SEX, NY

MIROSLAV TICHY, Untitled, mixed media on photograph, 17.5 x 10cm, Courtesy Delmes & Zander

MIROSLAV TICHY in "Known/Unknown"
at the Museum of Sex, NY
January 19, 2017 – September 16, 2017

Known/Unknown
"Private Obsession and Hidden Desire in Outsider Art showcases over 100 rarely seen works by self-taught artistic masters – so called ‘outsider artists’ – who have worked outside the continuum of art history. The exhibition features photographs, sculptures and paintings which provide provocative and sometimes disturbing insight into the psychological terrain of their creators. Featured artists include: Robert Anderson, Steve Ashby, Morton Bartlett, Gil Batle, Eugene von Bruenchenhein, Henry Darger, Thornton Dial, Aurie Ramirez, Marilena Pelosi, Miroslav Tichý, Edwin Lawson, Johann Korec, Johann Garber and Royal Robertson.

The art in Known/Unknown is a long way from the typical art world. Many of the artists in the exhibit are self-taught, with little formal education, and range from institutionalized mental patients, to intellectually disabled people, to untutored isolates and eccentrics. Their pieces were often created in seemingly unlikely places; ranging from the sanctuary of psychiatric hospitals to private realms hidden within the lonely, impersonal jungles of teeming cities.

Overall, the work is fueled by secrecy and isolation, resulting in imagery that is far from ordinary experiences of sexuality. And since information about the makers and their objects is often fragmentary with many bodies of work discovered after the death of the artist, in many cases there is no way to know if the makers intended the work for public display. Visitors are left to determine for themselves whether they are actually encroaching on the remnants of these unconventional artists’ most private thoughts."

Exhibition highlights include: 
"Erotic sculptural figures by Steve Ashby, who did not begin his life as an artist until after the death of his wife in 1960. Pieces on view include Rocking Bed Cunnilingus Whirligig and Masturbating Man with Hand Under a Woman’s Blouse, both of which give animated reign to Ashby’s sexual fantasies, as well as Woman and Dog, a sculpture of a woman in a compromising position with a dog, which exemplifies the more tongue-in-cheek elements to the sexual acts in Ashby’s work.

A collection of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s erotic photographs of his wife Marie. The black and white prints are stylistically reminiscent of the1940s pin-up and convey a loving playfulness between the photographer and his subject that is both titillating and profound.

Grainy photographs taken of unsuspecting women by recluse Miroslav Tichý, considered the master of the stolen image in his hometown of Kyjov (Czech Republic). The technical imperfections of the prints are a result of Tichý’s crude construction of his own homemade cameras out of shoeboxes and toilet paper rolls.

Also on display is Henry Darger’s watercolor At Sunbeam Creak/At Wickey Lansinia, which is abound with images of little girls, at times subjected to horrible tortures at the hands of male adult oppressors—a theme that is possibly related to the artist’s own childhood traumas growing up in an orphanage, and later an asylum. The piece was among 15,000 pages of text and hundreds of drawings and watercolors discovered by Darger’s landlord shortly before the artist’s death. (...)"

For detailed information visit website of Museum of Sex
www.museumofsex.com 

MUSEUM OF SEX
233 Fifth Avenue New York,
NY 10016

Monday 16 January 2017

Why the market for Outsider Art is booming in New York

SAVA SECULIC, das Haus, undated, 36 x 41cm, Courtesy Delmes & Zander

Why the market for Outsider Art is booming in New York
 
Susan Moore about the Outsider Art market on Apollo Magazine.com 15th January, 2017

In an era of what might be dubbed Outsider Politics, it seems hardly surprising that Outsider Art is attracting a growing audience. It is 70 years since Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut, and 45 years since Roger Cardinal’s Outsider Art provided its English synonym. For Dubuffet, Art Brut was work ‘produced by persons unscathed by artistic culture, where mimicry plays no part (contrary to the activities of intellectuals). These artists derive everything […] from their own depths, and not from the conventions of classical or fashionable art.’ While Dubuffet’s focus was on the marginalised and mentally ill, the parameters of what constitutes Outsider Art have continued to expand to embrace the work of any self-taught artist operating outside the mainstream. It is the apparent cynicism or lack of integrity – not to mention the cost – of so much of that mainstream that has fuelled interest in this parallel alternative tradition. As the New York gallerist James Fuentes recently told Bloomberg – appropriately enough in the vernacular – Outsider Art is ‘a f***ing breath of fresh air.’

This month sees the 25th anniversary edition of the Outsider Art Fair in New York (Metropolitan Pavilion, 19–22 January), and Christie’s New York staging its second dedicated auction, Courageous Spirits: Outsider and Vernacular Art (20 January), alongside the season’s sales of Americana and folk art. Even the city’s MoSex – the Museum of Sex – is tapping into the Zeitgeist with ‘Known/Unknown: Private Obsession and Hidden Desire in Outsider Art’ (19 January–16 September).

One of the earliest and most influential artists associated with Art Brut was the uneducated and psychotic Adolf Wölfli, who began to draw obsessively after his incarceration in the Waldau Clinic in Bern in 1895. His methods were carefully observed and documented by the psychiatrist Dr Walter Morgenthaler who published the seminal Ein Geisteskranker als Kunstler (A Psychiatric Patient as Artist) in 1921. Wolfli’s output of pencil and coloured pencil drawings was vast, and his typically densely worked and complex Bangali Firework Bänggaalisches Feuerwärk of 1926 ($155,000) is one of the highlights of this year’s OAF. The work is shown by Andrew Edlin, the dealer who acquired the event in 2012 and has overseen the tripling of its audience – as well as the foundation of a Paris edition in 2013. (...)

Read more here: 
www.apollo-magazine.com

Saturday 14 January 2017

Outsider Art Panel at The New Museum, NY

MORTON BARTLETT, untitled, 1950s, Gelatin Silver Print, Courtesy Delmes & Zander

From Obscurity to Prominence: The Discovery and Stewardship of Outsider Art

Wednesday, January 18th 6:30pm
The New Museum 235 Bowery

Managing an artist’s career or estate requires extreme sensitivity and astute business skills. Often, outsider artists present dealers and scholars with a somewhat unique quandary of management and interpretation, as the artists are frequently either dead when their work is discovered, or are perceived as having a limited ability to talk about the meaning of their art and make decisions about the trajectory of their careers. This panel discussion will bring together four professionals who have been tasked with navigating this difficult terrain, to talk about the ways in which they have helped shape our understanding of the work of artists who were unable to shape it themselves. Together, they will discuss both the rewards and potential pitfalls of this task of stewardship, and how their lives have been shaped by the work of these remarkable artists.

This event is presented to the public for free through special arrangement with the Outsider Art Fair. Tickets will be available on a first come first serve basis starting at 6pm the day of the event.

Panelists include Karen Patterson, curator of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, who will talk about her relationship to the work of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein; gallerist Marion Harris, who will talk about finding and promoting the work of Morton Bartlett; and Tom di Maria, director of the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, CA, who will discuss the life and work of Judith Scott.

For more information click here

www.newmuseum.org
www.outsiderartfair.com