That the exhibition ”Thrift Store Paintings” is chockful of exceptionally bad paintings did not prevent it from becoming one of the most talked-about shows of the fall season in New York. It provoked commentary from the Village Voice to the Wall Street Journal, this after similarly ballyhooed showings in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
That the show has just opened in Chicago at the World Tattoo Gallery, under the aegis of the fledgling Society for Outsider, Intuitive, and Visionary Art, does not prevent many of those in the art community here from raising an eyebrow and saying in less-than-exultant tones, ”Oh, that.”
Which is not to say that the exhibition-more than 200 largely anonymous paintings found at thrift stores, none costing more than $25 and selected by Los Angeles artist Jim Shaw-is a negligible event. On the contrary, it raises a number of very pertinent questions about taste and quality, about the workings of the art market, about the very nature of artistic production, all of them quite relevant at this time or any other.
But Chicago has a long history of interest in the work of untrained artists, whether one calls them ”outsider” or ”naive” or folk artists, as well as dozens of collectors, some of them well-known artists themselves:
Roger Brown, Ray Yoshida, Don Baum and others. In a sense, then, it`s as if much of the rest of the country had just discovered something called
”skyscrapers” and now a traveling skyscraper show is on its way to the city that is already home to the Sears Tower, John Hancock Building, etcetera. Sure, we`re interested in skyscrapers, or works by untrained artists, we might say. That`s why we have so many of them.
It was Roger Brown, in fact, who was instrumental in bringing ”Thrift Store Paintings” here. ”I was given the catalog for Christmas last year by a friend of mine from LA, and I just flipped out over it,” he said. ”I thought, `Wow, there`s not a word in it, only these terrific pictures`-what better art book could you ask for?”
Shaw first put together the show for the Glendale Art Library in California; it then moved on to Contemporary Art Forms in Santa Barbara. Brown attended the opening there, struck up a conversation with Shaw and soon plans were made to bring the show here as the inaugural exhibition for the SOIVA
(the unwieldy title of the organization is in the process of being changed to ”Intuit.”)
As he did for the New York stop, Shaw will also curate a local section for the show, drawn from local collections-in this case, from collections of SOIVA members.
And like collectors here, Shaw is not interested in just any $10 painting. ”I`m looking for something strange, or driven, in the mind of the artist. Something disturbed, or weird-like some of those in the show that are kind of household images, little domestic scenes, but with something slightly dysfunctional about them.”
To that end, pictures such as ”Man and Girl at Table in Gray & Cranberry” seem meant to depict a simple idealization of home, but something twisted and ominous seeps through instead: A swollen river seen through the central picture window appears to be about to engulf the house;
trash overflows a wastebasket; a blood-red liquid spills from a cup atop the table; and most disturbing, incestuous hints appear in the postures and expressions of the man and girl. Dysfunctional, indeed.
In ”Robot Attacks Two Women,” the protagonist appears on the verge of attempting a thoroughly un-robot-like act with one half-dressed woman, while the second woman, breasts straining against her blouse, fires a pistol-the entire bizarre scene depicted in a manner suggestive of Tintoretto
illustrating pulp science fiction, with a bad hangover.
Save for a very few paintings, Shaw himself has titled the works, sometimes with more than a hint of facetiousness or deadpan humor. ”Strange Interstate Bondage Image” is both a hilarious title and an accurate one, describing anthropomorphized outlines of the state of Rhode Island lashed to the back of the state of California. ”Indian Maidens Frolic in Bikinis”
depicts, well, Indian maidens frolicking in bikinis. And for another, nothing more need be said than ”Fishing Lure with Woman`s Head.”
”When I did the show for the first time in Glendale,” Shaw said, ”they wanted to hang it themselves, and I wanted to make sure that if there was a signature the artist got credit, and that the people who lent works got credit too, because they`re not all my pieces. So I put together on the back of each picture a little Post-It note with the simplest possible explanation.
”I mean, especially with the portraits it`s a little hard to tell one
`Head` from another. But they liked the titles so much that they decided to use them in the show.”
