Outsider art is something I know I should absolutely be in love with - based my leanings towards All Things Weird - but most of it either baffles me or just makes me feel indifferent. I bring this up due to a couple of recent things that got me thinking about it - a video I watched last month from The Cinema Cartography and a trip I took before moving into my new home. This "Something Interesting" post is more a recommendation for the video and some resources covering outsider art and its cousins in other worlds. [1]
At Battle of Drosabellamaximillan… (from In the Realms of the Unreal) by Henry Darger [found here]
The video I'm recommending from Lewis Bond is a history of what outsider art is and how it correlates with filmmaking while also serving as an announcement for their Patreon account. If you're aware of the subjects presented, a lot of it will be a bit rote but it's a good reminder that money isn't always the primary driver of how and why art gets made. It's also - if you can look past the occasional self-importance in tone - inspiring if you've felt like you've been in an artistic rut lately and need to look for a way out of that. The images presented by all the filmmakers included are evidence alone to jolt the senses (my personal favorite was the part about Shingo Tamagawa's Pupuria) and get some brainstorming going.
How this relates to my recent trip is that much of my sightseeing in the two cities I went focused on going to art museums. While none of the four I visited [2] focused heavily on outsider art, there were numerous reminders of how Art get made and what often goes behind it. Reminders of wealthy patrons and intense apprenticeships to randos hanging out in their garages applying what they've learned through trial-and-error. Having watched the video prior to going, some of the points Bond makes were on my mind and taking that experience plus my indifference to most "outsider" work made me realize that a general thesis I gathered from the video - money corrupts Art and weakens it through commercialization - rings a little hollow and feels too simplistic. I get that a lot of this sentiment is born out of a specific situation (YouTube demonetizing and blocking their account due to copyright complaints) but the conclusion feels off...
Much of the art I saw primarily at the Denver Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago required some form of financing to create it, especially the work done prior to the late 1800s when Impressionism arrived. Many of the pieces, even the more modern/contemporary ones, weren't usually made towards Art for Art's Sake but because the artist had something they wanted to say. Bond points this out numerous times - it's the other general thesis of their piece - but to tie with the belief that money from a singular source (person, group, institution) just often corrupts and waters down the potency of the expression seems too Manichean and runs counter to the experience I've had while walking through those museums. It would be like declaring that the artisans and craftspeople, not to mention the schooled painters and sculptors, were only hacks and not expressing themselves in the work they provided for pay. [3]
That all being said, I still recommend checking out the video for yourselves and see if it causes you to think about how art can be produced differently. I'll also include some additional links as resources if you want to go further down the trail and find outsider artists whose work you'd want to explore.
The truth is outside of all fixed patterns. — Bruce Lee
"What is Outsider Art?" (Raw Vision)
"Why ‘Outsider Art’ Is a Problematic but Helpful Label" by Scott Indrisek (Artsy)
"Outsider Artists Who Forged Their Own Paths" (Invaluable)
"The Ten Most Famous Outsider Artists" by Redmond Bacon (Sleek Magazine)
Wikipedia articles on:
End Notes
[1] I'll talk more about the trip in a separate post.
[2] Specifically the Denver Art Museum, the Clyfford Stills Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago).
[3] I doubt anything I've rambled about here is controversial but I'll also point out that my favorite art period is "everything after Impressionism." I love 20th century art especially and am putting this note here to make clear that I'm neither some reactionary whose got an axe to grind with modern work nor am I interested in getting an comments complaining about it...