Article: Jean-Pierre de Rothschild, an "Outsider" in the world of Art...
Thus, the peculiar scenario in which dealers promoting new artists all across America have been overheard assuring
collectors that even though a certain talent being showcased in their gallery did study at the Art Institute of Chicago ( --
or wherever), this 'academic' exposure had no effect whatsoever on the artist's creative development nor his perceived
investment worth. Somehow (despite his or her degree certification) the newcomer is represented as immune to the taint
of pedagogy -- a true artist following a 'private vision' -- a self-taught OUTSIDER. How, exactly, does this work?...and
how did we get here?
Collectors and dealers are not the only ones confused by this new step in the art dance. Just ask Jean-Pierre, a
successful businessman who chose to become a painter sometime after the age of 35. Ostensibly, Jean-Pierre has the
dream credential every young college educated 'faux' outsider artist would kill for. Certifiably self-taught, he came to the
art world as an international banker in the Pacific Rim and a career of corporate financial marketing in the Silicon Valley.
Not only did he study astrophysics, the place he came from is quite outside the art world. On the other hand,
Jean-Pierre produces paintings that, despite their self-taught/non-academic style, are loaded with a floral/allegorical
content that is social, cultural, and sometimes, spiritual -- all the stuff of the old 'art as culture mirror' paradigm. It is hard
to claim the a-historic, a-cultural outsiderness for this work, typically claimed for the art gestures produced by asylum
inmates, schizophrenics and delusional street people. So is this new self-taught painter on the block, an outsider or
not? Perhaps, in reality, he is the misfit that asks us to critically examine the whole overlay of thought and desire that
has brought the terms 'self-taught' and 'outsider' into the art dialogue of our time.
Of late, major art museums all across the country seem to be bombarding their audiences with exhibitions of outsider
and self-taught art. And they are doing so with the tacit assumption that the work they are promoting under these
dubious rubrics is, in fact, comparable in ambition, originality and aesthetic impact to works authored by the
academy-trained artists of art history. Infusing their exhibition programs with a new parameter, curators have found a
place for the contemporary 'primitive' art of our own culture - an art newly empowered by what John Berger identifies as
'the particular authority of the preserve.' Berger, along with a growing number of commentators, believes that art has
always been set apart from life (consigned to a preserve) and that the 'art' status of any object or gesture is primarily a
condition of privilege that some or another group constructs by creating a preserve around it. Thus, the elevation of
self- taught and outsider art to a preserve once reserved for the work of trained artists indicates that new forces are
redefining art in our time. Lamb and his paintings are looking for a home in the art preserve. The success of their
search, in part, will depend on where and how they fit in.
The idea of outsiders 'fitting in' has become more and more ironic as the 20th century binds itself ever tighter to
modernism's enduring dream of the primitive. In the 1940s the famous New York art dealer, Sidney Janis, became one
of the first modern American taste makers to invite contemporary self-taught artists to enter the art preserve. His book
They Taught Themselves chronicled the creative lives of a number of amateur artists whose primitive and naive styles
appealed to his modernist eye. A decade later the Swiss painter, Jean Dubuffet, introduced the world to Art Brut -- the
self-taught art he found being produced by patients in several European psychiatric hospitals. Here was self-taught art
from the far side. Here was something the avant-garde could idealize in its own quest to produce unfettered and wholly
original art. In time, the advocacies of Janis and Dubuffet (reinforced and refined by collectors and curators) intertwined
in a larger mid-century popular fascination with all manner of things primitive.
In the wake of the Kon Tiki raft, tribal art came into vogue. Mid-century Americans flocked to trendy new Polynesian
restaurants, to sip exotic drinks served in mugs shaped like miniature Easter Island heads and topped with colorful
paper umbrellas. Jackson Pollock, the leading light of the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York, gained
celebrity in Time magazine as 'Jack the Dripper' -- a nickname slyly intended to connect Pollock's controversial 'drip
paintings' to the outsider mystique of the British sociopath who slashed his way to infamy as 'Jack the Ripper.'
Against this 1950's backdrop, primitive art produced by amateurs -- the lower life form in the evolutionary chain of art --
gained respectability, finding its way out from under the shadow of the idea of folk art and emerged in the 1960s as
Self-taught and Outsider art. Recast and renamed by a small but vocal group of collectors and curators, artworks from
the self-taught tradition began to vie for critical esteem with both the abstract and representational works produced by
academy-trained professionals -- productions traditionally deemed more highly evolved (and thus more meritorious)
than those produced by amateurs. Proof that self-taught art had, indeed, become respectable came in the 1970's when
a small number of trained painters began emulating the look and feel of outsider art in their own work. By 1990,
self-taught, outsider art found itself accepted and even adored within the embrace of a radically redesigned and
remodelled art preserve. No wonder so many recent art school graduates have torn up their resumes.
