Connection to Art through the Creation Process for Three Self-Taught Artists
Three self-taught contemporary artists on the relationship that they have with their work and connection to art Artistic practice and the relationship that artists foster with their work is canonically seeded with the markings of ritual, catharsis, spirituality and catharsis. For many artists, the connection that’s developed in the process makes it difficult for them […]
The Rarely-Seen Work of Obscure Artist John Schacht
Earlier this year, the Knockdown Center in Brooklyn organized a group exhibition that was partly comprised by the first posthumous show of works by a little-known American artist named John Schacht (b. 1938). Stacie Johnson, the curator of the exhibition, first learned about Schacht’s work in 2010 when she worked as an archivist for the […]
NYHS Celebrates the Folk Art Collection of Elie and Viola Nadelman
The New-York Historical Society (NYHS) has organized an exhibition that celebrates the folk art collection of the late artist Elie Nadelman (1882-1946) and his wife, the heiress Viola Spiess Flannery (1878-1962). The show, titled The Folk Art Collection of Elie and Viola Nadelman (from May 20th to August 21st, 2016) comprises more than 200 objects […]
Verbalizing Art in a Deaf World: The Minneapolis Institute of Art Features Works by James Castle
The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) has assembled an exhibition comprising forty-four works by the late self-taught artist James Castle (1899-1977), titled The Experience of Every Day (from May 21st – August 21st 2016). The exhibition includes twenty-five drawings (ten that are double-sided), thirteen three-dimensional constructions, five hand-made books, and one collage. The collection of […]
Defining a King of Lesser of Lands
The Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York has organized a solo exhibition comprising photographs, sculptures, paintings and poetry by the self-taught American artist Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910 – 1983), titled King of Lesser Lands (March 24th – May 8th 2016). Von Bruenchenhein’s ethereal body of both formalist and semi-abstract works were posthumously discovered but he—unlike […]
Cripta Djan: The Brazilian Artist Legitimatizing Pixação in the Arts
The Brazilian artist Djan Ivson da Silva, better known as Cripta Djan, creates works that transcend what is often called vandalism to the realm of fine arts by providing a critical narrative on the cultural, socio-economic and artistic value of pixação. Pixação is an untranslatable Portuguese word that most closely translates to tagging but stands […]
Masonic and Odd Fellow Exhibition: Esoteric Secret Societies in America
The first exhibition to comprehensively profile the art created by Masonic and Odd Fellow fraternities during the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries aims to deconstruct the arcane significance of the esoteric aspects of their practice. Titled “Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellow Folk Art from the Kendra and Allan Daniel Collection,” on view at […]