The “Outliers and American Vanguard Art” exhibit has just opened at the National Gallery of Art and will be on display until May 13.
“Outliers and American Vanguard Art,” curated by Lynne Cooke, is the National Gallery of Art’s latest exhibition which delves into the realm of “Outsider Art” -- or artwork created by self-taught and “naïve” artists who either have no formal educational training or little to no contact with the mainstream art world. [gallery type="rectangular" ids="6956,6960"] The exhibit is presented in three parts: “Folk Aesthetics Reconsidered” (1924 to 1943), “Commensurables and Incommensurables” (1968 to 1992), and “Determining Difference Differently” (1998 to 2013). Overall, “Outliers” brings together awe-inspiring pieces by more than 80 individual self-taught artists from the last century.
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Artwork of all types will be represented, including masterpieces created from junk shop items and run-down houses, like the sculptures by Bruce Conner, which binds worthless objects together with nylon. Conner's produced his works in 1950s' San Francisco amid the emerging underground Beat movement and eventually gained worldwide recognition.
“Outliers” also presents traditional brush-and-canvas paintings by artists such as Malvin Gray Johnson, whose output occurred during the Harlem Renaissance in New York. Paintings of Johnson’s depict “the sorrow songs” of the American South and re-imagine the African American Spiritual.
Events of the “Outliers of American Vanguard Art” exhibit include the “Boundary Trouble” lecture series program on February 16 and 17 and the “Avant-Garde to Underground: Outliers and Film” film series through March 16 and the
The free exhibit is open daily and will run until May 13 in the East Building of the National Gallery of Art.