Jean-Pierre's situation has been both helped and hindered by this history and its influence on both critical and popular
understandings of self-taught artists and outsider art. Where does this guy and his work fit in? There was a time when
self-taught art was simply the art produced by creatures called 'Sunday painters.' Jean-Pierre hardly fits this stereotype.
Self-taught though he may be, he is serious and aggressive about his work. Over the past ten years he has created
hundreds of big pushy paintings that have attracted critical attention both in Europe and the United States. Much of this
attention, however, has focused on his 'outsider' relationship with the art world and on the idiosyncrasies of his
'self-taught' style. Still, how does a successful, cosmopolitan businessman qualify as an outsider? Where has he been
locked up? From what psychosis does he suffer? Rigid models and historic stereotypes fail here because Jean-Pierre
de Rothschild is a contradiction. A cultural insider, he has an outsider's perspective on art and the art world. He is that
rarest of birds, the highly sophisticated naive. He is something of an original -- a painter whose own centering is
'off-center' for most of the other inhabitants of the several art worlds he negotiates in the pursuit of his creative identity.
Self-taught?..Yes! Outsider?..That depends...
collectors that even though a certain talent being showcased in their gallery did study at the Art Institute of Chicago ( --
or wherever), this 'academic' exposure had no effect whatsoever on the artist's creative development nor his perceived
investment worth. Somehow (despite his or her degree certification) the newcomer is represented as immune to the taint
of pedagogy -- a true artist following a 'private vision' -- a self-taught OUTSIDER. How, exactly, does this work?...and
how did we get here?
Collectors and dealers are not the only ones confused by this new step in the art dance. Just ask Jean-Pierre, a
successful businessman who chose to become a painter sometime after the age of 35. Ostensibly, Jean-Pierre has the
dream credential every young college educated 'faux' outsider artist would kill for. Certifiably self-taught, he came to the
art world as an international banker in the Pacific Rim and a career of corporate financial marketing in the Silicon Valley.
Not only did he study astrophysics, the place he came from is quite outside the art world. On the other hand,
Jean-Pierre produces paintings that, despite their self-taught/non-academic style, are loaded with a floral/allegorical
content that is social, cultural, and sometimes, spiritual -- all the stuff of the old 'art as culture mirror' paradigm. It is hard
to claim the a-historic, a-cultural outsiderness for this work, typically claimed for the art gestures produced by asylum
inmates, schizophrenics and delusional street people. So is this new self-taught painter on the block, an outsider or
not? Perhaps, in reality, he is the misfit that asks us to critically examine the whole overlay of thought and desire that
has brought the terms 'self-taught' and 'outsider' into the art dialogue of our time.
Of late, major art museums all across the country seem to be bombarding their audiences with exhibitions of outsider
and self-taught art. And they are doing so with the tacit assumption that the work they are promoting under these
dubious rubrics is, in fact, comparable in ambition, originality and aesthetic impact to works authored by the
academy-trained artists of art history. Infusing their exhibition programs with a new parameter, curators have found a
place for the contemporary 'primitive' art of our own culture - an art newly empowered by what John Berger identifies as
'the particular authority of the preserve.' Berger, along with a growing number of commentators, believes that art has
always been set apart from life (consigned to a preserve) and that the 'art' status of any object or gesture is primarily a
condition of privilege that some or another group constructs by creating a preserve around it. Thus, the elevation of
self- taught and outsider art to a preserve once reserved for the work of trained artists indicates that new forces are
redefining art in our time. Lamb and his paintings are looking for a home in the art preserve. The success of their
search, in part, will depend on where and how they fit in.
The idea of outsiders 'fitting in' has become more and more ironic as the 20th century binds itself ever tighter to
modernism's enduring dream of the primitive. In the 1940s the famous New York art dealer, Sidney Janis, became one
of the first modern American taste makers to invite contemporary self-taught artists to enter the art preserve. His book
They Taught Themselves chronicled the creative lives of a number of amateur artists whose primitive and naive styles
appealed to his modernist eye. A decade later the Swiss painter, Jean Dubuffet, introduced the world to Art Brut -- the
self-taught art he found being produced by patients in several European psychiatric hospitals. Here was self-taught art
from the far side. Here was something the avant-garde could idealize in its own quest to produce unfettered and wholly
original art. In time, the advocacies of Janis and Dubuffet (reinforced and refined by collectors and curators) intertwined
in a larger mid-century popular fascination with all manner of things primitive.
