THIS IS THE PLACE FOR DISCOVERIES AND DISCUSSIONS OF THE MOST INVENTIVE ART FORMS – ALL KINDS OF ART THAT IS FAR-OUT, FANTASTIC, FREE-SPIRITED, FUN, FUNKY, PHENOMENAL AND GOOD FOR THE SOUL.
RECENT FEATURES
**ROB OBER: NO IDEOLOGY, PLEASE. THIS ART IS REAL.
“I am suspicious of art informed or directed by ideas or any ideology,” the American artist Rob Ober says. Keeping it real, authentic, shot through with a real pulse, and wildly colorful, Ober’s work feels irresistibly spontaneous and fresh. See. React. Paint. Here, the artist, who grew up all over the place, shares some thoughts about his art. Note to self: We’re in love with those gators. Click here to see article.
**JAMAICAN INTUITIVES: IT’S RAS DIZZY’S WORLD
Ras Dizzy (circa 1932-2008) was one of the most important of the Jamaican Intuitives, a group of self-taught artists whose works began to earn recognition in Jamaica in the late 1970s and notably contributed to shaping a sense of the postcolonial, independent island country’s national cultural identity. A selection of Dizzy’s works from a unique private collection. Click here to see article.
**A BIG, BOLD NEW BOOK: FRANÇOIS JAUVION’S TRIBUTE TO ART BRUT AND OUTSIDER ART MASTERS
In 2020, the French artist François Jauvion’s large-format book L’imagier singulier was published. It featured his own illustrations and texts by various specialists about the lives and accomplishments of numerous art brut and outsider artists. Now, a second volume of Jauvion’s big opus is here. See our overview of L’imagier singulier, Tome 2. Click here to see article.
**ARTIST CATHY WARD: IN LONDON, THE PSYCHIC, SOULFUL MESSAGES OF “THE ORACLES”
Like many art-makers, what with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic period and other concerns, the London-based artist Cathy Ward, who works in various media and genres, has wrestled with numerous, big challenges. Recently, as if purging the negative energy surrounding her, Ward sat down in a corner of her home to create a series of bold, mystical paintings. “They allowed me to reset myself,” she says. See a portfolio of these powerful new pictures. Click here to see article.
**PHOTOGRAPHER JOEL SIMPSON: CAPTURING NATURE’S BIZARRE CREATIVE SPIRIT — AND POWER
The photographer Joel Simpson travels widely in search of unusual natural rock formations and strange textures in the surface of the earth. Here, a selection of new photos from Simpson’s latest expeditions to the Southwest of the U.S.A. illustrates a theoretical approach he has developed to appreciating such striking images. As he notes, it leads viewers “from traditional landscape through abstraction, figuration, and finally to fiction." Click here to see article.
**OFF THE WALL: NEW YORK CITY STREET POETS AND VISIONARIES, THE KENNETH GOLDSMITH COLLECTION
In the 1980s, Kenneth Goldsmith, a poet and university professor, began tearing off anonymously made, handwritten ads, religious-themed proclamations, and oddball declarations that he found posted on walls and lampposts on the streets of New York City. A bemusing selection of such bizarre “poetry” was recently shown at Andrew Edlin Gallery. Click here to see article.
**GENEVA, SWITZERLAND: EMMANUEL HERZ’S JELLYFISH INVASION
Earlier this year, at the café/restaurant Remor in Geneva, Switzerland, we stumbled upon a stunning display of Emmanuel Herz’s festive “Fascinantes Méduses” (“Fascinating Jellyfish”), a group of sculptures and paintings that had taken over the old joint’s ceiling lamps and walls. We were smitten — and maybe also bitten. See out photo-filled report. Click here to see article.
THE VISIONARY BLIND ARTIST, HAWKINS BOLDEN
In retrospect, the Memphis-based, self-taught artist Hawkins Bolden’s powerfully stark, mixed-media assemblages may be seen as postmodernist appropriationist creations avant la lettre. In fact, though, no theory motivated their maker. Instead, as a recent SHRINE gallery exhibition reaffirmed, Bolden was both a sensitive, intuitive craftsman — and some kind of magician.
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NEW YORK CITY STREET ARTIST: ART & CONTROVERSY
New York City: Late this summer, on the median strip of an avenue in downtown Manhattan, an apparently homeless artist began painting a broad sidewalk and the exterior walls of a city-owned utility building. Eventually, city officials stepped in and took drastic action. See the artist Jon Waldo’s exclusive photo essay. Free access to this article.
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BACK TO THE APOCALYPSE WITH PAINTER NORBERT KOX
On the occasion of a recent retrospective exhibition of the late Norbert Kox’s paintings at the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay, the artist Cathy Ward, who knew the American artist and showed her work alongside Kox’s and Eric Wright’s in London in 2008, offers a personal remembrance of Kox and his aesthetic-apocalyptic vision. From the motorcycle gang to the art studio...
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BURT SHONBERG EXHIBITION, OHIO
On the occasion of the presentation of the first solo exhibition of the work of the California-based artist Burt Shonberg (1933-1977) in more than 50 years by the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick in Cleveland, Ohio, Sarah Fensom, brutjournal’s U.S.A. West Coast bureau chief, speaks with the show’s organizers and tells the complex tale of a maker of strange paintings who was influenced by the occult, the mythological, the extraterrestrial, and the psychedelic. Above, left to right: Shonberg, with his paintings; the actor Vincent Price; and production designer Daniel Haller on the set of the Roger Corman-directed movie House of Usher (1960).
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JOHN FOSTER EYES ART WITH EYES
Our pal John Foster, the talented graphic designer; longtime collector of outsider art, folk art, vernacular photography, and artistically striking whatchamacallits; and all-around thoughtful aesthete, has dipped into his big trunk and shared with us, in honor of this month’s “Eyes on October” theme, four beautiful pieces from his treasure trove. About the photo seen here, the St. Louis-based Foster says: “This darkroom-manipulated image of an eye floating inside a spinning, time-travel-like vortex is stunning.” See photos of all of John's selections from his holdings and his appreciative observations about them. With a wink and fluttering lashes we say, “We only have eyes for you, John.” Free access to this article.
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