practical notes: sketchbook

This sketchbook has been the first point at which I have found myself being able to immersively engage with the project and get into the 'flow' of it as it was. I gave myself the challenge or rather 'brief' of working expressively, and worked fast and loose, each image taking a minute or less to complete. I'm finding that this is my preferred way of working. In working like this, does this cyclically become 'selfish making' again?

Although there was an element of trying very purposefully to draw what I hadn't drawn before, as I would 'discover' new visual elements they would become a new repetitive visual language. But still, there is a level of process and change as these morph and merge into one another.

Here are a few examples, the rest of these drawings are documented on this archive, and will be presented physically for submission: [link here]

due to loading of computer sometimes not all of the posts show up in a tagged search 

COP3 practical crit day

Today gave me some time to re-evaluate the progress of the project.

• I wasn't kidding myself that there was enough work/ blogging, so that wasn't a surprise. IT NEEDS DOING!
• I started to evaluate the project- the body of work and the visual relevance to my own personal practice is there, but I wonder if it is illustration-y / APPLIED enough
• I wouldn't sacrifice something that I believe in/ feel that it synthesises with my project well for the sake of a few marks, but if it's going to be a big issue I'd like to find out now.
• I want to make some big things. I'm looking into cutting some wood up
• From the body of visual research and investigation I could make THREE or so more planned/ well-crafted images based on my ****artistic journey****
• if the work was going to be exhibited, I would be keen on exhibiting EVERYTHING as it's very much a project about the whole body of work. 

Regardless

• if it is going to be an exhibition it will need an accompanying leaflet/ paraphernalia, and I think that could have a more illustrative (applied) approach
• I'd like to have something to explain to people, in a casual way, how working privately and selfishly can (benefit) (be a con) to them as well as my own practice. To share information as this is very much an IDEAS/ THEORY BASED PROJECT
• This could be handled in an illustrative way- a booklet designed, with mini-mini comics / a character guide and some notes I have taken about this project? It would be LO-FI, and accessible. Informal monologue etc

• This would result in something that is educational, and ultimately something that encourages dialogue and conversation about personal practice which is something I have been keen on discussing with people/ online anyway (as seen on PPP)

presentation boards for crit

CHOMO research: transcript of letter for reference

Letter from Laurent Danchin to SPACES/ Seymour Rosen, 9/12/1989

accessed: 24/11/16

http://spacesarchives.org/uploads/2014/09/17/fr1283chomo002.pdf

Hopefully I've been able to transcribe this well, but I struggled with the handwriting.

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12 September 1989

Dear Seymour,

A quick answer to your long letter from September 7. Everything is fine, and almost perfect (except very small corrections listed below) but... there is a but...

You can't, my dear Seymour, expect me to approve a Spaces newsletter dedicated to french folk art environments which, for some reason (?), omits to mention Chomo's Village d'Art Preludien in Archeries-la-Foret: a major site (much more important than ????Vamen's???Vameur's??? Chateaus for instance) which most probably will be bulldozed immediately after Chomo's death if national and international interest is not focused on it very soon.

In one of my earlier letters I had, more enough, given you all the information about the site, the address, the names of the buildings, a.s.c. omitting this place would be as strange, ridiculous, as omitting Cheval or Picassette(?). So I hope it is still time to write at least a small on it.

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There is more but I can't read it and it seems less Chomo-specific. This is an interesting piece of positive reception for him.


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More biographical info here: http://spacesarchives.org/explore/collection/environment/roger-chomeaux-chomo/

and here http://chomo.fr/#nogo

(interesting ways of describing him... very positive (obviously)

Laurent Danchin tribute to Chomo https://sites.google.com/site/oeetexts/laurent-danchin-introduction-to-the-chomo-exposition

He obviously loves his work, but is also keen to exhibit it. Take it from the context Chomo wanted it in.

It's been quite hard to find info because a lot of it is in french :-(

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emails

For this essay I plan to write to people, namely curators and dealers, in regards to their opinions on the potential pitfalls of exhibiting outsider art. I emailed Jarvis Cocker asking for a brief chat, though haven't heard back yet! I also have the idea to contact the people at the Gallery of Everything and maybe the Wellcome Collection, especially after visiting these exhibitions as I can draw up specific points from my visits.

