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Funny--to me this is still a story that's quite explicitly about the extrinsic.

Looking @.

Beholding.

Staring.

From a distance.

But, since the idea I'm playing (hard!) with today is your notion of refusing the easy dyad between grid and play, I'm going to apply it now to this distinction we've set up between the intrinsic and extrinsic, the inside and outside. My example is the current exhibit of "Outsider Art" @ the Philadelphia Art Museum



(which, alas, we will not get to see as a class...but if you're anywhere close by, before June 9th--go to it!)

First: the Art Museum is a palace.

A castle on the hill.

Very imposing.

It's not easy to get to or into.

Set apart, it thereby sets apart anything that's on display inside it.

...which is (in part) what makes the current exhibit of
"outsider art" in this insider space so interesting.

Compare the images of the exhibit space (above) with some
of what is being exhibited (both below and @ this posting....).



Much of the wall commentary dances this dance between inside and out, explaining that

* the artists are self-taught,
* “literally creating what cannot be taught,"
* exhibited in a wide range of sites--in the barn, at the State Fair, on the street
(in an individualized version of mural arts).

"Not categorized by styles, movements, or trends, it is art made by individuals who are driven to create by their own particular inner compulsions." The exhibit is set up not to demonstrate any interactions among the artists, or to trace any conventions or connections, but with all the artists "living by themselves" in their own alcoves.

And yet, for me, the overwhelming impression of that there is, really, “no such thing as being outside":

* one artist said that her work was "born in the garden of my imagination" (and yet her
sources of inspiration were explicitly cultural--Mexican jewelery, Spanish Colonial
architecture, Middle Eastern minatures...);

* a number of the artists, we are told, are "no longer 'outside' the art world,"
but actually having an "influence" in the art scene;

* their subjects taken, "not from experience, but popular imagery,"

* their art, done because of commands or signals from God,

* often incorporating long Biblical texts;

* one exhibitor originally made yard art, including screens set up outside his house to shield
against evil forces (so: the art is positioned "outside," in order to protect the "inside"...);

* many of the artists underwent psychiatric treatment;

* many had visions of "another world,"

* visions of "metaphysical essence...."

which places us, in the everyday, then...

inside or out? within or without?

surely, both/and...