outsider art • art brut • the unclassifiable • the avant-avant-garde
NOVEMBER 2022
WELCOME TO brutjournal!
SO EXACTLY WHAT ARE WE UP TO HERE?
WELL WE’RE INTERESTED IN FORMS OF ART AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION THAT BREAK THE MOLD; THAT ARE FRESH, DIFFERENT, EXPERIMENTAL, DARING, AND DEFY FAMILIAR LABELS; AND THAT, FOR ALL THEIR INNOVATION OR FAR-OUT FORM, UNABASHEDLY CELEBRATE AND REAFFIRM THE HUMAN SPIRIT.
SOUND GOOD?
DIRTY WHITE
STRAYING JUST A BIT TOO FAR
We’re not sure what to make of the candidates for inclusion in this sketchy category. Everything about them is kind of edgy and uncertain. Some extremely light tints — colors to which white has been added to lighten them — fall into this category, as do passages of broader vistas or swatches of larger, multicolored compositions.
Sometimes a quick glimpse of a color may result in reading it as white — instead of the milky pink, light tan, or almost-light-yellow that it really is. We’ll give these masqueraders and impostors a nod and a wink — but we’re on to their confounding behavior on and off the color charts!
The white on the painted-metal pole in the upper right-hand corner of this photograph is, literally, a dirty white. Photo by Edward M. GómezThe colors of this baby carriage, photographed by brutjournal’s London-based artist-correspondent, Cathy Ward, in a park in the British capital, dwell in the no-man’s-land between off-white, dirty white, and maybe a very light version of taupe.With hints of pink and of what might be described as a tint of salmon — yes, on some charts, “salmon” is a color — the splotch of paint that appears in this photograph is a candidate for inclusion in the “dirty white” category. Photo by Edward M. GómezThe patch of light-pink-inflected white on the left side of this image makes it a contender for inclusion in the “dirty white” category. Photo by David EnsmingerNever mind the quizzical function — or non-function — of this protective metal barrier on a Tokyo side street that is positioned so close to the exterior wall of a building that it seems to serve no purpose at all. It’s painted white and it’s very dirty. Consider it a member of the dirty-white club. Photo by Edward M. Gómez
