Autumn 2008 Field notes

FIELD NOTES:A Cavin-Morris Gallery Newsletter

Autumn,2008

Welcome to this inaugural issue of our gallery'snewsletter. We hope to bring this to you quarterlywith gallery news, articles on artists, interviews,spotlights on artists and pieces and to let you feelsome of the excitement we have in developing ourknowledge and experience in working withself-taught artists, Asian textiles, Art Brut,Indigenous Drawings, Contemporary CeramicsAsian and Western, and select works of tribal andtextile art from around the world.

Welcome to our First Newsletter...By Editor Sun, Oct 05, 2008

Welcome to the premier issue of Cavin-Morris

Gallery's Newsletter: Field Notes.

In the last couple of years as we opened up our Ceramic

and Textile departments and continued to add to and

widen our Tribal Collection and our representation of Art

Brut, Indigenous Drawing and Neuve Invention we began

to realize that the classic exhibition tradition was just too slow for all the activities going on behind the

scenes in the gallery. We needed a new way to let our client base and the art world in general know

what changes and discoveries were taking place in all the departments of the gallery. In addition we

FIELD NOTES: - A Cavin-Morris Gallery Newsletter http://cavinmorris.presspublisher.us/issue-printer/field_notes__...

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wanted to add a little more spin by occasionally mentioning books, records and films that we felt were

relevant to work the gallery is showing. So please have a look at our book and music choices in the

Columns section. We believe Field Notes will be a means of furthering these communications.

But it isn't going to be a static publication. There will be four seasonal releases a year and during the

three months of each release we will be constantly adding to all the magazine's features including press

releases, editorials, new acquisitions, schedules, short features on new and more established gallery

artists in all our departments.

By connecting the Field Notes with a wider photo archive we will be able to expand the selections on our

soon to be updated website: www.cavinmorris.com. We have a lot of plans and so we encourage you

to bookmark the site or subscribe and check in often.

We are glad you can join us.

Randall Morris

Shari Cavin

Mariko Tanaka

and the staff at Cavin-Morris Gallery

Showing This Month! Visions Drawnbefore Dawn: Anna ZemankovaCentennial ShowBy Editor Fri, Sep 12, 2008

aboveC

Visions Drawn Before Dawn:

A Centennial Celebration of Anna Zemánková(1908 – 1986)

October 16 – November 22, 2008

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 16, 2008 6-8 PM

It is with great pleasure that Cavin-Morris Gallery presents Visions Drawn Before Dawn: A CentennialCelebration of Anna Zemánková. In the 16 years we have represented the artist's estate and been inthe presence of her drawings, we have remained in awe of her reinvention, re-assimilation, and


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renewal of the natural forces that release Nature's aesthetic in her work.

The layers of evocation in her drawings seem unending. She channeled great music, both classicaland jazz, into her work, struggling with it to create a new way of thinking and engaging the world,allowing her to express love, wonder and Eros, and ultimately of using her art as a means to extendthe reach of her life beyond the world of the mundane.

It must be understood that these ethereal gardens she drew are part of a fascinating phenomenon ofself-shaping, in that she created for herself a new rite of passage, one that came after the moreordinary rites of work and family, and allowed her to celebrate herself as a maker, a creator ofsynaesthesia, where the senses of sight and touch perform midnight variations in a mix that ismythological, intellectual and reverberatingly sensual.

This group of newly released drawings is a cross-section of the four phases of Zemánková's work as itchanged over the years. First there were her bold gestural pastels followed by work with obsessivedetailed patterning and unusual color combinations. It was with this second phase of her work thatshe began to sign her name to her drawings. In the third phase she combined elements from the firsttwo periods and then embroidered and drew with pen on top of the work. In the last phase shecollaged her drawings into simple and elegant forms, and began cutting and painting satin intocollages.

Anna Zemánková's drawings are in the collections of Le Musee d'art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland;Collection abcd, Paris, France; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Museum of InternationalFolk Art, Santa Fe, NM; American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY; and the Milwaukee Museum ofArt, Milwaukee, WI.

