I originally wanted to go to Poland as a matter of family heritage. But it turns out there is a ton to like there beyond the ancestral village. Quaint, baroque, modern, lovely, horrifying — the country’s history makes for a rich and varied experience. Click to see.
Continue readingCategory: Outsider Art
Roadside Poland
Like roadsides everywhere, Poland’s history and culture is spread all along the road, from the folky religious shrines of the countryside to the neon that once lit up its cities. Back to Poland index page
Continue readingStanley Szwarc Early Work
This gallery features a selection of mostly early pieces made by Stanley Szwarc. This work, dating to the 1980s or early 1990s, belonged to the late Rich Bowen, one of Stanley’s principal patrons, and came to me through the generosity of his family. Stanley’s creativity flowered from the beginning. You can see a large collection of his work in the galleries below or read more about Stanley.
Continue readingThe Rainbow Beach Carvings
The revetment and jetty at the south end of Rainbow Beach and adjacent to the northeast corner of the Sawyer Water Plant host more than 700 rock carvings, many made by lifeguards in the 1950s and 60s. These carvings represent a rich record of summer life at the beach as well as including a number of significant individual works of art. It’s also the location with the largest number of identifiable carvers. These galleries feature highlights from the Rainbow Beach carvings. Read the Chicago Lakeshore Art Story
Continue readingThe Morgan Shoal And La Rabida Rock Carvings
Many of Chicago’s oldest lakefront carvings are on the badly deteriorated revetments along Morgan Shoal in Hyde Park. The more than 1,000 carvings there, between 45th and 50th Streets in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, are in imminent danger of being lost. This section of lakefront is in terrible condition, with many of the old rocks topsy turvy and falling into the lake. The condition of the revetments is such that they cannot be rehabilitated, but that does not mean the rocks and their carvings must be abandoned. The city is proceeding with a project to rebuild and expand the shoreline here,
Continue readingA Joe “40,000” Murphy Update
I believe the first content I posted to this Web site was a piece about Joe “40,000” Murphy, the Chicago usher who created an art environment inside his South Side house and nearby five-car garage. That was in 1994, not long after I had acquired more than 700 pieces of art previously salvaged from Murphy’s property in anticipation of its sale. Murphy had died in 1979. Bits and pieces of the work have been exhibited in the years since then, most notably at Randolph Street Gallery in 1994, Aron Packer Gallery in 1997 (both Chicago) and in a traveling show
Continue readingReview: The Tom Patterson Years
The Tom Patterson Years: Cultural Adventures of a Fledgling Scribe, by Tom Patterson. Hiding Press/Jargon, 208 pages, 10 pages of photographs, 2021. ISBN 9781733709897. Paperback, $18 If you follow the literature of the folk/outsider/self-taught art field, then you know the name of Tom Patterson. He wrote the definitive book about Eddie Owens Martin/St. EOM and Pasaquan, and, with John Turner, the first major book about Howard Finster, among other achievements. Now he’s written a memoir that includes numerous interesting anecdotes from his encounters with Martin, Finster and other figures from the world of folk and outsider art, including the folklore professor
Continue readingReview: The Gallery of Miracles and Madness: Insanity, Modernism, and Hitler’s War on Art
The Gallery of Miracles and Madness: Insanity, Modernism, and Hitler’s War on Art, by Charlie English. Random House, 336 pages, 16 pages of plates, 2021. ISBN: 9780525512059. Hardcover, $28 Charlie English begins his history of Nazi cultural preoccupations— – and the genocides that followed— – with the story of Franz Karl Buhler, a German blacksmith who turned painter after he was overtaken by mental illness and entered an asylum. He also was an artist collected by the pioneering psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn (who gave him the pseudonym Franz Pohl), and he was as well an early victim of Nazi genocidal policies. Prinzhorn, and his
Continue readingJack Barker’s Metal Art Fantasyland
I don’t typically love junk metal art, but every so often a maker brings enough imagination and creativity to bear that the work transcends its lawn-ornament origins. Tom Every and his Wisconsin Forevertron is one of the more famous examples of this. Jack Barker, whose metal art filled his Essex, Illinois, yard, did not work on Every’s monumental scale — physically or conceptually — but his creations were if anything weirder than Dr. Evermore’s. Barker’s use of materials could be disconcerting, as could his imagery. The scrap metal he used was more or less conventional, but the metal scraps he
Continue readingReview: Elijah Pierce’s America
Elijah Pierce’s America, edited by Nancy Ireson and Zoé Whitley, with contributions by Sampada Aranke, Theaster Gates and Michael D. Hall. The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, in association with Paul Holberton Publishing, London, distributed by the University of Chicago Press, 208 pages, 120 color plates, 2020. ISBN: 9781911300878. Hardcover, $50 To the long list of reasons to resent the pandemic beyond death, sickness and unemployment, of course, we can add missing the opportunity to see Elijah Pierce’s carvings in person at Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation. The retrospective ran from September 2020 to January 2021 and included more than 100 works. But pandemic
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