Self-taught Artist Research Articles

Analytical Study of Modupeola Fadugba’s Paintings

Modern Nigerian art emerged through formal and informal training: formal art training includes the artistic knowledge acquired within the four walls of classrooms. Informal art training, on the other hand includes apprenticeship and self-taught systems. Self-taught artists have no known masters, but are naturally talented. The paper focuses on Modupeola Fadugba, a female self-taught painter. It adopted qualitative research design, using historical and descriptive approaches to discuss Fadugba’s paintings with particular emphasis on her background, style, theme and media. It was discovered that Fadugba is a realistic painter whose major theme is agitation. Through her works, she agitated for better condition for Nigerian women who have always been at the receiving end of cultural, political and social impediment in the country.

NEW FACTS ABOUT THE LIFE AND WORK OF THE FIRST RUSSIAN RESTORER A.F. MITROKHIN (1765-1845)

Restoration is one of the most important areas in preserving the world’s cultural heritage. Th e 19th century is a landmark in the history of restoration. At that time, it turned from a private practice of self-taught artists into a real scientifi cally based discipline. Many European countries have faced the problems of cultural heritage preservation, and everywhere they were solved in diff erent ways, depending on local peculiarities and experience. Th is article deals with previously unknown facts from the life and activity of the fi rst Russian restorer Andrei Filippovich Mitrokhin, who was born and studied painting in the town of Toropets. He served as a simple soldier, then on duty he ended up in Saint Petersburg, where he was soon granted a valet at the Hermitage. His career developed under Franz Ivanovich Labensky, who assumed the position of chief curator of paintings in the Hermitage Gallery in 1797. Mitrokhin’s role in the history of Russian restoration and, in particular, the Hermitage cannot be overestimated. He not only restored paintings and trained several apprentices, but also worked independently on the development of new methods of restoring paintings. By mastering new techniques and methods of mechanical restoration, Mitrokhin and his students managed to preserve more than a thousand paintings from the Hermitage collection, many of which are painting masterpieces. Unfortunately, some aspects of Mitrokhin’s biography, especially his life outside the Hermitage, have long been overlooked by scholars. This paper examines the problem of his alleged date of birth, family and friendship ties, etc. Th e archival data cited by the author allow us to take a fresh look at Mitrokhin as a restorer, and also shed light on some socio-cultural aspects of his time.

Uplifting Community and Incorporating Reuse in Conservation Planning for the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Sculpture

ABSTRACT In 2023 the Noah Purifoy Foundation received a Mellon Foundation Grant to develop, with conservators, an innovative and thoughtful conservation plan for the over 100 sculptures at the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Sculpture. Located in the high desert of Joshua Tree, California, USA, it encompasses four hectares of rural art space where Purifoy lived and worked from 1989 until his death in 2004. Although Purifoy was a trained artist, his works also draw from his time as a US Navy Seabee and the tradition of Black self-taught artists from the American South. His artworks were never complete, but alive, and in an ongoing conversation among him, nature, and material. Amidst the physical challenges of addressing found material assemblage in a challenging landscape, the project also requires bringing stakeholders and knowledge bearers into conversation to determine an appropriate ‘patina’ of weathering for the works. To achieve this, the project involves identifying Purifoy's definition of community, reuse, and interaction with the natural landscape into the conservation plan. The project also included drone mapping as a documentation tool alongside condition surveys and photographic documentation. Being led by a group of racially diverse conservators who are centering community involvement in the work helps the team mimic Purifoy’s own commitment to community engagement. This project has the potential to act as a model for the development of conservation plans for other sites of contemporary sculpture, especially those in remote locations or those focused on African American artists.