For further information please contact Shari Cavin, Randall Morris or Mariko Tanaka at 212-226 3768,

or [email protected].

Self-Taught Artists, What's New at Cavin-Morris,

New Drawing by Takashi ShujiBy Gallery Sat, Oct 25, 2008


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Takashi Shuji

Shimeji (Japanese Mushroom), bottle, cups and pot, 2007

Cardboard, pastel

29 x 16.25 inches

73.7 x 41.3 cm

ShT 2

Born in 1974 in Hyogo Prefecture, Takashi Shuji makes

drawings that are tone poems filled with mood and mystery, no less so because they are usually of

everyday objects. In a way this is a very cultural insight as a major aspect of the traditional Japanese

aesthetic is to pare away and allude to the intense essence of animate and inanimate things. Like a

ceramist shaping a tea bowl or a sake cup he constantly adds and erases for what can be hours till he is

satisfied with the result.

Contemporary Japanese and related Ceramics, What's New at Cavin-Morris,

Contemporary Tea Ceremony Bowls(Chawans)By Gallery Fri, Oct 24, 2008


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Self-Taught Artists, What's New at Cavin-Morris,

New Pushpa Kumari Drawing!By Gallery Wed, Oct 22, 2008

Self-Taught Artists,

The Exalted Lark: Excerpts from an Essayon Anna ZemankovaBy R. Morris Sat, Oct 18, 2008

There are some rare and fortunate times in one’s life

when one is allowed by intent sometimes, yet most often

by fluke or by luck, to witness on some sensual level a

beauty that is completely unadulterated and heart-

piercingly direct. Mankind has never invented an

adequate eschatology of words to match those moments.

They have no laws, they are limited to no locality. They

are the times when something outside you comes inside

you on an aesthetic joyride whether it be witnessing a

helix of homing pigeons in a trick of afternoon light, a

sounding whale in a wine-dark sea, a string plucked on a

moonlit kora in a moment just before it is joined by a


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voice singing the glorious history of ancestors, a sonata,

an orgasm, the first laugh in a new human being, a mark

made by light on a sun-spattered wall or firelight on a

perfect skin in a midnight dance, or on a piece of paper

held in place by a turned-on sentient being in an empty

room before dawn.

This is beauty that inspires awe. This is beauty that is terrible in its grandeur, beauty that is bladed, a

razor sharp knife. The chuff of a tigress. The sibilant hiss of something unknown in a forest thicket, the

beautiful but dangerous warning of a wasp.

I am not sure that Anna Zemankova deliberately set out to make this kind of beauty. I am more sure that

it represents the outcome of a struggle for some kind of inner balance, a way of bursting out of the cage

of her physical and emotional body, a way of thinking about things,of attempting to will an equilibrium. It

was certainly a way of personally re-ordering the world. Life had drawn boundaries for her, shackling her

spirit with age, a feeling of abandonment and disease and she reacted first with frustration, then anger

and finally with this ancient ululation of art-making that lasted her till the end and continues now beyond

the physical. Her life was ultimately successful then. She took a chance, dared to tap into something

eternal and succeeded.

Zemankova had put aside her earliest art-making desires in reluctant deference to a lucrative career;

dentistry. She was good at whatever she chose to do. Ultimately she left dentistry to raise her family. An

ascending stairway of sidetracks followed her; she left the dream of art to further a career, left the career

to further her family; the family grew up and dispersed in a natural series of rites of passage and she was

left with no art, no household to be the matriarch over, no need then for her nurturing senses, no career

and a body beginning to sense the coming on of its own Autumn.

We look at the drawings and think we might see references to things we recognize, say perhaps insects,

flowers, plants, birds, butterflies etc. They are ancestral, cultural, popular, and most importantly they are

intuited and reinvented. The moment is shaped and caressed from the non-evident. Each line is pulled

thin like the nerve in a tooth, each mark repeated often to soothe and assuage and achieve the bulk of a

prayer, a mantra, or end as a question sometimes answered, sometimes not…a koan . Undoubtedly

these things are there but it must be understood that there are also references there to so much we don’t

see. They aren’t solipsistic. They aren’t closed to us. We can feel the pain or the joy without necessarily

dissecting the specifics of the circumstances. When such art transcends the immediate personal and

flies like an exaltation of larks with the universally numinous it is no longer merely a physical process.

