outsider art 1: the outsider in art

perhaps i will launch a series of posts on outsider art, which frequently touches me. but the more direct reason for this post is my attraction to artists who paint some feeling of `outsiderness', frequently their own, frequently indirect - but how can one paint the feeling of being an outsider, if one does not feel this (or has not felt it) inside?

i recently finished a drawing which i started already long ago in 1993. below this drawing, i will post some really inspiring -to me unbelievably masterful- paintings by bosch, ensor, rembrandt, and van gogh - all from the low countries, coincidentally?


outsider
own work ~ 1993-2009 ~ 18 x 26 cm ~ mixed media on paper

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some perpetual inspirations that certainly influenced me for this drawing:


hieronymus bosch, christ carrying the cross

this has to be one of my all-time favourite paintings. seldom have i come across sharper depiction of la condition humaine. also, here christ is depicted as the outsider. incredible composition.

i believe the following work of james ensor to have some direct connection to bosch's painting:


james ensor, self-portrait with masks

further comment is not really necessary, i believe. but i would like to formulate a question that springs up in me: are we seeing the unmasked or the masked painter here? anyway, to me it offers also the interpretation that we are all outsider, because we are all surrounded by people wearing masks to us...with only one exception: ourself.

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then some self-portraits depicting -in my eyes- outsiderness in some way:

rembrandt, self-portrait

although this is a different self-portrait, i repeat from a previous post:

a self-portrait by rembrandt on the other hand i enjoyed for something perhaps strange; it gave me the following feeling: a man looks at me, knowing i will look at him-on-canvas when he is long gone and also knowing that he is a master far ahead of his contemporaries - not per se in skill alone, but especially in vision, in artistic feeling and experiencing reality, and therefore also in rendering reality - and knowing that i will appreciate this where most of his contemporaries lack the necessary depth of development of visual/philosophical issues.

vincent van gogh, self-portrait

one of van gogh's many self-portraits. outsiderness to me just radiates from expression, colour, brushstrokes...

refugee father & child

refugee father & child
own work ~ 2006-2009 ~ 120 x 200 cm ~ acrylic on canvas

although i have difficulty photographing the colours adequately (they are more brilliant, especially some of the yellow) the painting speaks for itself, i believe. but perhaps i could add a few words on the themes which drove me to this work.

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images of father & child are relatively rare in art. i don't think that this is a coincidence. somehow our society seems preoccupied with -in my not so humble opinion (imnsho)- silly preconceptions about woman-man differences. we have tons of `madonna-with-child'-like imagery, reflecting the cliché that children are raised by the loving care of the mother, much more than by the loving care of the father.

imnsho, we desperately need to change many of these man-woman clichés which are so dominant. a loving father's and mother's presence to me both seem essential in any upbringing - even though many of us have to do without one, the other or both.

the discrimination between the sexes is traditionally seen as holding women back from good job perspectives, economic independence, sexual independence,... but how often do we stop to consider the role patterns that hold men back from becoming loving fathers? from becoming actively involved in the raising of the children, from being a family- and community-involved person, instead of a career-, money-, power-driven one?

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anyway, i think a loving, present father can be a rock of security in a child's world. a safe haven, a protector, a comforting presence.

in the painting, i was also driven by the theme of war & violence, which is so predominant in the world. we are all connected. anyone's war is our war, and our concern i believe. why do we let ourselves be driven by racism, fear, greed, violence, power?

in the refugee father, i have tried to paint this. and yet his child sleeps in his arms, feeling safe, protected, knowing the father is there. but where are the mother, and the other children?

so perhaps i should add that the father understands we cannot even protect our loved ones from the violence in this world.

bill viola in de pont, tilburg

yesterday we went to see the show intimate work of video artist bill viola, in museum de pont, tilburg (netherlands).

a bit to my surprise -since i generally have difficulty immersing myself in video art-i found it really interesting, and i watched most of the works from beginning to end.

my favourites were small saints, acceptance and the last angel.


