The MoE presents The Salon of Everything // Venice Biennale 2013 // Who and What is an Outsider?

[Music] I'm Roberta Smith I'm an art critic at the New York Times and I'm interested in all kinds of art including Outsider my name is Jerry saltz I'm the senior art critic for New York Magazine I think of myself as an outsider critic even though people would say that's absurd you're an Insider well that's an interesting place to start is there such a thing as an outsider well to the extent that the art world is especially full of autodidacts yes I mean I I feel like the most interesting most people in the art world are to some extent self-taught because they figure out how they're going to be around art or they figure out the art that they want to make I mean there are tons of really famous artists who have barely like Jasper John doesn't have that much art education you know the the idea of self-taught is much more defuse it's not limited to people that we sort of that function outside of the outworld so yeah I think that we all you know to a certain extent we are how many art how many degrees do you have I just have an undergraduate degree you know one would never know so and I have I have no degrees whatsoever uh uh I was a longdistance truck driver I'm a failed artist I wanted to be an art critic I want well I wanted to be anything if I could get in the art World it didn't matter to me what it was but you know what it was that was was trying to get you to go there I mean no and I had no idea what it was I did see that the people in the art world were able to they were sleeping with each other easier than other worlds so that seemed interesting so so part of what you try and do is actually just give people the opportunity to know about something maybe right to point at something and in the process also to to to just remind people constantly how complicated visual culture is and that always at all times there are many many people making all kinds of things that are interesting and important to look at and it's not just art you know there's design there there's engineering there are all these things that getting made that that add up and and some of them get saved and brought forward and we see them in museums or we see them you know in the old buildings of Venice you just walk around and you can see what people did at a certain point they built things this way and and art has a similar you know art is just one part of this immense terrain of visual culture and art is much larger even as its own terrain than most people kind of realize you know and that's that also is why I'm interested in you know Outsider Art is one of it's it's a really important area that that broadens our understanding well it's interesting why are the narrow choices being made and maybe not these other histories not sort of getting Limelight I I think a couple of generations of critics and curators and even artists have been more or less destroyed I have no doubt about their great intentions Brilliance uh learnedness uh honesty openness but the idea that the art world has become so academicz that everyone speaks more or less the same language agrees on more or less the same Artist as being the canonical artist that the story be told more or less the same way that what's happened is coming out of even art schools you have artists critics and curators and collectors self-branding themselves to be sort of Junior postmodernists it's pretty easy to see if you know the entire game what a next move might be or what where each move fits in it's pretty damn hard if you're suddenly going off uh the radar and popping up in unexpected places unexpected mediums unexpected people unexpected Generations I would also say art doesn't let more of the world in the world will let less art in it's that simple the main thing that that holds people together is time you know all of these artists are working at certain times like what's what does rouso have to do with with poock I mean sorry with Picasso you know they're they're making art at the same time out of some of the same things they shouldn't be that separate they aren't that separate but we can't let Martin Ramirez in you know who in some ways I've written before is sort of could be seen as our Russo because you can you can relate him to all to different kinds of figuration you can relate him to to abstraction with his you know his regimented stripes and things like there's not um and the curators would say why why can't if you said to them well they like Ramirez we know they like them why can't because it disrupts it messes up this narrative you know that you're that particularly see it at the Museum of Modern Art where art just kind of Narrows down to conceptualism and the last few galleries of their permanent collection is nothing but conceptual art and you know you're looking at art between say 1970 and 1985 you know there's all kinds of stuff going on there you have the outbreak of neoexpressionism do you get any idea of that no well you're certainly not going to get the fact that Ramirez you know I mean Ramirez is parallel with popart he dies in 1966 he's using collage he's cutting things out of magazines MH you know darker the the things that the the connections have been drwn between darker and Warhol darker is taking I don't know what images out of coloring books I can't remember and going to a photo department and store and having them enlarged I think quite often with these artists you know that's the case and that's why you get into