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Outsider Art, Part 2

                                                                Outsider Art, Part 2

There is an outsider art fair yearly since 1993 in New York City.  In this context we have to broaden our definition of outsider artist using all the following names: self taught, marginalized, naïve, visionary, folk, primitive, and a French term for the outsider art works, Art Brut. 

Let’s consider artists included in the New York fair.  One of them, Martin Ramirez, whose works have sold in excess of $100,000, makes mixed media works that have the appearance of infinite lined fabric folds, together with a little figuration.  This work is called Galleon on Water. 

         

Another, Thornton Dial, is an African American from the rural South. He works with found materials.  Please look at his work called: Don’t Matter How Raggly The Flag It Still Got To Tie Us Together.

   

                    National Gallery Show

Occasionally major museums have shows of outsider art as in 2018 at the National Gallery in Washington, DC.  That show had an inclusive title: Outliers and American Vanguard Art.  To indicate the inclusiveness, they had a work by Jacob Lawrence, a trained artist, prominent in the Harlem Renaissance, who paints in a simplified style with expressive vitality.  

The work we show is Lawrence’s remembrance of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games called -- The Relay Race: Passing the Baton.  He worked mostly in gouache, an opaque watercolor paint.  

                    


         I first saw this painting in the Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C.  Then, and still now, I admire the vitality, the graphic design, the distortion of shapes for expressive effect, and the arrangement within the picture frame (abstract qualities?).

There are many videos about Jacob Lawrence on YouTube. One of them is an intimate visit to his studio. He explains as he paints. 

After a while, he comes to a stop, makes a long pause as if deciding, then says:  “The painting is complete.  It may not be finished but it is complete.”  

Every experienced painter knows how important it is to know when to stop – to maintain freshness and not overdo. 


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