Federico Fellini’s effect in Argentine cinema: The case of Leonardo Favio

A self-taught artist initially trained alongside Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, and considered today by both his country’s critics and his peers as one of the most important Argentinean directors, if not the most important, Leonardo Favio (1938–2012) often expressed his views on Italian cinema and Federico Fellini’s films without openly acknowledging their effect on his films. Despite this positioning, I intend to illustrate in this article how Favio’s cinematic universe has been traversed and shaped by Italian cinema, as by a red thread. More precisely, I aim to highlight how Favio, after incorporating several themes, characters and approaches of neorealist cinema in his only short and in his first film, included dialogues with Fellini’s cinematic universe in almost all his subsequent releases. The encounter with the cinema of Italian Maestro, without ever diminishing the originality and specificity of Favio’s films, turns them into a sort of resonance box for Fellinian echoes.

TRENDS IN THE FINE ARTS OF TATARSTAN IN THE 1970-1990S ON THE EXAMPLE OF NARKIS PONOMAREV’S CREATIVITY

he article is devoted to the late Soviet period of fine arts in Tatarstan — a republic with rich avantgarde traditions, which was characterised by extraordinary intensity of artists’ creative life during the 1970–1990s. Today, this period of art, as a regional version of the second wave of the avant-garde, still remains insufficiently studied and requires more detailed and scrupulous study and understanding. The topic is considered on the example of one of the most original painters of Kazan of the second half of the 20th century — Narkis Ponomarev (1946–1996), who is considered by the author to be among the unofficial circle of artists. The study introduces the personality of Ponomarev as a self-taught artist and autodidact into the scientific context for the first time. It is argued that, despite the lack of the master’s professional art education and the resulting difficulties (lack of recognition in the artistic community, criticism from official art critics and officials, inability to exhibit, and so on), he managed to form and develop a self-sufficient and original art. Avant-garde tendencies in the artist’s work are identified and substantiated based on an analysis of more than 60 Ponomarev’s works mainly from private collections. Turning to the heritage of Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, German expressionists, etc., without copying, only focusing on them, Ponomarev developed his own artistic concept. Using a variety of bright colours, free volumetric strokes, turning to marginal subjects or lyrical landscapes and fantastic images, he imbued his works with simplicity and primitiveness, in the good sense of the word, of the image itself. It is noted that creativity, which gained its fame and recognition only in the post-Soviet period, was necessary for Ponomarev as a way of understanding the world around and oneself, as a therapeutic impulse for one’s own alienation. The purpose of this article is to trace the evolution of the artist, to reveal the role and significance of Ponomarev’s creative activity in the artistic life of Tatarstan in the 1970–1990s. The presentation of new trends and the introduction of new names into scientific circulation will help to identify paradoxes and facets in the history of the second wave of avant-garde in the era of the USSR.

SPATIAL ARCHETYPES IN THE ARTISTIC WORLD OF V.E. SAVKIN AND YU.D. DEEV

The language of naive painting, like verbal, is a universal communicative system, which gives reason to use a diachronic approach to explore its content arising from the depths of human nature. Being a combination of historical experience and psychological energy, the archetype becomes a symbolic unit of the analysis of naive paintings. The universality of the archetype is manifested in its ability to be realized in different time contexts, which makes it a very attractive subject of research in the works of naive artists of the second half of the XX century. Repeated reference to the archetype of the “ideal city” accelerates its adaptation to new cultural realities, becoming a method of interaction of a self-taught artist with the world. The relevance of the research is related to the interest in the implementation of the utopian project of the city within the framework of modern art space. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time the archetype of the ideal city will be considered in the works of naive painting by artists V.E. Sakiyan and Yu.D. Deev. The research is aimed at studying the diachronic aspect of the creative interpretation of the «ideal city» archetype in the images of Russian artistic culture.