in small saints we see 6 small screens, each with a different figure. each figure is in a different time frame. each figure starts grey, jaded-photograph-like, behind a thin water screen. then comes slowly forward. the effect of brilliant colour coming to the fore as soon as the figure steps through to `our' side of the screen i found quite beautiful. clearly to me evoking a reference to the way we are born, and then live in a limited time frame, after which we fade away once again in oblivion. (the figures step back, the colour is gone, the figure walks and fades away). and these timeframes do not coincide, although there is some overlap sometimes. (i couldn't find an image which really portrays the work as i describe it.)


acceptance looks similar, in a way, but remains black-and-white. a naked woman slowly slowly and blurredly appears, until she (too) steps slowly through a thin waterscreen. crying, wailing. but especially the way viola uses the water screen to send light around the woman's body is simply wonderful. and then the way in which she (again) steps back and fades away, ever more blurry is really very special. i'm less impressed with the crying and wailing, and other facial expressions but that is simply my prejudice against acting for themes like this.


the last angel is more abstract, and for that reason perhaps my most favourite. because i found it to be a very subtly coloured, multilayered study of water, playing with different aspects of video itself too...really wonderful.

anyway, i advise you to go to any such show of viola's work. here a link to bill viola's website

beauty & the beholder: picasso in cathedrale d'images

beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

and there is -my grumblings aside- still a lot of beauty to be discovered in art, and in contemporary art.

for me personally however, i find that i seldom have this breathtaking experience anymore, that i sometimes had when younger, on encountering some (for me) extraordinary piece of art.

not that i have lost the experience altogether, it just has become quite exceptional. so it was a real pleasure to rediscover it at the cathedrale d'images in les baux de provence (south of france), in the light show dedicated to picasso.

the show, taking place all days this year 2009, is displayed inside the completely darkened old bauxite mine, and is accompanied by various pieces of music. it is looped, and takes around 50 minutes from beginning to end. i watched it twice, and i thought it was amazing. on all the walls of the mine as well as on the floors, simultaneously, images are projected, accompanied by very suitable music.

the directors/artists obviously have taken a lot of time to consider how to present and to transform picasso's imagery into a spatial and sensory experience. (they are named on the cathedrale website: gianfranco iannuzzi, renato gatto, massimiliano siccardi and marco melia)

if by chance you are anywhere in the neighborhood, don't miss it!


(right mouse click `view image' for a better view)

i was taken to the show by the excellent guide barbara dumont, a national tour guide for france and fluent in four languages. warmly recommended.

inside the commercial zone: contemporary art bubble?

last night i saw the documentary the great contemporary art bubble (for a trailer see here on youtube by ben lewis.

lewis tells an interesting story, which clearly touches on many the same issues regarding money & art as this blog.

i'm not in a position to verify, understand or even judge all the financial mechanisms behind contemporary art. what nonetheless becomes clear is that the contemporary art world is obsessed with and dominated by money considerations.

moreover, the picture emerging from the documentary is clear enough:

* we are letting a very small number of people determine what supposedly is `the best' in contemporary art.
* these people include influential gallery holders and museum curators/directors
* another important subgroup are the rich investors and collectors, and the influential auction houses
* the contemporary art market runs in the billions of euros (10⁹=billion)
* society pays along in various ways: by buying art for museums with public money, and through various tax deduction schemes
* there is little objective outside control over the art market
* there are few objective outside quality/reality checks as to whether `the best' in contemporary art is more than just a small group of people's temporary fancy combined with a small group of people's multimillions' worth of financial stakes.

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but now the real question: so what? the contemporary art market can hardly be as corrupt as the financial markets, and we couldn't even be bothered about them before the whole thing came crashing down. for any artist out there trying to create her/his own work (as contrasted to the damien hirsts who have studios filled with employees to produce `their' art) my advice would be:

just create, to the best of your ability. let the rich play, and be glad your work is not being treated like a stock commodity, but hangs instead in a normal living room, where it is loved by the people who bought it.

