OUTSIDERS, UnIncorporated Transgressive Potency in Underground Art By Iona Miller, 2004
The Real ‘Outsider Art’
Genius does what it must. Talent does what it can. -Bulwer Lytton
The genre ‘outsider art’ is generally reserved for those who don’t know that they are artists, the untutored, or naive artist, who may span the spectrum from functional to visionary folk art. The term is often misused, however, which we would like to do here. The real outsiders don’t even care if they are ‘artists.’ Their internal drive is so strong they cannot help what they do. It must be expressed.
The very term ‘outsider’ sets up a false dichotomy that there is somewhere in the artworld to be an ‘insider’, in a university, museum, or commercial gallery setting. In this sense, all the outsider is outside of is the clique of the artworld and its corporate sponsors. But the pronouncements of the artworld of its own self-importance may just be selling so much snake-oil. A lot of uncommendable work passes through the artworld. Plenty of commendable work does not, but this makes it no less relevant.
The real outsiders aren’t necessarily these unlauded folk artists, but the true outsiders of the societal mainstream -- mavericks who inhabit the dark worlds of various subcultures. They are those who intentionally place themselves beyond the pale, or are ‘out’ because they never made it ‘in.’
Their art has a transgressive power, whether expressed in film, performance art, music, or visual media. It gives the ordinary person a glimpse into a mysterious, dangerous, or forbidden world. The viewer may be drawn further in or completely repulsed.
Outsiders pursue art as a means of self-expression for themselves and their disenfranchised community, generally not commercial ends. Outsider art, in this sense, is analogous to ‘disorganized crime,’ executed in an idiosyncratic or haphazard manner by the rugged independent, rather than through institutionalized hierarchies.
This radical art inflames the desires that originally led to the lifestyle choice. Specialized taste and artistic style bind the community together. Artists are always interested in communicating the ‘signs of the times.’ This art draws on life for inspiration. It is very ‘street.’
Each of these worlds has its own aesthetic, its own dress code, its raison d’ete. They each produce their own ‘outsider art’ based on the proclivities of those who indulge in the lifestyle. Often the audience is an intimate part of whatever artistic process emerges. This art serves an ecological purpose in the community, reducing fragmentation, making meaning or fostering insights.
The artist speaks for the mute crowd and articulates their spirit, their zeitgeist. This raises him or her (or the diverse genders in between) to iconic status among his peers, for he can clearly express what others just dream. For this reason, subcultures often revolve around the artists who exemplify them.
Conversely, artists have always formed a solid subculture of their own, preferring one another’s company, mutual inspiration and understanding. Some scenes are merely faddish and deteriorate while others endure.
Transgressive Potency
Subcultures are as diverse as the worlds of body art, fetish, gay, punk, occult, Goth, cyber-, club kids, raveculture, hip hop, pagan, political, psychedelic, radical feminism, New Age, bodybuilding, motorcycles, filmaking, or any number of other underground “scenes.”
Mostly they are so far out on the cutting edge, they don’t want to be ‘in.’ They are ‘into’ what they do and how they do it, and generally loath the idea of corporate interference. They don’t create art for an audience, but for psychophysical survival. The art that emerges from these subcultures is often considered pop or low-brow, divorced by mutual consent from intellectual or high art circles.
High art and low brow art as well as media art can mingle in a lively juxtaposition of cultural activity, according to media guru Donald Theall. We could call it ‘hyper brow.’ All forms of cultural production are relevant, have validity and the potential to contribute significantly to social life and transformation.
Beyond personal expression, there is a social function to cultural and subcultural production. Subcultures often have overt or tacit political agendas. Sometimes the outsider artist, like a missionary, seeks to pusuade his audience to come into his world, to embrace its values, its freedoms, even its pain. Other times, he may attack the audience, even while seducing.
Shock value and confrontation is often a big part of setting oneself apart from the conventional, the hum-drum. This outsider art is anything but conventional or “safe” art, at least for the innovators. Copyists may faddishly follow later in their footsteps.