Colonial Legacies: Contemporary Lens-Based Art and the Democratic Republic of Congo by Gabriella Nugent

Colonial Legacies: Contemporary Lens-Based Art and the Democratic Republic of Congo by Gabriella Nugent

Transacting the Modern in the Works of Segun Aiyesan, a Self-Taught Nigerian Artist

Despite the embodied presence of self-taught art in Nigeria’s contemporary art space, the contributions made by self-taught artists in advancing the modernist landscape of contemporary art in Nigeria have remained largely understudied. Employing historiography and stylistic analyses, this article examines the modernist affirmations in the art of Segun Aiyesan, a self-taught Nigerian artist. It traces his artistic development as well as the various factors that influenced and shaped the modernist sensibilities evident in his art. Situating the discourse within the idiosyncrasies of Nigerian and Western art traditions, the study highlights how Aiyesan’s eclectic and experimental approach to art, in conjunction with the his effectual application of artistic talent and imagination, enabled him transact his own brand of modernism, and how its stylistic and aesthetic registers offer a deeper understanding ot the multifarious landscape of modern Nigerian art. Key attributes that frame Aiyesan’s art practice include the use of unconventional painting formats, multiple engagements of a particular subject matter using diverse compositional frameworks, and the continuous re-appraisal and re-invention of formal language. Thus, his art is very dynamic, expressive and constantly evolving.

“More than Just a Poet”: Konstantin Batiushkov as an Art Critic, Art Manager, and Art Brut Painter

This paper focuses on the Russian Golden Age author Konstantin Batiushkov’s involvement with fine arts. He is recognized as an exquisite elegist, an immediate predecessor of Alexander Pushkin in poetry, and “a pioneer of Russian Italomania.” Much less known is that Batiushkov was always deeply involved with painting, drawing, and sculpture—not only as a poet but as Russia’s first art critic, an ad-lib art manager, who worked on behalf of the President of the Russian Academy of Arts Aleksei Olenin, and an amateur artist. The paper offers addenda to the commentary on his essay devoted to the 1814 academic exhibition, commonly referred to as the earliest significant example of Russian art criticism. Many of Batiushkov’s extant paintings and drawings belong to the time when he was mentally insane. Since he was a self-taught artist, his visual works of this period can be categorized as early examples of art brut.

Matthew Higgs interviewed by Andrew Hunt

This interview considers Matthew Higgs’s role in programming work by self-taught artists and those with developmental disabilities within the context of White Columns, a non-profit artist-run space located in Chelsea, New York City. The conversation describes the active support of work before any critical or institutional consensus emerges around it and explores how painting by self-taught artists and those with developmental disabilities can provide a productive counterpoint to self-reflexive work or art more critical of the narrative of painting as a medium. The term ‘outsider’ is also scrutinized as a useful generalization for painting that operates outside of conventional forms of education and existing foundational narratives in culture. Also discussed is the impact of exemplary historical curators and dealers in the United States and Germany who serve to act as model ‘maverick iconoclasts’.

Minor painting: Outsiders and outliers

The editorial surveys the current terrain of contemporary self-taught and outsider art. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s Towards a Minor Literature to suggest a specific category of minor painting, the text discusses how museological discourse on outsider art that developed over the twentieth century has been transformed over the past decade by large museum exhibitions and smaller community organizations’ activities. These include key examples such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington’s exhibition Outliers and American Vanguard Art curated by Lynne Cooke, and White Columns’s exemplary programme that supports visionary and self-taught artists in New York City. The text outlines how these examples alongside curatorial activism and reappraisal have attempted to recalibrate art history and provides an analysis of the inclusion of outsider and self-taught art in biennales such as Venice, quinquennials such as Documenta and small publicly funded spaces with a desire for equality and inclusion.

