By an outsider, we don’t mean just any amateur artist, or a struggling artist who hasn’t made it yet in a major art market. We mean someone who due to emotional or personality problems or some special focus, doesn’t have the usual free relation to society and normal human connections that most people do.
You rarely find exhibitions of outsider art. But I visited a surprisingly varied exhibition of that kind in Amsterdam in 2016 at the Hermitage Amsterdam Museum.
I chose the more abstract pieces for us to view. Two are done by the Dutch black artist Lionel Plak and are based loosely on maps. Remember a while back we discussed artworks based on chance. I want to argue that maps, especially transit maps, have a chance-like character that gives them special appeal.
If you think about it, what we call a chance event is actually determined, but the event has so very many inputs that we can’t work with them. We can’t predict the outcome, so we throw up our hands and call it a chance event.
As an example, if we flipped a coin and knew everything about how the coin was propelled and how it moves, in theory, we could determine the head or tails result.
Let me try a historical example. To ancient or primitive people eclipses of moon or sun were chance events. But modern science ‒ with due complexity ‒ can determine and predict eclipses. Whether in old times or now, the events were determined, but they appeared to be by chance.
With that background, contemplate the map of a transit system. Its shape is based on the natural features of the lay of the land, in turn based on geology or geography, formed by processes over eons. By natural features we mean the position of rivers, valleys, hills, lakes, soft ground, and hard ground. All these positions are determined by chance-like events to us. Further, there were the choices made long ago by the builders of the rail system.
So the resulting network came about in some organic, evolutionary way, from a series of chance-like events plus deterministic engineering choices. I am elaborating on all this because I think there is a beauty to a process based on chance-like events. For example, consider the shape of particular trees, clouds, sunsets, flowering plants ‒ or maps.
Here is a map of a train system done by Lionel Plak.
Please look at a map of Europe by Plack. It is very nicely colored with subtle variations within the colored regions. I can imagine menacing red arms reaching out from Russia. Or are they red embracing arms? Is this artwork abstract? What makes it abstract or not by your sensibilities?
Next, we look at a dark drawing by the Dutch woman artist Jannemieke Tukker. Because of the subtleties of the drawing, easily missed, I will point out details. Look closely.
The drawing appears to be done in black ink on a light to mid-tone background. Eyes can be seen peering into a room. Recall the popular song -- I'll be watching you.
Do you see it is a room? There is a door straight ahead, a window on the left, and some flower pots on the floor in the left corner? Notice rugs on the floor, some side shelf or radiator cover with a drinking glass on top, and a ceiling with two eyes.
Notice, how, once an eye is drawn, its shape emanates concentrically outwards but then joins with other lines delineating the planar region it is in, like a door or wall. Also see how outlines or ripples from the three lower eyes on the door build and then stop so as to make an intriguing shape in between them.
There is a lot going on, but it all seems so well integrated into the whole. We are used to seeing conventional drawings that make outlines of figures and then fill in hatching or cross hatching for shading. Here we see an overall pattern reminiscent of certain sewing or Batik patterns. One could argue that this is a painterly drawing.
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