Synaesthesia is creating a Babel from the languages of the senses all manifesting at once. To see sound

and to hear sight, would be examples. Her work is deeply synaesthetic. It will come as no surprise when

she tells us that music provided a catalyst to her creating. Music was a fellow force her art-making met in


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the interstices of Nature and she used it to explore the eroticism of known and unknown forms. She

listened to Bach, Beethoven, she listened to Janacek, and she listened to Charles Lloyd. At that time

Lloyd was also seeking light with a horn sound that could whisper of the sublime or scream in the

positive rage he had been freed to express by the tone poems of John Coltrane. In addition to his

saxophone his flute playing was not about the formalism of the instrument but about the sensing of multi-

cultural sunlit essences of the sublime art can convey. She would have loved Don Cherry’s music as well

had she heard him. She was drawn to how artists made choices that skirted dangerous chasms and

reached for exhilarating heights. At that time Charles Lloyd had that great channeler of Bach, Beethoven

and Mozart filtered through the blues and Semitic clarity; Keith Jarrett. Together with the multi-rhythmic

intelligence of Jack Dejohnette on drums they were juggling new musical ideas like animated fireflies. I

can see the music rising from the speakers like electrified bees, hovering around her head, traveling

through her heart and hands and taking deliciously structured form on her on her papers where, like the

music, she she threw large powdery forms down as a bass line and then contrasted improvisation, color,

texture, femininity vs. masculinity, whisper versus shouts or just sugary dark iridescence against the

strong backgrounds. Funk or fugue she allowed improvisation to always hold hands with stark control.

You can hear her drawings if you open up enough to them. But she added things to the music, her own

instrumentation, the sounds of insects magnified to distortion, the sounds of thorns and spines, the

sounds of air as it fuses like nuclear energy with color.

Her art, her music, her muses aren’t a steady stream of predictable imagery, either. So often we have

watched people approach it with that ‘why are you showing me florals’ look of weariness and then we

watch their nostrils dilate as the impact hits them; that they are, in reality, looking at something for which

few precedents exist.

Meeting Terezie, her granddaughter, and knowing of the closeness of the family one imagines one can

feel some of Anna Zemankovas’ spice in the grand-daughter’s quick mind and movements. For Terezie’s

sense of nurturing art, commitment to the idea of home, of place, of family but always especially her

excitement by what Art is. The granddaughter inspired her and shares her dedication to the edge of

ideas, to wild and deep music, to the art of the self-taught, to Art Brut, that neighborhood of Art which

moves backward, laterally and forward all at the same time. It is easy to see how she might have

inspired her grandmother in the following quote from that interview: “I watch how my granddaughter

draws. And nobody tells her what to do, she wouldn’t listen. They leave her alone. And that’s right. She

can’t help herself from saying, ”Grandma! Look what I made! Isn’t it good?” And I know from my own

experience, that it is good. I would hate for someone to tell me…put that flower on the other side! No,

never!”

Zemankova’s work is a cry sent out to and from ancestors who came before her and are here now. If you

read the interview with her by Pavel Konechny you can see how through the drawings she interacted

with her family. This is no surprise, really, they were all artists. This family spoke in art as well as words

and so there were all these extra paths of communication. They understood and deeply respected the


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songs she drew. They understood better than anyone that the art making was Anna Zemankova’s wild

song of health.

Self-Taught Artists,

Interview with Anna ZemankovaBy Gallery Sat, Oct 18, 2008

INTERVIEW WITH ANNA ZEMÁNKOVA

When did you begin creating?

You know, when I was seventeen, I loved to draw.

Landscapes and things, I still have a few of them. I didn’t

show them much. Sometimes I entered into fantasy, but

only sometimes, and then not at all. Then I got married.

