From Outside

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In 1932 in Copenhagen, Leon Trotsky delivered what was to be his last public speech.

Reflecting on the future of humanity he had this to say:

"It is true that humanity has more than once brought forth giants of thought and action who tower over their contemporaries like summits in a range of mountains.

The human race has a right to be proud of its Aristotle, Shakespeare, Darwin, Beethoven, Goethe, Marx, Edison and Lenin. But why are they so rare?

Above all because almost without exception they came out of the upper and middle classes. Apart from rare exceptions, the sparks of genius in the suppressed depths of the people are choked before they can burst into flame.

But also because the process of creating, developing and educating, a human being have been and remain essentially a matter of chance, not subjected to consciousness and will."

The exhibition 'Outsiders' is a rich collection of these sparks of genius from the suppressed depths of the people demonstrating brilliantly how human creative power can survive even the most extreme forms of alienation.

Not a school The 'Outsiders' are not a school or movement of art in any usual sense. The work shown here has been assembled from the artists' private collections, from mental hospitals and institutions and even from commercial galleries.

The organisers of the exhibition have set themselves the task of presenting a collection of work by creators immune or resistant to the surrounding culture.

The exhibition itself is remarkable. Over 40 artists are represented by paintings, drawings, sculptures, models and assemblages of astonishing inventiveness and originality. On this ground alone it can be unreservedly recommended.

But there is much more interest us than just the Joel Negri: Charrette display of novel works. As revolutionaries we will be concerned with the relationships between the content of the work and the social context in which it is produced.

'Outside' is not an absolute value but rather one pole on a social scale.

The purest example of alienated creativity in the exhibition are probably the pencil drawings of the artist 'Max' who has spent most of his life in psychiatric care.

Many of the artists have spent at least some of their time in mental institutions but others maintain a normal working life; devoting their non-working hours to their art.

Alienation The degree of social alienation to be found in their ways of working ranges all the way from the totally formalised abstract paintings of Augustin Lesage to the explicit social criticism in the tableaux of Francis Marshall.

It is interesting to consider the extent to which the art works on show reflect the stress of the proletarian condition.

In the cases of several of the artists the question cannot be easily answered.

The paintings and drawings that we see are representations of the artists' hallucinations or visions, whose origins we can only guess at.

Compulsion This is certainly true of many of the institutionalised artists, but also ot others who become subject to some compulsion to take up art work.

Augustin Lesage; for

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SOCIALIST PRESS. - P:2E