that difficult biography non- biography situation well the idea that everything in Outsider Art is grounded and can't be romanticized and mythologized and is grounded in just the exact same way that what we call Insider artists that they're you know whether you talk about Pollock seeing Indian seeing sand painting or hieroglyphs or whatever you know that all of it it's all as specific that immediately removes a great I think a big separation or a big rationale for a separation and there just has to be more and more of this and you know for example like Jerry was saying last night somebody's saying well you know how can they be artists these people are in prison they're they're homeless or they're insane or they're insane but I mean one thing about that I always always struck me about wulle and Ramirez is when I first saw Ramirez's work I was just thinking well what if there's this inborn urge to be an artist inborn in these guys who had no chance the thing that I think we look for in art is a kind of urgency like the artist could not help but do it and what we have in Contemporary Art right now is a lot of calculation where the artist there's no sense of that urgency or necessity and by the way excuse me kagio was homeless incarcerated and insane we call murderers insane so boom and and 90% of the artists I've ever met are kind of a little insane and if you hear Bryce Martin explained his monochromes or a a great genius blowhard like uh Barnett Newan explained his stripes it's no more insane sounding than uh any so-called Outsider none we all he the so simano has done this thing so I'd be interested to know what you feel about the reasons for it like like why do it also the last time you you guys made you know between the two of you you made a very loud bold series of statements what six months ago five months ago in the Press repeatedly rallied against the segregation basically to and talking about that then how do you think this fits into what you were calling for so what was political in this show for the people that will now complain the show isn't political enough is the politic is his definition of Art and what an artist is is charged and elastic and what and more elastic that is the political act in this show sorry if it isn't the right politic people say that he's primitiv vising say Africa and South America uh sort of turning everybody into witch doctors and Voodoo men uh again no more than Bryce Martin is to me honest to God of this guy drawing little snakes and slivers to me it's the same um one thing that is a little problematic is he looks at the Soma is it Soma the gigantic work the work that involves the archive the encyclopedia brings with it a male uh coded Drive the male coded Drive seems to be to organize gigantic numbers of work in order to systematize and understand the world because men are idiots and we have fear of chaos and so it's a pre-selected show where masim Milano isn't isn't a misogynist but that why that may be why only 14% of the show is women because the lens he picked is a highly controlling lens so definitely I agree with you what's phenomenal about the whole Bal is that something else isn't something else I mean that's what I when I wrote in the catalog I wrote a poem because I didn't know what the hell to write and I wrote a poem about being different and that actually being different is probably what we look for in the are same thing you look for what you haven't seen before you're always looking for that to some degree or to a Hu you know in a huge way or a small way we look for a kind of freshness that's what draws your eye I sort of look for confirmation of who I am I look for something where my engagement with the object is somehow it's giving me a sense of existence in that moment call that something coming to you with an alienated Majesty that you knew it before you knew it the way all Shakespeare right that he knows anything you can possibly ever know and when you hear it you you get that that otherness suddenly becomes part of you that's beautiful I also think what you what you the way you say it's about you is what you have as an experience of your senses working you have an experience of that you are perceiving something and you're absorbing something in it and you're making meaning using that experience so so it's like yes my parts work yeah you know in front of this this makes my makes me experience my thinking my feeling all this stuff I would like to say that I I would like to make a prediction uh in the month of June 2013 that the borders are not down at all around the word outsider on the contrary I think all three of us would agree the art world is about to mount a counteraction and to try to toughen up this border not because they're because they're not they love art as much as anybody everybody but people will now try to define the term again and those that those definitions will start to put up walls and they will include what we already know they will include well artists that we are following know about history of art that will be one the other will be well you're just going after the incarcerated the homeless and the insane and again I would say with great narratives right I would just say think in the model of YouTube or a digital camera or anybody using your computer and all of those words should fall for you it's all one ball of Wax a

Channel: musevery

Views: 11,544

Keywords: Venice Biennale (Recurring Event)

Id: DK06Q_2iM48

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 01 2014