Both Eros and Pathos are fundamental to subcultural immersion. One’s chosen path is the Beloved and totally identified with; personality becomes structured around it. This art may be very gritty, counter-poetic, satiric, confrontive, dissonant, primal and sensual, even erotic. It is the dark shadow of snobbery and elitism. It is reverse-elitism. It tears at the subconscious, the weak underbelly of society.
This is where the main hotblooded current of today’s ‘outsider art’ lives, and throbs through the veins of the heartland. Many of these artists never see the light of day beyond their own subcultural context; many of them never see the light of day at all! It is all about the subcultural experience. ‘Have you ever been experienced?’ For the rest of us, it is like a short trip to another planet, far far away.
Underground superstars rarely become household names even if they join the pantheon of their own subculture. They are ‘not ready for prime time’, in fact, they are likely to object strongly to commercialization. But collectively they say something historically important about the culture at large, much like an ‘indicator species’ does for an ecological system.
Most of them wouldn’t have a clue about the history of art, or their potential place in it. Mostly, they spend their days ‘preaching to the choir.’ But they still act as chaotic “Strange Attractors,” culturally engineering the whole fabric of society by perturbing and unravelling it ever so slightly from the fringes.
Their mediums range from their own bodies, to performance art, musical and spoken word poetics, ritual, digital- and multimedia, hypertextuality, and more traditional graphic forms. But the content of the work is always in the vernacular of their subculture with its prefered palette, symbolism, and feeling tone. Their audience has been conditioned toward certain expectations, a certain aesthetic, even certain politics.
The post postmodern Underground traces back to the counterculture of the ‘60s, but it can arguably be traced back to certain art movements in Europe (fin de siecle, impressionists, dada, surrealism, expressionist, etc.). In those days the artists’ community and the cultural intelligentsia were one. But even these now well-established schools had to fight academic art to carve each niche.
The same struggle goes on today in the world of new media. Over the last 25 years, digital fine art has had to struggle for ligitimacy with other print media. Now the same arc is repeated for electronic media: media art, animation, webpresentations, and interactive multimedia installations. Hypermedia gives us the sense of art as virtuality, an ephemera.
Techno art has carried a stigma that perhaps the results are haphazard appearing as artifact of seeing what the equipment will do, rather than the more traditional approach of conceiving the piece in the mind’s eye, then executing that vision. This is likely a ‘bum rap.’
Artists have always made use of ‘happy accidents’ in their work. Further, the exploratory path has always been a viable process in art. If we don’t follow the circuitous path of the Muse, how can our art be authentic at all? Outsider art invites us to let go of all preconceived categories and expectations entering a realm of existential immediacy where the art may not be separate from the participants.
The Underground
To curate a show from ‘the American Underground’ we have to look first to the ‘Ground Zero’ of the genre -- New York City. Scenes also arose in London, San Francisco, and Los Angeles (Hollywood). Lately, Miami has become a cosmopolitan hotbed for diverse lifestyles.
For decades, avant garde artist Andy Warhol was at the heart of and orchestrated the NYC underground scene. His experimental films were actually largely written and directed by Paul Morrisey. His Factory also spawned the prototypical punk band, years ahead of its time, the Velvet Underground, featuring alternative icon Lou Reed. They opened the way for acts such as Iggy Pop, Plasmatics’ Wendy O. Williams, and Brian Eno.
The modern era of outsider lifestyles took hold with east and westcoast Beat generation poets which gave way to the counterculture, then the punk, cyber- and techno- subcultures. But counterculture sought to reform the mainstream with its values; relativistic subcultures could often care less about bourgeois or conventional judgments.
The shamanic beat poets of San Francisco’s North Beach rubbed elbows with gay theatrical pioneers, such as the Cockettes and their NYC counteraprts, Black Lips art troupe. After fomenting the psychedelic revolution, Tim Leary went on to become the godfather of Cyberpunk. Only the drug of choice changed to protect the innocent.
The punkrock genesis saw groups like Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols), the Ramones, Patty Smith, the Pretenders, Blondie, and Talking Heads crawling out of the underground like cockroaches scurrying from the kitchen. Rock music had gotten stupefyingly banal at the time, demanding a return to fundamentals. These soulful artists sought permission from no one, performing whether they could actually ‘play’, or not. Soon, the world beat a path to the Bowery door of CBGBs, Max’s Kansas City, and the Roxy.
