Project 2: Josephine Baker

For project 2 my historical figure is Josephine Baker. Below I attached a youtube clip of her most famous dance, the Banana Dance, so everyone has some idea of who/what I am talking about.

Re: Outsider Art

Yeah, I definitely had to look up outsider art. I found some really interesting things. A lot of the outsider art that I found was weird and bizarre, but simple at the same time. It reminded me of the year-long exhibit that just ended at the American Visionary Art Museum in Bmore called What Makes Us Smile? I saw the exhibit this summer AND it was my first time visiting the AVAM.

The exhibit was awesome! It was full of fun and funny drawings, sculptures, paintings, videos, and more. It was particularly interesting because the works featured in the exhibit weren't all created by "artists." Some of the work was done by people outside the traditional art world like comedians and writers. Here's one of my favorite illustrations featured in the exhibit:

I think this exhibit showed how a different perspective can completely change the quality of art.

Re: Outsider Art

I wasn't really aware of what Outsider Art was or that it even existed. After reading the blog entry I quickly headed over to wikipedia.org. Darger's story is quite amazing and sad at the same time. The documentary is now on my list of things to watch (when I have time). I think it's fantastic that his art and story are now being shared with the world.

An interesting fellow I have come across is Daniel Johnston. I'm not sure if he falls under the Outsider Art umbrella, but he came to mind when reviewing what exactly Outside Art was. He was the subject of the 2008 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. I attached an interview with him below. He writes and sings folk music and also is an artist. Here is his website if anyone has time to take a gander.

I had to really think about your question, because I don't think that I follow any outsider designers/artists. My interests are pretty mainstream, but I'd like to expand them. I do however love to look at other graduate students' work. I don't know if any of you have ever checked out the graphic design work done by the grad students at MICA, but some of their stuff is really fantastic. Here is the link to all of the graduate work: http://www.mica.edu/Browse_Art/MICA_Artists/Graduate_Students.html. I'm not an illustrator by any means, so I find the illustrated work really fabulous. I really like this piece. I almost can't tell if the pieces of paper are actually there or not.

Outsider Art

First, this post is fantastic. I have never heard of Harvey Darger and his work is simply amazing. I am planning a trip to the American Folk Art museum to see his work in person. Recently I came upon the work of Vivian Maier. She is a photographer with no formal training who took over 100,000 photographs of New York City and Chicago over her career. Her photographs were discovered in 2007 by historian John Maloof.

She is an untrained photographer, and most of her work was found as undeveloped film, but her photographs are masterful. Not only is the composition and exposure amazing, but every photograph captures the era.


http://www.vivianmaier.com/

Re: Outsider Art

Sufjan Stevens' 2010 album Age of Adz features art from the outsider Royal Robertson and also draws inspiration from Robertson. While the album is about Sufjan himself it explores themes from Robertson's life and work. Some of Robertson's work is on permanent collection at The American Visionary Art museum as well as several other museums. He died in 1997.

As a side note - he's really interesting to read about. He was born in 1936 and lived in Louisiana as a sign maker. Him and his wife had 11 children. She cheated on him, left him, took the kids and became a minister. He either was or became a self proclaimed prophet and had visions of aliens, the end days, etc. A lot of his art had to do with his wife or women in general.

I would have never known about Royal Robertson but after I got into Sufjan Stevens' and got the new album, a friend told me that he had heard that Sufjan was inspired by a schizophrenic artist.

The documentary Make is about several artists, including Royal Robertson.

MAKE the documentary from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.

Age of Adz:

I should probably say here that I did google "outsider art" before I started to write up this post - if you need a refresher, here's the Wiki link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art

Project 3 (Director Series)

First off, here's a great link of a movie poster series.

http://lizrawr.tumblr.com/day/2011/09/06

Second, I wanted to add the trailers to the movies I was doing.

Movies:

Hannah Takes the Stairs

Nights and Weekends

Alexander the Last

Director:

Joe Swanberg