Patrick Reel: A Life in Paint

Patrick Reel: A Life in Paint John O’Hagan1 (bio) I first met Patrick Reel around fifteen years ago. Initially I was drawn to the quaintness of and the atmosphere in the shop, house, studio, and gallery. In time we were delighted to become regular visitors to Ludlow St to meet Patrick and his sister Esther, and we became familiar with his wonderful life of artwork, the subject matter of a current retrospective exhibition of Reel’s work in the State Apartment Galleries in Dublin Castle. The purpose of this short essay is to tell the ‘story’ of some of the main developments impacting on Reel over his long and distinguished career as an artist. What is remarkable is that the quality of his artistic output has if anything reached new heights into his eighties. The setting for his life and work though are such an essential part of this man, the article will start there. 12 Ludlow St and the Oriel Café and Gallery You enter the house of Patrick and his sister Esther from Ludlow St in Navan, through the quaint shop there. As poet Tom French noted. The little red light on the CCTV camera glimmers like a sanctuary lamp. Esther will be along presently when she is finished on the phone, so you have time to stand and read the labels on the transparent sweet containers – Bullseyes, Butterscotch, Bon bons, Pear drops, Rosy apples, Brandy Balls, Cola Cubes, Clove rock, Cough Drops, Mint Imperials, Glucose Barley. The passageway leads between a glass cabinet in which china is arrayed on glass shelves and a wall shelved with 4lb jars of sweet, to living quarters. Leaving the confectionery behind you pass the low coal fire in the living room and enter the demesne of oils, charcoal, linen, paper, board, canvas, card, wood, and light.2 The house is a listed Georgian building, directly opposite St John’s Church of Ireland in the centre of Navan, where time seems to have stood still. Again, to quote French: God is in the house. It is less a case that you have stepped out of time than that the digital age has not crossed this threshold. Its wonders are [End Page 148] superfluous to this house’s needs. In a very real sense, the way things are is the way things used to be, and all the change that happens, occurs internally. French concludes with a further evocation of what so many people experience when they enter the Reel house: I think again of the upstairs room, the view, the silence, the smell of paint. Out of silence and seeing the images come and find their form through him. He has stopped time in the process, and his sensibility is one that has been honed by silence and seeing and dedication. Now, after more than half a century of ‘going at it’, approaching the quiet centre of his self, nothing is beyond him. What happened over that half century and more when Reel was ‘going at it’ in his painting is the subject matter of what is to follow. As the story of his life unfolds it does appear that nothing is beyond him, and remarkably still so well into his eighties. 1960s to early 2020s Patrick suffered prolonged ill-health earlier in his life. He turned this misfortune to good effect though by taking up a career as a self-taught artist, following the interest he had developed in the local De La Salle Primary School in Navan.3 By 1960 he was able to hold a one-man exhibition of eighteen realist paintings in the Navan Technical School.4 As early as 1963 a painting by Patrick Reel, ‘Portrait of a Young Girl’, was hailed as a beautiful portrait, which aroused ‘keen interest and admiration’ among viewers at a Boyne Valley Festival Art Exhibition, it being a highlight of the cultural calendar of the time.5 This early promise was highlighted again in a Meath Chronicle article in 1964. The article stated that ‘Patrick has been imbued with a remarkable flair for painting since he was a young boy attending the local De La Salle Brothers’ School’. By...

Anthony Mannix

The Australian artist Anthony Mannix (1953–) has been publishing and exhibiting his writings, artworks, and artist’s books since the early 1980s. As a self-taught artist with lived experience of diverse mental health, or what Mannix prefers to call “mixed realities,” a question has been asked repeatedly of his work: is it connected to the broader conventions, institutions, and networks which make up the contemporary art world? In this essay, Mannix’s interest in traditions of art which rebelled against conventions; his efforts to set up novel exhibition structures within which his work could be appreciated; and the acerbic critiques within his work of the mental health system are understood as forms of secession through which the artist consciously sought to establish alternative institutions and paradigms for the production and reception of his art.

Abbe Schriber. Review of "Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America" by Katherine Jentleson.

Abbe Schriber. Review of "Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America" by Katherine Jentleson.

Sauveur Galliéro et la Génération du Môle :

This article addresses the question of identity issues underpinned in the affirmation of an Algerian painting through the figure of Sauveur Galliéro (1914-1963). As a self-taught artist and leader of the "Generation of the Môle of Algiers," he was a major intercessor between European and indigenous communities. At the heart of artistic, political and social issues, he holds a singular and plural position. The personal archives of the artist and a review of the colonial press allow us to analyze the reception of his work between Paris and Algiers, with the assumption that it bears the seeds of an open “Algerianity”. Free of any colonialist perspective, taking up elements of North African and European traditions, it is indeed anchored in a local and universal topos: the artist's relationship to the sea.