I don't want to come across as aggressively saying that Outsider Art is handled incorrectly- far from it, as I don't wholly believe that! And it would be plain rude... but things to bring up would be along the lines of

• what are your intentions of exhibiting outsider art?
• there is an idea that discussion of artist identity overwhelms the conversations around outsider art- what are your feelings on this? did you specifically curate the exhibition with this in mind?
• i.e. with Gallery of Everything- I noticed that description of the artists were minimal, were you wanting to let the art speak for itself?

tutorial 4: 24/11/16

NOTES:

• A lot can be done to the grammar of the essay- the structuring of awfully long sentences, introducing semi-colons, getting rid of empty phrases, making sentences less awkward! 
• More context in the introduction of chapter two, give enough context so anyone can understand. Give more context to the Salon Des Refuses and it's relevance and transition to the contemporary art market.
• Work on triangulation!!!!!! Link ideas together, smooth it out
• There is potential for Finster to be the biggest case study- with information not just from him or his interviewers but his dealers and even say, REM discussing why they chose him- even if they're not academic it is still the opinion of those who bought into him.
• More voices of dealers and curators in general: need the pros and cons of O.A. to establish my own strong opinion. And evidence of the negativity towards Finster
• Are there any more reviews of Chomo?
• Discuss how Chomo forged his own identity and personality BY being reclusive. Reminiscent of Banksy (haha). Was Chomo interested in creating a BRAND, even if he didn't realise this?
• Small intro to case studies would be nice
• Write about the practical study in the methodology
• Reference things nicely :-)

PRACTICAL RESPONSE THOUGHTS:

I have written in a notebook my feelings about the project and need to blog that BUT....

• abandoning the social media aspect of the project isn't that bad as it's something that is justified and found through trial, error and personal research
• key words: PRIVATE PRACTICE
• question how private anyone can be (especially when already established as an artist online and in the real world)
• I'm never and not trying to be an outsider artist, but to investigate the ideas of the authentic in isolation and repetition. Like a really low-key Chomo.  
• how I would do the project if I wanted to get my teeth really into ideas of the authentic- how actual isolation from other visual work and projects must go. Chomo it etc

The Gallery of Everything- Journeys Into The Outside

On a trip to London I visited the Gallery of Everything's Outsider Art show: Journeys Into the Outside. I have already written about it in my essay, so I will take what I wrote there into here rather than writing a new review for the sake of it!

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The Gallery of Everything describes itself as exhibiting “non-academic artists and private art makers”[1] and from September to November 2016 held an exhibition titled ‘Journeys Into The Outside’. The temporary exhibition was based on Martin Wallace and Jarvis Cocker’s 1998 documentary series of the same name, displaying work of Outsider Artists featured in the series, including Howard Finster, Nek Chand Saini and Karl Junker.

On a visit there it was noted how the pieces were displayed in the environment. The pieces were separated into groups dependent on the artist, with a small description of the artist and their intention from a small gallery flyer. There did not seem to be an unnecessary fixation on their identities as Fine et al were concerned about. The screening of the accompanying series did give the opportunity to learn more about the artists’ biographies, but largely kept this brief.

There were some concerns however. To see Chomo’s sculptures in the context of the gallery setting was jarring with the knowledge that they had once inhabited his forest home (see: fig.1) that had been his very sanctuary from the art environment. To view these pieces without such context as many viewers do would, with assumption, not solicit the same response.

SOME (vague) NOTES!

HOW TO LOOK AT OUTSIDER ART by Lyle Rexer

• p.16 art exhibited with outsider art on the assumption that it is naive/ independent but actually has an extensive cultural history (i.e. Haitian art)
• p.18-19 secularism of art, SALON DES REFUSES 1863, 'SELF-CONSCIOUS BREAKS FROM TRADITION' 'new art become synonymous with opposition to the status quo'
• p.39 comparison to viewing outsider art as VOYEURISM, romantic nostalgia
• p.41 THE BEST WORKS OF OUTSIDER ART AND SELF-TAUGHT ART MAKE THE SAME CLAIMS AS ANY GREAT ART, THAT IS, THEY JOIN FAMILIAR AND UNFAMILIAR REALMS OF EXPERIENCE IN SYMBOLIC FORMS
• p.42 Outsider Art physically becoming a rebellion in the gallery space, how they don't lose their meanings regardless of environment
• p.45 civilisation of daily life and how this fed the allure for 'mysterious' outsider art
• p.47 modern artists self-consciously flout norms but O.A. it is a "principle force" (he describes as DEMONIC??)
• p.48 "the idea of art as kin to madness has been with us for millenia"
• p.49 people collecting O.A. as "their interest was primarily medical and diagnostic, not aesthetic"
• P.51 CAN IT BE LABELLED ART IF IT IS NOT CREATED WITH ANY ARTISTIC INTENTION? not to say that all O.A. are unaware... but sometimes it is a mode of making sense, organising a world (for artists with severe mental disorders etc) art as "private communion" p.52
• p.69 "only modern art has explicitly assumed the tragic burden of self-consciousness... earlier art and most sacred art sees the world as more static"