Yes, and I wanted to go to a school for drawing. But my

parents wouldn’t allow it. People saw things differently then, you know how it was. So I put it in the attic

and moved on. And then I got married in Olomouc, the wedding was in Hejcín, in the new Catholic

church there. I had a beautiful wedding, when I think back on it….well, it’s been 48 years now. And then

painting was out of my thoughts. When my son, the eldest, studied medicine, all of a sudden those two

came with their second son. We had it here in the cellar, that suitcase. I never told anyone that I painted!

I never mentioned it. And then he asked whose drawings they were. So I said they were mine. They

couldn’t believe it, that I had drawn them. So then my med student kept asking me to paint. “Me, what

would I paint? I have other responsibilities!” Then they bought me coloured pencils and paper, so I could

draw. So I made some drawings….and they were ecstatic. I said “Sure, I’ll draw you something, I’ll draw

you one of my fantasies.” Then he told me, and I think back on it often, “Draw Ma! When you get older

and you have this hobby, you’ll be happier in your old age!” And I think back on him often, that I listened,

and I drew, and that I have that to this day…you know, when I draw something, that fulfills the bargain, it

brings me boundless joy and lets me unwind. And then I move on.

I live here alone, but I always have something to do. But my eyes are not too good. So when I do

these tiny things…I thrive on these miniatures but my eyes are not so good, I can’t do them. Right now.

I’ve been drawing twenty years now, I started in, oh…’sixty… ‘fifty eight.

Did anyone in your family draw?

No, but there were other artists in our family tree. My father’s cousin was a famous actress – Paula


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Veselá, in Austria. The older generation knows her. And on my mother’s side, their father’s were

brothers, there was a famous opera singer, Herma Zárská. You know, that was an artistic branch of the

family, but not in drawing. It’s interesting, that my son the sculptor, his artistic gifts began when he was

also 16 and 17, just like me. My father was a barber and my mother was at home. She was one of three

sisters ad she was different from them, very different, You know, my grandfather, he was a master

mason, in that time they were really builders. He even made up blueprints, he was quite gifted. My

parents were from Príbor (the birthplace of Sigmund Freud – PK). My mom often stayed in Olomouc with

her uncle and there she met my father and there I was born. I studied to be a dental specialist, and I

worked at that until I was wed. I really enjoyed it. I even operated. But I like drawing more, that’s for sure!

How did you make your drawings?

I draw here… on this table. See how inspiration is? Sometimes I recognize that I saw something.

Sometimes maybe I see something… sort of a deep feeling, that a person has inside, that stays with me

a and then I put it onto paper later. But sometimes not, sometimes I create during drawing. You know, I

make a sketch, and then I change the sketch until I’m happy with it, and then I color it in. Sometimes it’s

easy, sometimes not. Sometimes I don’t know what to do with it. So I usually put them up on the wall and

look at them… and maybe it’ll come in a few days! And sometimes it happens that I work on the picture

for a long time… for a long time. Sometime when someone comes to see me and I show them my work

and we find something missing, and there should be something there, so then I put it aside. And that

could be a couple of years! And then I fix it.

Do you have a favorite colour?

Well, I do have a favorite. I like yellow… Then I like orange… well, actually all the colours, except for

black. However, you do see black occasionally. I don’t know why I have such an aversion towards black,

but sometime I need to put it in, see how I’m always in twist, you know? I’ll show you how I work… it’s on

fabric. I always say ”I’ve got the chessboard out.” I change it several times, until it seems ok to me. Well,

it will work out… I already have an idea. Maybe on this satin I’ll make one thing next to another, maybe a

whole flower. Then you’ll see it in the work and then from that… that’s my method. I’m very pleased by

this method, it’s mine, it doesn’t come from anyone else, you know? And that’s something I prize, that

nobody tells me how to do something, I just do it. And I think that that is a good way. I watch how my

granddaughter draws. And nobody tells her what to do, she wouldn’t listen. They leave her alone. And

that’s right. She can’t help herself from saying, “Grandma, look what I made! Isn’t it good?” And I know

from my own experience, that it is good. I would hate for someone to tell me… put that flower on the

other side! No, never!