Later, California painter Ed Ruscha approached Shaw about producing a book of the show. ”Ed liked the titles, too,” said Shaw, ”so they stuck.” A number of pictures in ”Thrift Shop Paintings” could be seen as third- or fourth-rate knock-offs of Salvador Dali or Rene Magritte, but Shaw doesn`t feel that lessens them. ”If they haven`t seen surrealist images per se, they`ve seen images based on surrealism. I don`t think anyone just sits down and puts a bunch of Salvador Dali infinity lines on a plane without having seen it in a movie or a Levi`s ad or a perfume ad or somewhere. I`ve always had a preference for surrealist work. I love the way that people taking off on surrealism feel free to do whatever they want to do.”
Perhaps more than anything else, it is that sense of absolute esthetic lawlessness, an anarchy bred of more than a disregard but a thorough ignorance of the rules of painting, that is the cynosure of ”Thrift Shop Paintings”
and their ilk. Unencumbered by such rules, untrained artists instead relay some intensely personal, if crudely rendered, vision. Fantasy, obsessive desires, an idiosyncratic version of the sublime embedded in an otherwise ridiculous picture.
These are some of the traits that have attracted Chicago artists to the work of outsiders and naives for years. A little more than a decade ago, that affinity found expression in an exhibition, much discussed in its day as well, entitled ”Bad Painting.”
But ”Thrift Shop Paintings” is all the rage these days not only for those reasons which have attracted local artists and collectors for years, but because it brings up issues that are more conceptual in nature.
For example, it becomes clear as one follows the critical history of
”Thrift Shop Paintings” that the issue of context-of where and how artworks are presented-has reared its ugly head a little higher each step of the way. Metro Pictures especially, is known for showing cutting-edge, big-name artists, many of whom take a rather cerebral approach to artmaking and still command high pricetags. Part of the punch the show packed in New York inevitably derived from its being shown in what must be considered an unusual venue for cheap paintings by unknowns rather than in a church basement or a swap meet (none of the pictures are for sale).
Shaw is aware of the contextual issue, although he professed to not be manipulating it. ”The show takes on different significance depending on where it`s shown,” he said. ”I was a little shocked at the way it fit into Metro Pictures-to me it was just another place to show it, and all of a sudden everybody was asking me about it as if it was this important thing, so it became this important thing because it was in this important place.”
Some have suggested that the exhibition as a whole, in the words of critic Peter Schjeldahl, ”amounts to a conceptual artwork on the cutting (or at least abrading) edge of contemporary sensibility.” That is, that it be considered Jim Shaw`s ”appropriated” set of artworks, a la Sherrie Levine`s rephotographs of Walker Evans photographs, or the disguised self-portrait photographs of Cindy Sherman (who happens to show at Metro Pictures).
Of course, in Chicago it may prove more difficult to advance such arguments, given the show`s venue. World Tattoo Gallery shows neither high-ticket nor high-concept nor high-gloss artwork, opting for a rather funky, gritty style reflecting that of its founder, Tony Fitzpatrick. (According to Cleo Wilson, publicity chairperson for SOIVA, Fitzpatrick was excited enough about the society`s mission that he offered the use of the space.)
Others have questioned Shaw`s attitude towards the pictures presented, seeing evidence of condescension or racism or worse. Here, though, it`s not hard to fathom why the SOIVA considers ”Thrift Shop Paintings” worthwhile enough to be its inaugural exhibition and to be seen by the Chicago art community.
”Woman By Table with Chinese Writing” recalls certain recent paintings on an Oriental theme by Phyllis Bramson; the color harmonies, compulsive geometry and patterning by an anonymous painter of fantastical American first ladies brings to mind late works by Barbara Rossi; some of Ken Warneke`s more hallucinatory images find their reflection in ”Fishing Lure with Woman`s Head”; and on and on.
In short, we`ve been there, seen that, done that, and we`re still not over it.
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”Thrift Shop Paintings” runs through Jan. 4, 1992 at World Tattoo Gallery, 1255 S. Wabash Ave. Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. None of the artworks in the exhibition are for sale. For more information, call the gallery at 312-939-2222.