• REPETITION AND OBSSESSION:
• p.99 discussing the idea that these artists are obsessed, but are they any more so than other insider artists? "Obsession is the occupational hazard of all artists... (p.100) nevertheless, the obsessions of an outsider artist are of a different order"
• p.100 "the entire career were completed within an unbreakable circle. Art making seems as much a trap as a liberation"
• p.101 "obsession also shows itself in elaborate details"
• OUTSIDE IN: THE END OF OUTSIDER ART
• p154 at the end of the day, are we not all contemporaries? "certain social, economic, and art-world trends have contributed to erasing at least the practical distinctions between insiders and outsiders, and even made the notion of self-tutored art nearly irrelevant"
• since the 1950s artists have been keen to break out, and have done this each time by being inspired by the other p.155
• p.159 "both contemporary and outsider art have significant nonvisual components that force us to think and imagine beyond what we see. The crucial difference may be that the explanations offered by outsiders can be understood only within the context of their systems and dovetail at tantalising moments with a wider, commonly shared frame of reference".
• p.159 "These artists presage a new time of orphaned, unplaceable art, a time when the intimidating, hermetic privacy of outsider art and the deviations of auto didacts take their place among the fragmentary, self-sanctioning productions of artists everywhere. Call it pluralism or the end of art history as we know it, the paths from the outside in are many"

THE MYTH OF PRIMITIVISM (PERSPECTIVES ON ART) by Susan Hiller

• "cultural colonialism" -> but I think this is more about actual colonialism, though this ties in with O.A. as discussed by Reynolds-White Hawk
• OUTSIDERS OR INSIDERS BY DAVID MCLAGAN
• its intentionality is either perverse or non-conformist, or else is effectively absent P.32
• P.33 "they are treated as endogenous primitives'
• p.33 "once these images have been discovered and promoted, they re-enter the cultural domain; and once this publicity barrier is breached, the feedback between outsider art and the culture at large becomes too complex for the original notion of the 'outsider' to be workable"
• p.33 "the standard definition of outsider art depends upon a notion of utter originality... the pursuit of 'original' has for a long time been a distinctive feature of european culture... but not every work that appears  'original' in the context of european fine art conventions is ipso facto 'individual'...
• p.33 "it is one of the paradoxes of outsider art that it is defined from the outside: it is people from within the art world, however avant-garde, who collect and classify it as such"
• p.33 "a great deal of outsider art appears to be created in a kind of indifference to or detachment from such factors as commercial reward"
• p.46 "modernism tried to wrench outsider art loose from any context... in terms of which it would have been possible to situate it, and declared it 'free', so that it could be used, like 'primitive art', for its own currency"

ART BRUT (THE ORIGINS OF OUTSIDER ART) by Lucienne Peiry

• p.11 account of DuBuffet's journey to Art Brut
• p.12 "the artist is unaware that he operates in the domain of artistic creation: his work is developed outside any institutionalised art framework"
• p.14 DER BLEUE REITER ALMANAC: displaying insider, outsider, naive, folk and children's art together "all of these works of art were placed on the same level, not within any qualitative hierarchy. By elevating marginal creations... they were introducing a radically new value in the culture"
• P.15-16 "sketched out in the nineteenth century, this theory contained the underlying idea that these groups possessed similar perceptions and minds"... the idea that the collection of these people suggested an evolution. Klee DISAGREED "Klee was opposed to this evolutionary concept, as well as pedagogical studies concerning children's art work, and he inverted critical assessments that the specialists assigned to the differing phases of children's expression from the initial "negative" to the "positive" "    (Klee did not see the 'bad' as 'bad' but devoid of influence, corruption and at its most "richest and inventive")
• p.75 described DuBuffet's "uneasiness" of the selling of art brut as similar to his own unease of selling his own paintings- that it is too personal
• p.81: IDENTITY an exhibition at Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris  did not reveal names as it was confidential, but still stated the patient's diagnoses "openly revealed and presented as part of the work"
• p.82 at the foyer d l'arte brut "[DuBuffet] respected the ethic of medical confidentiality... the artists were designated by simple abbreviation... treated [the artist] as an autonomous individual, and presented as the author of the artistic creation" 
• p.85 Der Blaue Reiter Almanac progressed to Almanach de L'Art Brut -> which showcased marginal art only 

OTHER NOTES:

• can I make a case for Outsider Art being more withstanding than Insider? i.e. Rexer 'O.A. embarrasses the gallery' etc.... O.A. display as rebellion to the status quo, as innovation to the galleries. as POWER )????)
• OUTSIDER ART IS EQUAL TO INSIDER AND EVERYONE: DER BLEUE REITER AND PAUL KLEE
• INTRODUCTION POINT: why do [we] like Outsider Art???
• IS O.A. ART IF IT IS NOT CREATED WITH INTENTION?
• ARE WE CHAMPIONING OR EXPLOITING OUTSIDER ARTISTS? -> jean dubuffet's obsession with the working class
• Different ways of exhibiting can affect perception, different ways of portraying identity

Reflect on how The Gallery of Everything describes itself as showcasing "non-academic" and "private" art makers

abandoning the social media aspect of practical research

Upon reflection I had decided to abandon the social media/ project persona aspect of the project.