Shaker Vision: Seeing Beauty in Early America. By Joseph Manca

Shaker Vision: Seeing Beauty in Early America. By Joseph Manca

PCN Art Brut Series No. 19, Artwork Description.

Among themes in Japanese art is what we call “Hyakkiyakko” or Monsters Haunting at Night, which depicts demons and ghosts that roam around at night. Ukai's work is a modern version of Hyakkiyakko, so to speak. The human figures do not live in the modern era, as they wear topknots; they lived in Japan more than 150 years ago, before the Edo period. Among the people are dinosaurs, animals, insects, and cartoon characters. What appears to be dinosaurs are smaller than humans, so they look more like dolls. Some of them have animal faces, but you can tell that they are toys by looking at their bodies. These dolls and toys are given a sense of life in this vibrant piece. What is intriguing is the presentation of “movement”. In the case of this work, the movement to the left diagonally downward is formed mainly by the posture of human figures. At the same time, however, while directing their body along the downward left axis, some are gazing at the upper left or upper right. Also, you see some even moving in a rightward direction, as if to resist the overall flow. The intricate interplay of postures and gazes of creatures in a wide range of sizes and types contribute to the charm of this piece. The artist Ukai, born in 1995 and now living in Shiga Prefecture, has been a member of Atelier Yamanami, a welfare facility for artists with intellectual disabilities and autism, since 2014. In 2020, his work titled “Yokai” (meaning “monster” in Japanese), created in 2019, was acquired by the American Folk Art Museum, which is known for its excellent collection of self-taught art.

Toward a Common Configurative Impulse

Brazilian art critic Mário Pedrosa’s theorization of art’s affective power, whereby the relational contract with the spectator is neither rational nor purely visual but is infused with feeling, was decisive for understandings of geometric abstraction as expressive in the 1950s. “Toward a Common Configurative Impulse” turns to another modernism, nestled alongside the geometric ones that would come to define the aesthetic of artists associated with Concrete Art in these years. Beyond Concrete Art, Pedrosa’s modernism also encompassed the creative production of diverse practitioners, among them, popular artists, self-taught artists and psychiatric patients (the latter is the subject of my book Learning from Madness: Brazilian Modernism and Global Contemporary Art). With this in mind, this essay tracks the historical and discursive origins for such an inclusive modernism and how Pedrosa’s embrace of different artistic subjectivities calls for a necessary shift in the historiography of Brazilian modernism at mid-century.

Introduction Tutorial for the Indigo Artists Gallery Ireland - Digital Marketing for Health Professionals (Presentation Slides)

This workshop was created for a local art group, consisting largely of a collection of nursing and health professionals, looking to attract more attention to their art program. Taking to their art in their downtime and retirement, this community of professionally trained and self-taught artists often holds charity events to raise money for causes in need, and exhibits at local cultural events. Their next step was to take their talents and awareness building to the digital domain. Step by step, this 6-hour workshop showed the group how to take to the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms to help develop a social media plan for their work and sponsored exhibitions throughout the annual calendar. Their chosen channel Facebook now helps to facilitate their marketing program of creative working and fundraising. Indeed this workshop has received almost 7000 reads on ResearchGate, and for a small group of hobbyists or part-time professionals it will be most instructive.

Francis Place (1647–1728) and his collection of works on paper

Abstract Within the modest archive of materials relating to the artist Francis Place at Hospitalfield House in Arbroath is an eighteenth-century notebook listing a selection of drawings by Place and others, which were inherited by his daughter Frances Wyndham. Although Place’s original and significant collection of prints, drawings and paintings is now widely dispersed, the drawings notebook at Hospitalfield and a corresponding notebook listing intaglio prints go some way to reconstructing the contents of his studio or ‘painting room’ at York, and aid our understanding of the influences that informed this largely self-taught artist. The details in the drawings notebook of sketches now lost or in private hands also greatly develop Place’s known oeuvre in this medium; evidence is provided for a far broader range of subjects, including nude figure studies and biblical subjects, than has previously been acknowledged.