But all shamelessly took their turns in the commercial markets, becoming brand names. They played to the masses while William Burroughs and his successors such as Brion Gison, Lydia Lunch and Hakim Bey continued ranting with outrage in the style of Ginsburg’s Howl. Their audience doesn’t want them selling out to corporate sponsorship. For some it is a point of pride, of artistic authenticity.
The rave movement spawned such ‘industrial strength’ hybrids as pangendered Genesis P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Thee Majesty) and his bastard offspring like Marilyn Manson and his bandmates Twiggy and Gidget Gein. Genesis, now Breyer P-Orridge, traces his arc back to S.F. troupe, the Cockettes’ influence in his youth, as well as the Occult.
No one comes out of a vacuum. All of them owe a lot to the legacy of the Velvets, New York Dolls (David Johanssen), The Fugs, Zappa, and genderbender chameleon David Bowie, a mainstream artist but one with original roots in a few underground scenes, including gay theatre.
If It Feels Good, Do It -- Virtually
Subcultures offer self-indulgent permission for virtually mythical living. Lack of talent or inability to play is no disqualifier; particpants are nominated and elected by themselves only. If they suck, the audience lets them know. One can create a unique persona that is, indeed, larger than life, and act it out. In cyberculture, such an incarnation is referred to as one’s virtual or “chip body.”
We may give wildly different names to these subcultural alters than our normal personalities. And, they may behave differently. They are hybrids spawned in the underground hothouse. They only come out at night. They constitute a form of performance art themselves, on or offline. The more outrageous, the better.
Recently, the kaleidoscopic world of fetish has also become an established feature of urban life, allowing the workingclass to walk the razor’s edge. For many, it is more of a fashion-inspired artform than a psychological compulsion – more good clean fun than pathology.
Weekend warriors and suburban housewives now flock to exotic-erotic balls or dungeons for titillation as they once flocked to drive ins or rock concerts. American voyeurism, fostered in all forms of commercial media, has found its roots again. Our novelty-seeking culture keeps pushing its boundaries of acceptability outward. And the people-watching keeps getting better and better.
Sexual boundaries have been obliterated by multimedia artists such as Annie Sprinkle, with her boob imprints, wild film and TV performances, and serious sexual research work. Contemporary cult films have demystified sexual and political content, while displacing narrative, time and space. Today’s filmmakers draw on a rich heritage.
The boundary-breaking underground film scene might be traced back through mother of the avant garde Maya Deren (Ritual in Transfigured Time), Kenneth Anger (Magic Lantern Series), the ‘elegant madness’ of Curtis Harrington (Games), and John Waters (Hair Spray; Cry Baby). Anger’s use of dream imagery, rapid cuts, and pioneering use of gay, sexual, and occult themes in his experimental films began in 1947.
“Kenneth Anger and the Kuchar Brothers are the aorta of the original underground film movement," said filmmaker John Waters. "Without their incredible pioneering influence, the independent film world could never have been born."
“In the late fifties George and Mike Kuchar began making 8mm movies that toyed with the conventions of Hollywood melodrama. With titles like ‘A Woman Distressed’ and ‘I Was a Teenage Rumpot,’ the outrageous take offs caused such a scandal at the New York Eight Millimeter Club that the Kuchars moved screenings to Ken Jacob's Ferry Street loft. The works are among the underground films credited with spawning a rethinking of popular culture that later took on the term "camp."
A major difference between surrealist masterpieces, such as Fellini’s works or Dali’s Un Chien Andalou, and today’s cult films is that much of the subversion of conventional content and form of the surrealists came from the unconscious, from a dreamlike quality and vision. Today’s subversive art films are not based on dreams, or even fiction, but on unvarnished reality where the pathological, forbidden, and unthinkable are neither glamorized nor dissociated.
The new underground has produced intentionally confrontive classics of the Warhol-influenced Cinema of Transgression, like the Cremaster series with Kendra Phaler (C2) by Matthew Barney, the films of Nick Zedd (War is Menstrual Envy), Richard Kern (You Killed Me First).