(To note, the social media had not really been discussed asides from hypothetically so far. The account was @winters222, a vague name and number chosen as something bland, and non-telling of any identity)

• This could have been more interesting/ fruitful with more time to build up an audience of which their reactions could actually be judged. Without a large group, it is as much of 'yelling into the void' as it would be practicing alone.
• Although I was only posting to a minute audience I felt a strange amount of pressure to conform to what they would like, and seek their approval, essentially nullifying the private practice. It is a strange phenomenon for sure, and one I should be able to ignore, but given that the social media aspect was not providing much in terms of the research, it was not worth its hinderance on my creative processes either. 
• The *persona* (a new identity, but not anything beyond a name) in being so anonymous and bland was meant to be another tool in supporting a new/private practice, but in the same way of the account in its entirety was a hinderance. 

COP3: essay writing reflection

I had been struggling to write recently but I've been having some second thoughts about some of the arguments in my essay and maybe it is almost a blessing in disguise that I hadn't written more about the contexts and themes without thinking about these points:

• WHY IS SHOWCASING OUTSIDER ART GOOD???????

I've been a bit doom and gloom about the gallery impact of Outsider Art in my essay. There is no doubt that it is problematic but, in a very basic sense:

• it is offering an outlet to artists who may not otherwise make it in such a restrictive and elitist system
• it is offering an outlet to new art that does not follow trends/ works towards the market (this gets into fetishising authenticity but all in all, personally, I feel the authentic is truly quite a great thing)

I've been ignoring why I was drawn to Outsider Art in the first place

• Do I too, fetishise the authentic or is it genuinely a 'better' artistic characteristic?

I'm still behind at this point in my writing but I think if I can do a small amount of research now it will really benefit making a better, balanced argument within the essay. I also believe that visiting this art and the gallery environment it lives in in real life will also encourage thoughts and discussion. 

COP3: remaining chapter notes/ overviews

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

è BRIEF INTRO: small definition of Outsider Art, and the divide of this and folk art, art brut etc. Could briefly discuss the divide of Insider/ Outsider?

è WHY THIS TOPIC SHOULD BE DISCUSSED: art is for everyone, and everyone should be treated fairly. Discussion of identity, authenticity.

è METHODOLOGY: reading from journals, documentary, exhibition visits, interview. Discuss my practical work/ reflection in this?

è PERSONAL BIAS: writing as someone who has is in formal art education and could not experience what Outsider Artists experience. Writing as someone concerned with the ethics of how O.A. is treated / the division of it but very much enthralled by Outsider Art in the same way the galleries may also be- the lure of authenticity is inescapable, but is it the (idea of the) authentic that makes it good or is it good because it is truly authentic?

CHAPTER THREE: CASE STUDIES

                 

è HOWARD FINSTER:

o   One of the most well known outsider artists

o   What drove him to work in such ways, to such scale etc (God)

o   How he became famous through commercial commissions

§  How this affected how people saw him

§  How this affected how he worked (if it all)

§  Was he co-erced into working so hard/ in this way?

§  Did he enjoy the fame?

·       How when he became a personality people didn’t like it, people are keen for them to be humble. BUT he enjoyed the fame because it meant he could spread his preaching further

è ROBYN BEVERLAND

o   Fine discusses him in Crafting Authenticity, about how his story was used as a tool to market his art that may have otherwise not be touched by dealers

o   Religion as artistic motivator and identity marker (similar to Finster) (is this most appreciated by american markets?)

o   Humbleness as identity and authenticity

o   How Robyn continues to be marketed today

è CHOMO/ ROGER CHOMEUAX

o   Was once part of the arts scene but denied it to become, essentially a recluse. He became the Outside because he felt this would be the best way to create work authentically.

o   But he did create something of an identity for himself, and was specific to who could interview him so he could maintain this

CHAPTER FOUR: REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

è Project not yet completed, but potential discussion points:

o   Is it really possible to create work obsessively if it is made with a goal driving it?

o   If the project does not receive any attention on social media does that really matter? Can it be taken into account as a marker of how lack of identity  can affect perception and distribution of art work? I.e. I gave this artist a distinct identity, would people be more interested?

o   In proposing an exhibition, how will playing the role of both artist and promoter affect the project?