Enjoy The Experience

Welcome to a world of neglected musical misfits and bargain bin freaks; the LSD soaked lounge crooner, the astral trippin’ cowboy, the electronic porno balladeer, the psychedelic disco queen, the yodelling yoga teacher and the queer cult leader ......

For the last couple of weeks I've been leafing through an oddly enjoyable book called “Enjoy The Experience” by Johan Kugelberg. It's probably the most definitive handbook of 'odd' I've read. The book collects the lost fragments and faded dreams of a thousand or so obscure musicians who, despite having no record deal, released their own unique and occasionally brilliant recordings on an unsuspecting and largely indifferent world. It’s a fascinating story, populated by ordinary people with strange dreams and like the most interesting outsider art, the very best of these private press records have a raw immediacy and visionary power seldom heard (or seen for that matter) in the mainstream. If you're looking for a bumper book of weird and ‘out there’ graphic strangeness, this is the book for you. Unmediated by graphic design convention or artifice, many of the record covers function as highly illogical, off-kilter archetypes or pictorial missives of zoned-out eccentricity which perfectly mirror the highly personal and curious music contained within their respective custom made grooves. A plethora of weird gear idiosyncrasies elevate several of the designs beyond the mundane and into the sublime creating a ‘higher key’ vernacular graphic art of blurred amateur photography, awkward layouts, visionary typography and peaked ‘stare at the sun’ high school illustration.

Weird gear all round.

If you’re a seeker of eccentric vibrations from the late 1960s and 1970s this book is pretty much essential. Seek out.

“Enjoy the Experience” by Johan Kugelberg is published by Sinecure Books.

A Symbolic Composition Of The Spiritual World

Augustin Lesage was born in 1876 and spent his early adult life as a coal miner. In 1911, when he was thirty five, he heard a voice from the spirit world. It said “Un jour, tu seras peintre” which roughly translates as "one day, you will be a painter". The voices instructed him on every detail of his work, from the mixing of the colour to which brushes and size of canvas to use.

For the next several years, he worked in the coal mine by day and painted by night, letting the spirits guide his hand. His paintings were created in a highly repetitive and methodical manner, as he began in the upper right corner of the canvas and gradually worked across and the downwards until complete.  As the canvas was built around a roller frame, Lesage could not view the entire composition until the painting was finished. His legacy remains obscure despite leaving over 800 large scale paintings, as his work is seldom exhibited outside of France.

Alfred Wallis

I'd only seen one reproduction of a painting by Alfred Wallis before we went on our trip to Cornwall and to tell the truth I was struck dumbfounded when I saw them in the flesh. His paintings are intensely honest, powerful and spirited in their execution. I fell in love with them immediately. Alfred Wallis spent most of his working life as a fisherman. He claimed to have gone to sea aged nine and was involved in deep-sea fishing, sometimes sailing as far as Newfoundland in Canada. In 1890 he moved to St Ives in Cornwall, where he became a marine scrap merchant. He began painting at the age of seventy “for company” after the death of his wife. Wallis sold few of his paintings during his lifetime and lived in poverty until he died in the Madron Workhouse in Penzance. He was buried in Barnoon cemetery, overlooking St. Ives' Porthmeor beach and the Tate St Ives gallery. An elaborate gravestone, depicting a tiny mariner at the foot of a huge lighthouse – a popular motif in Wallis' paintings – was made from tiles by the potter Bernard Leach and now covers Wallis' tomb.  Jonny Trunk emailed me this morning with an odd bit of Wallis trivia, apparently Richard Attenborough sold a pair of Alfred Wallis paintings a few months ago.  So there you go.  Here's a few examples of his work.  I hope you like them as much as I do.

Tal R

Tal R is an Israeli born artist based in Copenhagen. I like his primitive scrapings. It reminds me of Madge Gill's work, which is always a good thing in my book.

The Extraordinary Mediumship Of Madge Gill

Madge Gill believed she could commune with the spirit world through the ritual of drawing.  Her intricate line drawings are thought to be a representation of herself or her lost daughter.   Born in 1882, this very peculiar English outsider created thousands of visionary works, many of which, depicted a woman lost in a hyper state of agitated pattern.

James Castle

The Museum Of Everything

From Primrose Hill, London to Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli in sunny Torino, the Museum Of Everything sure gets around.  This collection represents art produced outside the confines of the traditional art world by people not normally associated with the process of making art.  Outsider art was a term coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for 'art brut' (French:"raw art" or "rough art"), a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture.  Personally, I find the term 'outsider artist' misleading as it alludes to a division between those 'in' and those 'out' which by it's very nature has political implications.  This collection, showcases some wonderful examples of art which is both uplifting, intriguing, frustrating, poignant, enchanting, raw and honest made by people at the margins of society.

Jockum Nordström

Jockum Nordström is a Swedish artist best known for his collages, paintings, drawings and sculptures that knit together references to folk art and outsider art, jazz, surrealist collage, furniture and architectural design, human sexual habits and maritime lore.  What I like about his work is that it combines a childlike primitivism with incredible draughtsmanship.  Sadly, there are only two long out of print monographs which document his work.  Hopefuly another will go to press shortly.  Michael who runs one of my favourite blogs Stopping Off Place emailed me to say that there is also a great compilation of his first three children's books availiable from the Fine Little Day shop.