Do you thing there exists some sort of relationship between your picture and music?

Well now ! There are many… I can even tell you what music I was listening to while drawing. I really love

janácek. I sure do love janácek. When I started to fall in love with his music, it took a lot of work for me to


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approach it. It was really difficult. Or take Beethoven! My daughter can play the piano beautifully. She

can play Beethoven’s Appassionata… isn’t that something! And when she began to play, I would grab

my kit and begin to draw. I drew and drew while she played. She plays marvelously. Sure… I can draw

while listening to music. I couldn’t work if it were quiet, no. My thoughts would wander! I must have my

thoughts connected to the whole. And music has helped me a lot. For example chamber music… I really

like those kinds of things. And sometimes someone will tell you, “That’s really something else!” And I’ll

say, yes, I did it while listening to a different kind of music. You know, I am catching those different tones

which I later give shape to. That’s it.

What kind of changes has your work gone through?

My work has gone through huge changes. The steps were very slow. What you see today, and if you

saw the beginnings… well, what a difference! A huge difference. And I always say, whenever I created

something, that’s it, I’m finished. And I’m convinced, that I can’t go on. But again and again I come up

with another thing. It sows it’s seeds on me, it comes to me by itself, you know. It comes to me itself.

What does creative work mean to you?

It means a lot to me. Life enriches me, enriches me with such… such… I can say that when I’m painting

I’m more balanced, calmer, so… well, it gives a lot, art. It sorts me out. Before, I was not as I am now! I

was so aggressive, really sort of aggressive and unstable. Now I’m rather mild, balanced, calm. I don’t

have days when I’m angry. No, I take care or things calmly. And what art gives me is… it releases me

from material things. You know, when a person is released from material concerns… it’s easier. Not that I

would renounce all material things, no, but I don’t long for material goods. I always say, “ Only what I

need, and no more!” I think it’s foolish when one is attached to material things. I think it’s ridiculous today.

And when a person is removed from that, it’s good. I keep thinking a step higher. I think that people who

are attached to material possessions are stuck on the ground floor… Yes, and to also have a good heart!

You know? That applies to everyone. And I’m satisfied with my life. I have taken advantage of all that

was given me. And I put it to good use. You know, I see it in my kids. I have great kids, generous kids.

Do you give your pictures titles?

I don’t give my pictures titles, because everyone can see something different in them. I’ve already

noticed that every person has a different feeling about them. I have one feeling and another person has

a totally different feeling, so I don’t know. I think I told you once: “Is that healthy? The person who is

working on it should name it!” But once on television I heard a Soviet sculptor, of abstracts, talking. He

made beautiful things. And they asked him, what are they called? He would ask his friends and then

decide after listening to what they had thought. And so I would say, “I agree, to hell with it. That is

healthy! So it’s the same for me, it’s nothing unusual.”

What technique do you use?


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Various – tempera, oils, dyes, pastels, ballpoints. Well, anything there is, I use. I’ve done a lot of things in

twenty years. You know, it doesn’t give me pleasure that people from abroad are interested in me. I

would prefer it of my work was in my country. If my people had it. So I’m not after success abroad, not

interested in sending things away. I was so happy from [the exhibition in] Litomêrice, enormously happy.

Even when I gave them it for free. I had such enormous joy that the work stayed here. Lots of Czech

artists have my drawings.

What are the sources of your inspiration?

Nobody knows. Me neither, when I think about it. Why? Where did it come from? There’s a big question

mark hanging over it for me too. Some sources? No, I don’t feel anything, not like that. I can’t really say

much about that. Really, I don’t know what to say, how to answer that. Because I don’t have any

sources, I’d… simply I can create and talk with you. That’s interesting, you know. I prefer calm when I

paint. And when I paint, I paint, and then it’s obvious… But I could maybe take some paper, talk with you

now and then I could paint a subject.