In the wake of the Kon Tiki raft, tribal art came into vogue. Mid-century Americans flocked to trendy new Polynesian
restaurants, to sip exotic drinks served in mugs shaped like miniature Easter Island heads and topped with colorful
paper umbrellas. Jackson Pollock, the leading light of the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York, gained
celebrity in Time magazine as 'Jack the Dripper' -- a nickname slyly intended to connect Pollock's controversial 'drip
paintings' to the outsider mystique of the British sociopath who slashed his way to infamy as 'Jack the Ripper.'
Against this 1950's backdrop, primitive art produced by amateurs -- the lower life form in the evolutionary chain of art --
gained respectability, finding its way out from under the shadow of the idea of folk art and emerged in the 1960s as
Self-taught and Outsider art. Recast and renamed by a small but vocal group of collectors and curators, artworks from
the self-taught tradition began to vie for critical esteem with both the abstract and representational works produced by
academy-trained professionals -- productions traditionally deemed more highly evolved (and thus more meritorious)
than those produced by amateurs. Proof that self-taught art had, indeed, become respectable came in the 1970's when
a small number of trained painters began emulating the look and feel of outsider art in their own work. By 1990,
self-taught, outsider art found itself accepted and even adored within the embrace of a radically redesigned and
remodelled art preserve. No wonder so many recent art school graduates have torn up their resumes.
Jean-Pierre's situation has been both helped and hindered by this history and its influence on both critical and popular
understandings of self-taught artists and outsider art. Where does this guy and his work fit in? There was a time when
self-taught art was simply the art produced by creatures called 'Sunday painters.' Jean-Pierre hardly fits this stereotype.
Self-taught though he may be, he is serious and aggressive about his work. Over the past ten years he has created
hundreds of big pushy paintings that have attracted critical attention both in Europe and the United States. Much of this
attention, however, has focused on his 'outsider' relationship with the art world and on the idiosyncrasies of his
'self-taught' style. Still, how does a successful, cosmopolitan businessman qualify as an outsider? Where has he been
locked up? From what psychosis does he suffer? Rigid models and historic stereotypes fail here because Jean-Pierre
de Rothschild is a contradiction. A cultural insider, he has an outsider's perspective on art and the art world. He is that
rarest of birds, the highly sophisticated naive. He is something of an original -- a painter whose own centering is
'off-center' for most of the other inhabitants of the several art worlds he negotiates in the pursuit of his creative identity.
Self-taught?..Yes! Outsider?..That depends...
M. Renure introduces Jean-Pierre de Rothschild and looks at the definitional problems
experienced by an artist on the margins of outsider art.
How strange it is. A society that demands a resume summarizing the formal education and
professional training of everyone seeking entry into its work force, has decided somehow
that it will esteem its artists precisely for their lack of such credentials. The fashionable artist
today
is 'self-taught.' In fact, 'un-taught' is preferred. Everyone is talking about self-taught/outsider
artists.
Make it clear, we are not just continuing the old conversation about naive and folk art here.
We are looking at a new and wider conversation in the contemporary fine art scene. What we
are finding is a shift of the old paradigm in which art was presumed to mirror a culture's
collective life. This traditional model is being replaced by one in which art is expected to
negate cultural experience via a celebration of the personal experience of its maker -- a
creator whose credibility as an artist is directly tied to his or her isolation from cultural life of
any sort.
experienced by an artist on the margins of outsider art.
How strange it is. A society that demands a resume summarizing the formal education and
professional training of everyone seeking entry into its work force, has decided somehow
that it will esteem its artists precisely for their lack of such credentials. The fashionable artist
today
is 'self-taught.' In fact, 'un-taught' is preferred. Everyone is talking about self-taught/outsider
artists.
Make it clear, we are not just continuing the old conversation about naive and folk art here.
We are looking at a new and wider conversation in the contemporary fine art scene. What we
are finding is a shift of the old paradigm in which art was presumed to mirror a culture's
collective life. This traditional model is being replaced by one in which art is expected to
negate cultural experience via a celebration of the personal experience of its maker -- a
creator whose credibility as an artist is directly tied to his or her isolation from cultural life of
any sort.
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