When I was a kid living in Paris in the 50s, my favorite room at the Louvre was the Mummy Room. The mummies are long gone now but at the time there were several mummies in various stages of deshabille wrapping-wise, and one had a toe that was unravelling. I was fascinated by this toe and always looked at it with a certain amount of terrified delight.
Shortly after the mummy period, I became enamored of the French Baroque painters Nicolas Poussin (The Rape of the Sabine Women), Jacques-Louis David (The Death of Marat), and the French Romantic painter Theodore Gericault (The Raft of the Medusa), amongst others. Their voluptuous, larger-than-life saints and sinners, martyrs, warriors, men and women in distress or in command, and the exaggerated style of the work — the intense colors and the contrast between light and dark, the despair, the passion, the bodies! — were endlessly fascinating. At that age, I didn’t know the stories behind the paintings and could only imagine what was going on. Whatever was going on was certainly beyond my experience but I was gripped by the emotion depicted in these paintings. Once you learn the story behind the painting, it is even more commanding.
Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa
In my early 20s I gravitated toward surrealism because of its provocative visual simplicity, wit, and dreamlike, out-of-mind qualities; it made sense to me. I was particularly fond of Magritte, the more whimsical Miro, and Dali for his outrageous art and behavior (“There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.”).
Its complicated history was also interesting. Guillaume Apollinaire, once my favorite French poet (Le Pont Mirabeau), first publicly used the term, surrealism, in program notes for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Parade in 1917. It developed as a political and literary force after World War I with two competing manifestos published by Andre Breton and Yvan Goll. Visual artists became part of the movement soon thereafter.
Years later, I saw the Dutch Renaissance painter, Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, at the Prado. The painting’s surreal, gruesome, and dramatic depictions appeared to be an early harbinger — some 400 years earlier — of the fantastical and imaginative paintings of the surrealists, as well as a reminder of my past interest in Baroque art with its gripping and vivid renditions of fearsome events.
Rene Magritte, Not To Be Reproduced
Even later, my interest in picassiette, a mosaic technique, was piqued when I first saw photos of Raymond Isidore’s house and garden, La Maison Picassiette, near Chartres in France. It was a spectacular demonstration of an artist’s obsession and execution of an almost 30 year long vision — a garden, house, and its interior, completely covered in intricate mosaic designs.
La Maison Picassiette
A similar but less formidable effort in Seattle was the Walker Rock Garden. Milton Walker, a Boeing mechanic, and his wife, Florence, created an incredible garden out of stone, tiles and found objects. Unfortunately, after their deaths, the garden was closed in 2014, sold in 2021, and then razed. Richard Tracy’s Art Yard in Centralia, fashioned from rebar and styrofoam, was sold in 2013 and then torn down, a reminder that art is nothing if not ephemeral. Dick and Jane’s Spot in Ellensburg, an eccentric collaborative garden creation, is, fortunately, protected from destruction.
Another unconventional artist in this vein I admired was Sabato Rodia, an Italian immigrant, construction worker and tile setter, who spent over 33 years single-handedly building the Watts Towers in Los Angeles — 17 connected towers ranging from 15 to 99 feet — using found objects, tile and steel. His single-mindedness and ingenuity are compelling and awe-inspiring.
After the picassiette and quirky garden art forays, I become very interested in street photography, and that interest continues to this day but warrants a separate post at a later date. Simultaneously, my interest in ethnic and American crafts — pottery (Mata Ortiz and Native American), textiles (Southeast Asian, Indian, South American), baskets, sculpture, and art — expanded through increased travel. My son has lived in the capital cities of many countries — Kazakhstan, Cameroon, England, Kenya, China (not Beijing but Shanghai), Thailand, and Chile, soon moving to Hanoi — and my many visits have allowed me to appreciate various indigenous crafts through exposure to markets, museums, the streets and the people.
Mata Ortiz pots- Miguel Bugarini, potter, Manuel Quezada, potter, left to right
This ultimately led to my interest in outsider art — also known as art brut, outlier art, naive art, visionary art, or folk art. Studies made in the 19th century of art made by mentally ill patients, followed by studies in the early 1920s led to a strong interest in this kind of expressive, unsophisticated art. Dubuffet, founder of the Art Brut movement used this term (raw art) to describe art unbound by tradition and training usually made by children and mental health patients. Consequently, Dubuffet, the Paris surrealists and German expressionists bought and promoted these artists’ work leading to more exposure and study. In 1972 Roger Cardinal, a British art historian, published Outsider Art, defining the art form for English speaking readers.
Since then outsider art has expanded and been promoted, but the basic underlying tenet is that these artists work without the benefit of art school and formal training. Their work is direct and frequently shocking but so constructed from their subconscious mind that they reveal a vivid reality. Bill Traylor, Madge Gill, Judith Scott, Howard Finster, Gregory Blackstock, Mary T. Smith, William Hawkins, are some of the many artists working in this field. Their art certainly does not appeal to everyone. It is rough and frequently ugly, but it is alive, quirky, unsophisticated and weird. You are in a direct communion with the artist on a very basic emotional level. These artists are storytellers as you can see in the photos below.
Howard Finster
Everyone relates to art differently, and it can be intimidating if you don’t know the academic history or the language. It’s not a character judgment, just a personal judgment, if you prefer one style over another. It is simply your choice and nothing more. I don’t care for video art or performance art, but others love it. Minimalist and conceptual art never appealed either. As with music, I need to have something of a melody, some kind of story, to make me want to listen and to look. Outsider art, for me, is refreshingly relevant, immediate and tells a story.
Missionary Mary L. Proctor
Cover photo: Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David