But now I’ve done a drawing for you and it was pretty, pretty… sensational, you know? I had to look at

it again, how I made it… But still I didn’t like it and I thought about it for a fortnight: “I have to re-do it, it’s

not working for me!” Markêta saw it. And I pay attention to her. She doesn’t talk much. But when I see

that she doesn’t say anything, she’s just looking at it, then I’m thinking that she’s found something there.

She brought me around. And so I changed it a bit. Yes, and now I am happy with it. Its interesting, when

I’m not happy with something, I get all agitated. I keep thinking about it, you know? And I have the best

thoughts when I get up early. Then I always come up with something! Later, not so much, I’m too

scattered. Me, when I get up early, I think about something. Maybe a theme. But I don’t see it a hundred

percent clearly, just the beginnings. And then I create it while working. Capture it. It’s the same as when

a composer hears a certain tone. Maybe a pot falls on the floor and he hears it ring. He captures the

tone… and then it’s motion. It’s as of he’s found the key to something. And it’s the same with drawing.

And when poets write. It’s enough to capture one line, I don’t know where it comes from. And then it’s in

motion. They’re mysteries which are not solved, and probably never will be.

What are you working on at present?

My son promised me butterflies. You know, he has a set of beautiful butterflies. Tropical ones. But he still

hasn’t given them to me. So I said to myself, I’ll draw them. And so I did. Here, take a look… It’s

interesting how I came to that while working. That’s cut-out, that’s pressed, that’s sculpted. For me,

drawings that are done normally have nothing to say. So then I tried to cut through the sculpted ones, so

that they would approach reality. And it worked…! This one has a lilac colour… They’re not like the

butterflies here, but they are butterflies… maybe it will fly sometime. Sure, nobody knows. I don’t rack my

brains over it… I draw it. Yes, take a look at those rainbow colours! They’ve come close. But now I’ll

show you some butterflies which are really amazing. Take a look. These ones don’t resemble our

butterflies. They’re more like birds. You know, when you look at them, there’s life there. The sculpted


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effect does that. If they were drawn normally, no…

I really love my daughter-in-law, the sculptor. She’s a very unusual girl. And I had a bird which

everyone admired. When someone looked at him they’d go… oh! And Markêta, when she saw him, used

to say: “Oh, he’s so beautiful!” And the last time she was here I said, “ Wouldn’t you like to have him?”

And she said, “ Mother, would you give him to me?: And I said, “ You know I would!” So I brought him

over and she was overjoyed. And with Markêta it is especially exhilarating, because she knows what is

good. She know… it’s fantasy, you know!

What do you like best to create?

I can’t tell you what I like best to paint. Every picture is dear to me. Every picture is dear, when it’s

finished. And when I put it aside and I draw, then the new one is dear, And for the past 24 years that I

have been drawing, so far I have never thrown one out! Even if I wasn’t crazy about the subject. It’s

happened that I drew half of it in a completely different way. I’ve never thrown anything away. I really

think about them quite a bit. I take every drawing seriously.

And now I want to show you the birds on satin. Sure, take a look…! That incredible softness… You know

how satin shimmers and makes a life-like structure. I love working with it. I thought of it myself. I didn’t

have paper. I always arrive at something out of desperation. I had a piece of satin and I said to myself: “I

wonder if I could paint on that?” Si I tried it, and see for yourself, it worked! Most of the time when I

change a technique, it’s always out of necessity. I run out of something, you know…? Now I’ll show you

a bird which has a propeller. Imagine that. You know, the propeller turns and allows him to fly. See how it

turns? There, that is beautifully represented. That’s all from the satin, otherwise it’s ballpoints, That was

a lot of work, enough for five other drawings. You have to have very precise fingers to do it. You have to

put it aside after awhile on account of your eyes… And here are some drawings on silk. You have to

prepare the silk first from behind. If you just cut the silk it would fray. It took me a lot of work to get it right.

Now I know the trick. Whenever I paint on material, it takes special paints. You can get them… well, not

always. You see… this is the four-story satellite of y fantasies. Can you see it? In my fantasies the

butterflies and birds are not sitting on the ground, but in the branches. And then the branch strongly

resembles the bird. See it, sitting on the branch, on the leaves… there’s a kind of hawk, see it? And here

are doves. Sure, they’re different… here is softness and silkiness.

