art smarts

Chapter 5. Training and Development

I am part of the disability movement in another way. I’m teaching classes to people with disabilities. That’s been an interesting process because the whole point of the class is to provide people with disabilities with an intro to art materials – to drawing, painting and sculpting – which is giving them the professional materials that everybody else is using as artists. And helping them learn how to use that material, so that they can continue.

I’ve found myself up against the very reason why I wanted to teach this course. That is, people perceive that people with disabilities don’t really need to have professional materials or to be taught these things, that maybe we should be teaching them crafts rather than treating them like any other artists, where you say, “Here’s the materials, let’s do some art.” That’s also coming from some of the students themselves, this sort of entrenched belief. I don’t feel that people with disabilities are taken seriously, even when they want to do art. It’s therapy, or it’s play, or it’s something to boost their self-confidence. Do you know what I mean? It’s not seen as work.
bernadine

I have my company, called Corpuscule Dance, with another woman, who comes from a classical and modern dance background, and a guy with contact dance and improvisation experience. Right now we give some dance classes in a rehabilitation centre – one day a week for seven weeks. Maybe we’ll do a weekend intensive worksho and maybe this summer some people from CandoCo will come to Montreal, and we will give a one-week intensive workshop. The rest of the time we will work, research, to present a piece in 2003. I hope we will give a performance here in the Théâtre Tangente: it’s a big theatre for young, contemporary artists. We have had very good feedback.
france

For most artists, their art education comes from a variety of sources, just like their inspiration. This is good; it gives them a wealth of experience to draw upon.

A friend gave me a guitar when I was sixteen. I’d been writing poetry since the age of nine. She taught me the chords C, G and D, and I explored variations based on those, experimenting by myself with both picking and strumming. Then I got some chord books to learn more on my own. I took guitar lessons and I sang and played bass drum with the Extraordinary Clown Band for a couple of years, where my musical ear was exposed to klezmer, jazz and circus music at the Children’s and Folk Festivals.
sylvi

The best words of advice I ever got from the comics were, “The first 100 shows do not count; that’s just work experience.” I’d watch these guys work and I’d say, “How do you get to that point, how do you reach that point of calm, of control?” And they’d always tell me the same thing: it was time and experience. I have watched the character of Gord Paynter emerge and evolve on stage. And that’s been very exciting. I come away sometimes saying, “You know, two years ago I could not have done that show. I couldn’t have done it.” Because it was beyond my skill level, my personality level. I used to tape-record all of my shows and play them back. And I would learn so much from a recording – where I blew a joke, or I’d discover it wasn’t really a joke at all.
gord

I did go once to a group – there were maybe twelve of us. Each of us would work and the artist there would comment on our work and make suggestions. But it was not theory. He didn’t teach us technique, and I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to learn how to make grey or to make green, because if it’s a recipe, it’s no fun. After a couple of years, I went to a series of intensive workshops for colour, composition – maybe three complete days – just to go and reassure myself, give myself some confidence. With those intensive workshops sometimes you pick up only ten percent of the content. But you go on working, and five or eight years later you think, “Oh, that’s what they meant by that.” Also, I never wanted to be like my teacher. You know, the best compliment for me is when you say, “I recognized your paintings when I saw them.” But if you tell me I remind you of the Group of Seven, it’s not a compliment. I really like those painters and I know how they influence us, but I never want to do the same colours, the same compositions as those men.
roger

Intuitive or Self-Taught Art

This kind of art is also sometimes called visionary, primitive, naïve or outsider art, although there are some differences in what each of the terms means. Generally, this type of art can be characterized by an innocent or “childlike” quality, unusual use of materials, wild subject matter, exuberant creativity and a lack of concern for mainstream art. In fact, creators of this work often may not even think of it as “art”– they’re just following their inner voice and natural instincts. They are creating directly out of personal vision, experience, memory or obsession, rather than from commonly accepted ideals.

The widespread awareness of forms of creativity that exist outside accepted cultural “norms” began with the research of psychiatrists early in the twentieth century. Dr. Hans Prinzhorn collected thousands of works by psychiatric patients and his book Bildernerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill), published in 1922, became an influential work among surrealists and other artists of the time. One artist who was particularly affected by the works Prinzhorn presented was the famous French artist Jean Dubuffet. Together with others, including André Breton, Dubuffet formed the Compagnie de l’Art Brut (raw art) in 1948.

During the 1970s, interest in works of art by untrained artists began to grow. Collectors and curators of this work started to group several other types of art and artists under the name “Outsider Art,” because the creators were outside the mainstream of the art community.

Some people feel that it is arrogant to assume that anything that doesn’t adhere to a typical Western system of expression is therefore “outside”. However, the term has stuck because it is a handy way to categorize work that seems to have different motivations and concerns than work produced by mainstream artists, and to identify a certain segment of what the art market is interested in.

Of course, becoming a part of the mainstream art market means that the outsider artists become “insiders”– and some would say they risk becoming “contaminated” by what they think the art world wants from them. These problems aside, though, the fact remains that our society has developed a deep appreciation for the fresh, honest and original creative expression of untrained artists.

There are many interesting websites about visionary and outsider art. Here are a couple to get you started:

www.interestingideas.com/out/out.htm
www.avam.org

Chapter 6. Technique and Adaptability