Outsider Art Fair 2017 Bonus Post Alabama Early 1990's

Outsider Art Fair 2017 Bonus Post Vernon, Alabama Early 1990's  
Photographs by Jim Linderman

Free preview and purchas the book IN SITU: American Folk Art in Place by the author HERE

Annual Outsider Art Fair Post 2017. Hawkins Bolden Garden of African-American Outsider Art Sculpture

Mr. Bolden's make-do scarecrows have attracted attention from collectors (and some scholars) for many years now…but you don't really need a scarecrow unless you have a garden. If you ever wondered what a blind man's garden might look like, this is it.  Years had passed since he laid it out and surrounded it with muscular figures, somehow, from his mind's eye.  The only eyes Bolden had were taken from him as a child while playing in Memphis, TN.

Like the figures for which Bolden has become known, the garden is tactile as much as visual…and each piece was placed by the artist.  Don't expect any precise lines. This garden was laid out by hand, not sight or surveyor…and by an artist feeling for proper placement with his hands alone. No taut line of string and chalk to follow. As such, Mr. Bolden's garden has more than a little in common with the abstract and varying panels of an African-American improvisational quilt.  Seen from above, it might have appeared  to be a quilt made from scraps, but in rusted steel.

Quilts from Signs and Symbols: African Images in African-American Quilts - Maude Southwell Wahlman, Penguin: 1993.  Sourced HERE

But is it imbued with more? Hawkins Bolden (and his sister) were born on the same day  in 1914.  Why is this relevant?  It places his youth only a lifetime from the Civil War and 50 years before the Civil Rights Act.  Scholars of African-American art might think it possible he retained deep-rooted African esthetics and meaning, blind or not.  Subconscious or not. Historical, psychological and tenacious attempts to hold on to traditions left behind.

Can a blind man play the blues? Yes…if he has them.

Or is it no deeper than a man wanting to make something he could.  Not black, not white, but simply an anomaly?  Are the figures "art" only when recognized as such by collectors and removed from the original environment and presented on a white wall?

His own explanations for the scarecrows were tossed off and lighthearted…but then would Mr. Bolden have learned decades before that African-American men were taught to avoid boasting by the dominant white culture? Did he learn to dismiss his art with humor and deflection as a survival technique?  He lived in a state which did not even allow interracial marriage until 1967.  A state which begrudgingly gave in but still retains the law on their books.

How can one ask an artist who has never seen his own work what it means?

Note the rudimentary stakes.  Each has some shape or form which makes it more than a simple pole.  Old handles, nozzles and angular forms of industrial purpose.  Salvage and scrap, but made to live again.  Several of Mr. Bolden's masks and figures line the area.  One piece consists of the discarded base to an electric fan. It has been given eyes and a long, soggy tongue (or beard?) made of carpet. Imagine that…a sculpture given eyes by a blind man.  A larger piece on the other side of the property hangs adorned with rags for straw hair.

At  the 2016 Outsider Art Fair, the SHRINE GALLERY created an installation recreating the garden.  Photo Credit Claire Voon for Hyperallergic used with permission.

It is fraught…or even indulgent to speculate about Mr. Bolden's sculpture.  Who are we to understand this place while only we can see? It took a fairly sophisticated sighted person to appreciate the work while wandering home from a tavern.  I hesitate to use "saved" as the original environment is gone…but wide open (if bleary) eyes recognized this place was profound. Mr. Bolden leaves us with instruction to see clearly but that sometimes mystery  and wonder is all we can know..  Even a glance is precious and a gift we should not take for granted.

Dull Tool Dim Bulb runs an annual post relevant to the Outsider Art Fair.  Previous posts over the years include Sister Gertrude Morgan, Basil Merrett,  Nyla Thompson, Asa Moore, Justin McCarthy and more…search for "outsider art" in the blog's search box.

See also Claire Voon review of the 2016 Outsider Art Fair HERE Shrine Gallery is HERE
See also the film MAKE by Malcom Hearn which shows the artist at work.  Available HERE
William Arnett article on Hawkins Bolden HERE at the Souls Grown Deep site.
Hawkins Bolden Environment photos by Jim Linderman 1994. Books and ebooks by the author on folk art and photography HERE

Outsider Art Fair 20th Anniversary Review from Afar 2012

No, the pictures above are not from the Outsider Art Fair 20th anniversary.

Viewing the 20th anniversary outsider art fair from afar, through slide shows, it appears after all that time the field (as I hate to call it) is still confused, too inclusive and loaded with baggage. At best a misnomer, the term has been squabbled over for so long I gave up, but with distance and time, I will revisit.

Shown here is the material which first attracted my eye, the Black Folk Art show of 1982. A magnificent exhibition of material which was mistakenly included under the rubric of outsider art around the same time, but a show which to this day remains as one of the best curated art shows of my lifetime.

The true defining criteria for anyone being marketed as an outsider is a complete lack of training in the arts. No schooling and I'm not fooling. I have always felt anyone aware enough of the art world to claim to be an outsider doesn't qualify AS an outsider. I don't mind artists, dealers or collectors fighting over the definition, if they still do..but once again it is obvious a few ringers are slipping in. People who even begin to utter "I am an outsider artist" do not pass the test. And no, art school "drop-outs" do NOT qualify either. Neither does anything from an "other-worldly" environment, culture or country if it is part of the regional milieu.

The other primary criteria is that the artists work in some form of isolation. This could be as a result of institutionalization, a lack or educational opportunities, a religious fervor, an undefined particular visionary impulse...you name it...but while creating their initial body of work they have no idea anyone else is doing it, and they make it all from their own devices. No looking at Sotheby's catalogs or finding a "how to paint" brochure at the flea market. None. NONE.

However, the "trained or untrained" aspect, dicey enough, isn't the most unfortunate definitional failure of the material or the show. It is the inherent dichotomy of lumping together artists who come from no school and FIT into no school together in one place. How can a group of artists be labeled and lumped as outsiders when by definition they have absolutely nothing to do with each other?

Which is why I show the photographs above. You see, these artists DID come from a "school" of sorts. All the artists included in the Black Folk Art show had something in common...all were from fairly early generations which were descendants of slaves. They thus, to some degree or another, shared the common experience of having been displaced...and all held again, to some degree, a shared African-American esthetic which was retained, unconscious or not, in their work. They shared a common origin (to the extent that their ancestors were taken from one huge continent and brought to another) and they shared an inherent consistency of cultural artistic expression. Which is why together they formed a successful exhibition. Not really a "school" mind you, as originally none of them had any idea the others existed, but an esthetic. They lacked educational skills, formal training and awareness of the arts but that was the result of racism more than any other circumstance.

They were mistakenly included originally as "outsiders" when the field formed, and their works still appear here and there as by far the best work in the outsider show. Bill Traylor, Sam Doyle, William Edmondson. Even the lesser known and lesser skilled George Williams, whose frontal totemic carved figures look quite smart above. I say the best work, but that still doesn't mean they belong there.

There is other good work at the show...I presume the magnificent Electric Pencil work was there, and I suspect James Castle was represented, but they were true isolates with completely unique consistent visions. In other words, they qualify but they do not belong.

Unfortunately the few rare genuine articles and the Black folk artists from the exhibition pictured above continue to be presented in a forum which persists to lump together all manner of eccentrics, wanna-bees and what a good friend of mine used to refer to, with little irony, as "failed trained artists" on the walls with no intellectual validity or foundation other than a good weekend bourse. In other words, a good show to visit but not to write about.

Pair of original "installation view" photographs by Michelle Andonian 1983 Collection Jim Linderman