And when I later look and see what I’ve done, I tell you, I feel good. I feel really good. And not out of

pride, no. When I die, I’ll leave them for my children. And they can do what they want with them. Just so

they get them, and they’re distributed fairly. I know what Mammon does to a person. No person is good

who has too much. I’d rather live humbly and live a beautiful life. I’ve always been afraid of money. It

scares me. Because ho who has a lot of it, is bad. I’m so glad it occurred to me to paint on fabrics… See

the softness here and the density here.

But it’s interesting, I came up with it myself. Now I’ve bought some new kinds of paper. But I have

never found any on which I would paint the same subject. If I do, if I start to repeat myself, I might as well

pack it in.


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Spring 1980, Prague

The text is a partly edited and abridged transcript of an interview recorded by Pavel Konecny during

preperation of the lecture “Fantaskní tvorba Anny Zemánkové” (“The Fantasy Work of Anna

Zemánková”), which was given at Divaldo hudby (The Olomouc Music Theatre) on 28 May 1980.

Previously Exhibited: Sabhan Adam:Painting With SmokeBy Editor Fri, Sep 12, 2008

SABHAN ADAM: PAINTING WITH

SMOKE

September 4 – October 11,

2008

Cavin-Morris Gallery is pleased to present the paintings

and drawings of the singular self-taught artist, Sabhan

Adam. His subjects mostly figurative seem to live in a

place that tears the watcher out of complacency into an

uncomfortable almost hallucinogenic plane of existence

where any reference to beauty depends on a level of

discomfiture.

There is anger, a righteous anger that is tempered by a sharp-edged sense of humor. The work seethes

with an almost literary sense of cosmic punishment meted out by an unfriendly universe that shares a

distant relationship with Kafka’s post-Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa or the caterpillar in Through The

Looking Glass. We are ushered into an unnamable place where caricature becomes very serious.

There isn’t other work like Sabhan Adam’s coming out of the Arab World right now. His polemic is

human and generalized rather than strictly local. There is very little sacred geometry in what he does,

and what he depicts is an expressionistic distortion of the human form. He has a sensitivity to costume

in an off-kilter way that is as rich as embroidery. His figures rise from the canvas like djinn. They come

from a place that is earthly and metaphysical simultaneously. An earlier exhibition of his work was

entitled “Ethereal”, an especially relevant term because it is so easy to get engrossed in the


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non-empirical enigmas of the work that one can forget how skillfully they are made. It is as if Adam were

drawing with a paint made of smoke and tar.

Perhaps his words say it best:

The only thing I own is my drawing. Most of people sit on chairs, talk numb and don’t understand what I

am going through, and that blood is coming out of my eyes. Only my parents saw me drawing.” Another

silence, then: “in the middle of the vertigo of my spirit, a path takes form and leads the way.” He hesitates

and says: “if I hadn’t drawn I would have been no body. I don’t want to hear the sound of the sea the way

it should be heard. Sometimes, I wish I had burnt my paintings. Present is the only thing that matters.

Painter or dustman, so what?

I am having hard time understanding people. I enjoy God’s company! I talk from the inside and most of

the people are not interested in that. I do embrace time and space in a single move.

My talk is like the wind. I wonder why people talk or write about me; what I am is something else. I hate

human relationships, openings. I love nonsense; I love God and the prophets.

Humanity is just like hunger or sleep, that’s all. Beggars or kings, it’s all the same, and that is the way

they are in my paintings. Joy is not my topic. Pain, disabled and handicapped people; that is my world.

Things change around me, I don’t. People talk without being connected to their spirit. May God demolish

their houses!

For further information please contact Shari Cavin, Mariko Tanaka or Randall Morris at

(212) 226 3768, by email: [email protected].

