Bookshelf #1

The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art

Greg Bottoms

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London, 2007, 182 pgs.

  

 Greg Bottoms is the master of colorful laid-back language in his colorful book (though there are no illustrations, not even in black and white, except for the cover). Phrases such as “twangy  do-it-yourself alternative music and art scene”; “photographic stop-time”; “the poor, God-haunted South”; “the larger, soul-oppressing world”; “the seeds of our destruction layered through our slang and gesture” proliferate throughout the text—these all on the first three pages of the Prologue! It makes the reading a delight and fits comfortably, even seamlessly, with the dialogues and discussions he has with his subjects (he wouldn’t care for this word, I’m sure, however much he is an observer to their words). But Bottoms is in search of what he feels has been overlooked, outsiders’ deeper intentions past the slick biography of eccentricity, naiveté and gaudiness expressed in the media, with dealers and collectors—the undercurrent that keeps outsider art moving in the markets. Bottoms views himself as a documentarian of Outsider Art who decided to talk to the artists directly about their intentions, because, as he puts it, “…rarely are the particulars beneath the caption, the actual thinking and mission of the artist, explored.” His mission was to “travel and listen and record.”  

       The three artists he interviews, researches, scrutinizes are Rev. Howard Finster, William Thomas Thompson and Norbert Kox. Along the way, he bumps into others, including Myrtice West, C.M. “Mike” Laster, and Davy Damkoehler, all of whom know each other or at least one in this group and have religious intent in their work.

Much of their art pivots around their prophesies of doom, as they see it, the rotten  underbelly of Christianity as an institutionalized religion, the re-interpretation of the Scriptures—especially Revelation—and the ecstasy of the Christian experience. They call what they do The Truth in a world of false security, hope and comfort. Foundationally, Bottoms claims, they are about suffering, which they all have had much of in their lives, enormous losses when young, some almost unbearable so. All are on a mission of great urgency—to inform and rescue.

Finster (1935-2001) produced more than 46,000 works of art during his lifetime; by 1994, Thompson (b. 1935) had painted over 500 paintings, and on the Raw Vision website, it is stated that from 2008 to the present, he has painted 600, plus two huge Revelation murals; and Kox’s (b. 1945) output is obvious, if not stated in numbers, as he has exhibited at the New York Outsider Art Fair every year since 1994 and in six of eight of AVAM’s (American Visionary Art Museum) first shows. The point being that these artists produce constantly, painting at a rate unparalleled in the mainstream art world. Picasso (1881-1973) produced an estimated 50,000 artworks—an extraordinary amount, but he lived to be 91 and began training with his father at age nine, an incredibly unusual state of affairs.

       All three outsider artists Bottoms interviews began their painting life because of an epiphany or dramatic revelatory event which makes for some intriguing reading—Thompson’s not too far from Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, Finster’s from a talking face on this thumb, and Kox’s from thoughts he states were in his mind that were not his thoughts—all of which have reached the level of personal mythology. And once the commitment was made, these artists were (two still are) driven—as most outsider artists—by what Bottoms calls “passion, troubled psychology, extreme ideology, faith, despair, and the desperate need to be heard and seen.”

       The conversations Bottoms has with them address so many concerns and are so amazingly insightful of their creative expressions (absolutely stunning in what they reveal) that the pages practically turn themselves. Despite the cliché, I truly could not put the book down. These visionaries are inspired by a genuine belief in the presence of God—His speaking to them directly—and a sense of being chosen, of being called to show truth through visual and written description of their visions, dreams, ecstatic experiences and divinely-given thoughts. They view themselves as having apperceptions into people, Scriptures, the fakery of institutionalized religion and social and political institutions. They believe they have the ability to hear divine messages, see signs, all of which they feel compelled to record so that The Truth gets out there. And although they are not concerned for the aesthetic and the art world of acclaimed artists, dealers, collectors, critics and marketing agencies, the art world is very aware of them, and once outsiders surrender to that world for profit and fame, their visions change—at least their recorded images of their visions do.

       Bottoms is interested in how this commercialization affects their work, how the art can become hackneyed and self-conscious once the gallery and museum venues open to them. He demonstrates how Outsider Art is fueled by biography, the view by the art world that these artists are insane or mad and create from impulse, desperation and craziness. Their eccentricism, deviance, fanaticism, paranoia and obsessive devotion to the art of subversion of established rules and institutions are what make them attractive and why there hasn’t been deeper searches into their motivation, intentions and belief systems, outside the scattered slick mythologizing of their unconventional lifestyles. To have a richer understanding of their deeper motivations may be too close to magic and superstition, a straying too far from the insider cultural nest. If they become included, they could expand the range of art’s definition to include everything—which made Marcel Duchamp both attractive and frighteningly threatening. But Duchamp was aware of the insider-art and language game he was playing. Outsider artists don’t play this kind of cultural game—though some, as these three have, play the money game. But selling or not, they believe sincerely in their own pulpits and the messages they issue from there.

       Self-taught Art, Folk Art, and Outsider Art—the term “Outsider Art” assigned to the genre by the British professor, Roger Cardinal— are the three major labels assigned to art outside the mainstream today. The French painter, Jean Dubuffet, was the first to give it a label which stuck in Europe—Art Brut (Raw Art)—and which was viewed by many as less impalpable for English cultural language. But there are many inside the mainstream art world (and out) who take issue with a label at all, including the Reverend Howard Finster, who views artmaking as an occupation. Finster’s said: “There’s no such thing as an outsider or insider artist. Just as there’s no such thing as an outside or an inside mechanic, and outside or inside president or an outside or inside governor.”*

As early as the 1930s, their works began to be shown. MOMA  in 1938 organized an  exhibition, Master of Popular Painting, in which thirteen self-taught artists were included. But most of the works shown were labeled “folk art,” which had an antique collectors’ ring to it—most often used to designate early American painters such as Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley. It wasn’t until the early sixties and again a revival of self-taught artists in the 1980s that outsider artists began to have consistent gallery and museums shows and specifically-classified festivals and sponsored outlets for their works. Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago and Janet Fleisher Gallery in Philadelphia were two elitist galleries that become known early for their outsider art shows. Presently, all three of the artists written about in Bottoms’ book have their own websites and exhibition platforms.

       I highly recommend The Colorful Apocalypse. Even if you’re not interested in art history, theory, or the art scene, the biographies and discussions with the artists are well worth the read. And Bottoms’ interweaving of his own personal experiences with his schizophrenic brother makes what he has to say highly credible.

           

Reverend Howard Finster (1935-2001)

www.finster.com

William Thomas Thompson (1935—)

www.arthompson.com

Norbert H. Kox (1945—)

www.apocalypsehouse.com 

*quoted in Gary Alan Fine’s, Everyday Genius, The University of Chicago Press, 2004,

   pg. 32.