[ 夢土上 ]

It is an exhibition review of Martín Ramírez's show at The American Folk Art Museum from January 23, 2007 through May 13, 2007. It is an assignment of an art seminar class.

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Outside of What ?
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A Review of a Retrospective of Martín Ramírez at
The American Folk Art Museum
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Martín Ramírez (1895–1963), who has 97 selected drawings in the show at The American Folk Art Museum, was a tragic Mexican American artist. As many immigrants at that time, in 1925, he left his homeland and family, came to California in order to have a better job. At first he worked in a railroad company and mines, but a few years later he lost his job because of the Great Depression. One day in 1931, he was picked up by police on the street then sent to a state hospital, where he received a diagnosis of manic depression. After that, he had been moved to several different institutions, and until his death, he was confined and never went back to Mexico. On pieced together paper with whatever materials he could get, he did over 300 drawings in his restricted life. Most of them have stressful structures and parallel lines depicting Mexican Madonnas, cowboys, trains, tunnels and landscapes, which deeply refer to the features of his homeland that only appeared in his dream.

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Ramírez has a very unique artistic characteristic, and the exhibition is also very good. However, one of the interesting issues that frequently appears in the texts of the exhibition and reviews on press is about the term “outsider artist.” What is outsider artist, or we can say “self taught” artist instead as the review on The New Yorker mentions? This exhibition in someway tries to open a door for this outsider artist to have a seat inside the art history. The texts in the exhibition mentions the artist’s drawing have been sent to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, but never heard back. Now, this artist gets a retrospective exhibition in the American Folk Art Museum right next to MoMA (Some of the drawings are borrowed from Guggenheim Museum), reviews on many of important media, and his family who used to feel shamed by him flew from Mexico to see his work. He finally got reputations that he deserves, but is he becoming an insider artist?
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I recently think about some basic issues of my artistic life very often. Where is my art going to? What do I care about? How do my art communicate with audiences? Nowadays, In front of a piece of art, we usually try to “read” it rather than appreciate or experience it. We criticize art in critiques all the time, and there are too many intentions, meanings, implications or symbols behind the forms we need to figure out. If we don’t understand, we ask the artist for a “clear” statement. It is how insider artists learn art! However what do we make art for? What does art mean to us? When I look back on Ramírez, his art seems inherent and absolute, and I don’t think the questions that confuse me would bother him in any case. If he is an outsider artist, he is definitely outside of something else but art.
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The title of the review on The New York Times is “Outside In.” Even though the author thinks the insider-outsider distinction is null and void, but why did he make this title? Is outside in better than inside out? And what is the boundary between these two sides? Luckily I got a professional ticket to go to The Armory Show two week ago. Because of the day I went was for “professional” persons, who are successful artists, critics, and of course wealthy collectors, I didn’t have to crowd with numerous tourists and art students. The show was so-so and even worse than last year, but the people around me were so interesting. They all dressed up, looked fancy in black overcoats, or stylish hats and furs. Occasionally, I heard people discussed about how much they like a piece of art, with the same expression as when people see something interesting in the window of a department store. Are they insider? What are they inside of?
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Up to now, this review has opened up too many questions. Some of these questions might have obvious answers, but some are difficult to answer and the answers might vary. I am not going to answer them, but I think these questions illuminate many possibilities for me to step back and see the art world we are in a little clearly, which helps a lot when I am confused. These reflections of Martín Ramírez’s art and the term “outsider” are a reminder for myself of not getting lost in the way of art, and always remember that the most important thing is to live genuinely, and keep doing what I want to do.
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Reference:
- Brooke Davis Anderson, Daniel Baumann, Víctor M. Espinosa, Kristin E. Espinosa, Victor Zamudio-Taylor. (2007). The Exhibition Wall Texts. Available: http://www.folkartmuseum.org/default.asp?id=1805. Last accessed 5 March 2007.
- Roberta Smith. (January 26, 2007). ART REVIEW; Outside In. The New York Times.
-Peter Schjeldahl. (January 29, 2007). MYSTERY TRAIN -Martín Ramírez, outsider. The New Yorker.