In Los Angeles, Sam Parker Gallery is presenting The Earliest Years: 1987-1989, an exhibition of the very first creations of the late, American self-taught artist Thornton Dial, Sr. (1928-2016). Parker’s showing of hitherto unseen Dial paintings on board, welded-metal sculptures, and sculptural furniture is the first-ever solo exhibition of his work on the U.S. West Coast. Organized by Phillip March Jones in collaboration with his new, New York-based March Gallery, the exhibition is accompanied by a catalog documenting a body of work that will come as a revelation to admirers of Dial’s history-informed, powerful artistic vision. Thornton Dial:The Earliest Years: 1987-1989 June 6–July 31, 2021 Sam Parker Gallery 2441 Glendower Avenue Los Angeles CA 90027 www.parkergallery.com

New to my collection is this carved and painted folk-art cane, which is believed to have been made by an African American carver somewhere in the American South and to date from around 1880. Measuring 37 inches in height and 2.5 inches in diameter, this rare object has the weight and the feel in the hand of a baseball bat.

Jean Dubuffet: Brutal Beauty May 17–August 22, 2021 Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS, www.barbican.org.uk In “Anticultural Positions,” a talk the French modern artist Jean Dubuffet presented at the Arts Club of Chicago in December 1951, he said, “[T]he values celebrated by our culture do not strike me as corresponding to the true dynamics of our minds. Our culture is an ill-fitting coat — or at least one that no longer fits us. It’s like a dead tongue that has nothing in common with the language now spoken in the street.” He observed, “I consider the Western notion of beauty completely erroneous. I absolutely refuse to accept the idea that there are ugly people and ugly objects. Such an idea strikes me as stifling and revolting.” Now, in the first major survey of Dubuffet’s art to be presented in the United Kingdom in over 50 years, the Barbican Centre has produced an illuminating examination of the work of one of modern art’s greatest inventor-provocateurs. From London, brutjournal’s correspondent, the artist Cathy Ward, reports.

Based in northern California, where she taught for many years at San José State University, Jo Farb Hernández has spent decades documenting environments created by visionary self-taught artists across Spain’s varied terrain. Her book Singular Spaces: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments was published in 2013; now she is working on a new volume that will examine 100 more unique, artist-made places. Exclusively for brutjournal, Hernández has invited us to dip into her notebooks and savor her revealing field work.