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Outsider Art Fair Breaks All Records
Visitor numbers were the highest ever at the Outsider Art Fair in New York with galleries and dealers reporting robust sales across the board. The New York Times featured a front page review by distinguished critic Roberta Smith who stated that the Fair:
‘proved that just beyond the borders of the professional art world there lived a parallel universe of art-making, every bit as good as the insider one. And so much wilder and more diverse in every way. Year after year, the Outsider Art Fair hammered this point home... It played a crucial role in changing the shape of modern and contemporary art.’
Click here to see Outsider Art Fair photos by Asuka Morii.
Click here for more photos of the Outsider Art Fair.
Museum of Sex
Steve Ashby
Another major event in a buzzing week of Outsider Art receptions, lectures and exhibitions was the opening of KNOWN/UNKNOWN curated by Frank Maresca at the Museum of Sex, showing erotic works by established outsiders such as Royal Robertson, Henry Darger and Morton Bartlett, photographs of Von Bruenchein's wife Marie as well as the rough assemblages of sexual acts by Steve Ashby. Anonymous objects included sex objects, shop figures and erotic sculptures.
MUSEUM OF SEX
233 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016
www.museumofsex.com
Christie's Outsider Art Auction
William Edmondson
Christie's major outsider auction of the year took place in New York on the Friday of the Fair and raised over one million dollars in sales. William Edmondson’s Lion achieved $511,500, while a large monument stone carving by Raymond Coins sold for $68,750, a record for his work.
Raymond Coins
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FEATURED ARTIST:
Martín Ramírez (1895–1963)
Martín Ramírez, a Mexican immigrant to the USA, was considered a virtually mute schizophrenic. Hospitalised in 1930, he began to draw only 13 years before his death. His first works were confiscated and destroyed at the end of each day by the hospital authorities but the arrival of a psychology lecturer, Dr Tarmo Pasto, brought encouragement and materials.
With Pasto’s help, Ramírez began to create larger, free-scale compositions. He rapidly developed his own distinctive personal style. An important feature of his work was his use of linear frames and concentric curves encircling a central figure, the contoured lines giving a sense of depth and perspective. Most of the central figures in his artworks are human, often a lone horseman or sometimes a woman, occasionally a train or an animal.
portrait: Phyllis Kind Gallery
above: Untitled, c. 1960-63, Ricco/Maresca Gallery
Many theories abound concerning Ramírez’s frames and their meaning: some argue a sexual significance while others stress the importance of Ramírez’s background, his experience of the Mexican landscape and folklore surrounding Emiliano Zapata, Mexico’s revolutionary hero. Ramírez worked on whatever materials came his way, including wrappers, waste paper and magazine pages. He left 340 drawings in total, some as large as 12 ft / 4 m in height.
Martín Ramírez is featured in our Outsider Art Sourcebook.
Untitled, n.d., Ricco/Maresca Gallery, copyright on this work is retained by the Estate of Martín Ramírez