erikwennermark.com

Clyde Angel @ Judy Saslow
James Castle @ AIC

Last week I wrote about two "outsider" art shows and as a result obviously spent a lot of time thinking about the concept. First of all, for whatever it's worth, I generally like "outsider" art, it's just that a lot of fun and interest has been taken out of the work as it becomes more popular in whatever way. An example: when I moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama three or so years ago I was really really excited about the Kentuck Festival, a major folk art fair in neighboring Northport. When I finally got to go to Kentuck, I was massively disappointed: it was all the same ol' shit, nothing "outside" about it. Or it's outsideness had become insideness pretty quickly, if you know what I mean. (That is not to say Kentuck is incapable of putting on a good show, I saw some nice, and occasionally very weird, work in their gallery over the years.)

The main thing I like about outsider art is its ability to surprise me--you can see some pretty weird, unusual stuff going on, and sometimes it's really cool and interesting and exciting. Unfortunately, the Clyde Angel show I wrote about did not really do it for me. I say why in my piece and I won't rub it in here, but yeah, not all that unique. Though there was a pretty neat (and crazy expensive) Henry Darger drawing in the back too.

The second "outsider" show I wrote about was James Castle at the Art Institute. I liked this one quite a bit more primarily because of the things the artist was doing with scale and the very, very strange way he rendered faces as random not-face things--Castle was deaf, which makes it seem like maybe he would pay more attention to faces, but maybe not, maybe he saw them as these completely abstract things separate from communication. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any images that illustrate my point, though the doll kind of does.

Good portions of his work were almost downright conventional; his landscapes reminded me of Van Gogh:

In a way it's like the "outsider" appellation is both unnecessary and kind of useful. On one hand it provides some interesting things to think about and on the other, so what. So concludes my week in the realm of the outsiders, one pretty neat, one pretty average. Better odds than I'd get in Chelsea.