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some interesting comments on the documentary can be found here, here (scroll down to `the mugrabis respond to my film') and here.

street art 3: outside the commercial zone

on a more positive note (as compared to my usual rants against commercialism): i came across this wonderful sculpture in nijmegen:


unknown-to-me street artist, unknown-to-me title

constructed strangely against the remaining wall of a torn down house, the sculpture just is. i couldn't find any reference to indicate either maker or title. though it struck me as simple fun from a sculptural point of view, i found it to represent a very refreshing and vitalizing remembrance of art for the sake of art.

ohhh auldfashioned...but i mean art not for the sake of ART (in capitals, destined for museums, money, jetset, prestige, grandeur, really deep you know especially if you don't get it) but for the sake of art. where art stands for the expression of the human soul in visual terms. or something like that.

without regard for NAME, FAME, etc. and therefore logically anonymous (see previous posts on anonymous art - use the search function of this blog at the top of the page).

in my not so humble opinion, these anonymous street artists have a real message. i believe it concerns the freedom of the human spirit. and that there is always a way to create meaning outside of the commercial zone.

art & entertainment: kunstweek 2009

to continue from the previous post, i remember writing in my comment last year, that the borders between art and entertainment are fading rapidly.

and, the applause machine for this development is being cranked to the highest level. only natural, when one understands the mechanisms behind this. these mechanisms are many and varying in nature.

but a main ingredient is that smart marketing of a relatively shallow product gives a great yield. which is why so much effort is put in the marketing, especially when compared to the product being marketed.
which is why on our television sets we see channel after channel filled with the same rather meaningless entertainment programmes, and we have to search hard among our 100 channels to find serious and well-researched documentaries. [later comment: i must have been in a negative mood writing this - recently i saw various very good documentaries!]

in art, there used to be an added complication. namely the pretention that art is somehow `deep' and `meaningful' and `important commentary on society' etc. etc. etc. but, as we progress, this pretention can surely be dropped. more and more we see that art is being presented as `cultural business'. in the netherlands (as elsewhere i'm sure, since the netherlands never dare to take up a serious frontline position in the arts) the word `cultural entrepreneur' is being advocated instead of `visual artist'.

we are condoning the usurpation of art by business types, money makers and managers. we are more and more sponsoring entertainment which is presented as art, with funds which should [could at least, to be less morally pressuring] be used to create some depths in our modern culture. depths which the entertainment machine will never create, because the effort-yield ratio is too low in business terms.

the running example: kunstweek 2009 (dutch `art week') not only organizes a largely pre-arranged election, but in order to gain momentum -which means enough participants in the election, since success in the entertainment industry is always measured in audience numbers- they offer prizes which can be won if you vote.

and then they dare say (again i translate literally from their website):

Question: Which criteria determine whether an artist is good or not?
Answer: Much can be said on the creative and artistic value of art [sic!], except that it can be measured with concrete norms. There are no conceivable absolute norms for the appreciation of art, neither the market value nor the artistic value. But even if the quality of art cannot be quantified, the resonance and the appreciation can. And that is the goal of the election!

notice, that first they say that there are no conceivable absolute norms for the appreciation of art, and then one sentence later they say that the appreciation of art can be quantified...i'm not joking!

such quantification is even the very goal of the election, they say.

i'm sorry. words fail me. good luck, brave new entertainment world. i always thought art was about something else. perhaps we can invent a new word for artists like me, meaning something like `silly old romantic strugglers with paint, colour, form, life, depth, nature, human existence, beauty'?

better still: let's organize an election for such a word!!! the best word -to be judged by a panel of experts from the advertisement industry- will win the 10,000 easels which were used in the interactive art work `we are all artists' which won the heineken art festival 2009!!! (`we are all artists' is a work by by cultural entrepreneur ralf kwaaknijd in which on a large public square 10,000 people (selected through an internet election) paint a collective portrait of our queen, which is 100 x 100 pixels. each canvas is approximately 20 x 20 cm, the completed portrait measures 20 m x 20 m.)