Gallery News and Projects,

Happening stuff....By Gallery Sat, Oct 25, 2008

News 10/10/08:

Randall Morris and Mariko Tanaka will be curating the San Francisco Arts of Pacific Asia special

exhibition

at Fort Mason Center Festival Pavillion from February 6-8, 2009.

http://www.caskeylees.com/shows/3/asian/sf/events/


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Randall Morris will be curating two special exhibition for the San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show

titled

Conversing with Culture: Paintings and Drawings by Jose Bedia and Indigenous Drawings: Works by

Self-taught artists from Non-Western Cultures from February 13-15, 2009 at Fort Mason Center Festival

Pavillion.

We welcome Frank Parga to the gallery, and congratulate him on opening his new art studio space in

Brooklyn.

For more info: www.frankparga.com

Shari Cavin has completed her certification for Art Appraisers Association of America in Self-Taught and

Outsider Art. Additionally she has written the exam for future appraisers to get certified for Self-Taught

and Outsider Art field.

Mariko Tanaka, independent curator is appointed vice-chair to the Art Gallery for Siggraph Asia 2009,

the largest U.S. conference and exhibition in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, launching

for the first time in Yokohama, Japan.

http://www.siggraph.org/asia2008/

Upcoming Art Fairs:

Treasures Show for Antique and Unique Decorative Objects, Textiles and Wearable Art, October 24-26,

2008.

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Cavin-Morris Gallery will feature Japanese Ceramics and Textiles, and Tribal Art.

http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/events/treasures/index.shtml

OUTSIDER ART FAIR JANUARY 9 - 11 NEW DATES & LOCATIONTHE MART, 7 West 34th Street, New York City

The San Franciso Arts of Pacific Asia Show

February 6th-8th, 2009 Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA

The San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show

February 13th-15th, 2009 Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA


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Our Kinds of Music, Gallery News and Projects,

Our Kinds of Music

Music from around the World you might hear at the

gallery or during our openings. We will update this section

constantly.

10/5/08

1.- Calexico- Carried to Dust

Quarterback Records 2008

This band is one of the ones I would take with me when I

disappear into the South western desert. They are

Masters of the evocation of Place with their refined

mariachi brass, their genius drummer and their great

songwriting and evocative guitar.

2.- Lila Downs- Shake Away

Blue Note Label Group 2008

Less Cafe than her last outing, this one finds her more jazzy but still very edgy. Fewer ballads but a

smoking version of Black Magic Woman. She was the singer in the movie Frida and I have always felt

she would have made a better Frida than Selma. Looks more like her also.

3.- Ali Farka Toure and Toumane Diabate- In the Heart of the Moon

World Circuit 2005

The music on this CD is as close to its title as you can get. They fill silence with visionary delicacy the

way a Bach cello sonata does. This is healing and spiritual music for these damaging times.

4.- Shantel- Bucovina Cub Mixture Mixtape 2

Crammed Esay Records 2008

I can't play this when clients come into the gallery because it makes my body twitch in odd rhythmic

ways. Shantel is an amazing DJ who has reworked great gypsy music into a positive and sometimes

hilarious debauch without any sacrifice of musicality.

5.- Elvis Perkins- Ash Wednesday

XL Recordings 2007

A pure and beautiful CD of exquisite and generous songwriting. Perkins was the son of Anthony

Perkins and recorded this CD after his mother, on returning from his fathers' funeral went down on the


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9/11 plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. Despite that the music is uplifting and energizing like a forest

at dawn. The song 'While You Were Sleeping" is one of the greatest American songs ever written...up

there with Dock of the Bay, A Change is Gonna Come and Tangled Up in Blue, to name a few.

6.- Carolina Chocolate Drops Presents Sankofa Strings- Colored Aristocracy

Music Maker 2007

A contemporary African-American String band playing old-timey music but with a slight twist. Sounding

often like an old jug band it is great hearing violin and guitar sound like this.

7.- Watcha Clan- Diaspora Hi-fi

Piranha Music 2008

Smoking on the dance floor, smoking on the stage this band rewards with its combination of Balkan,

Jamaican, North African and hip hop among others. From Great Britain, they are loud and rhythmic and

just starting to be known in the United States.

8.- Africa Remix

Milan Records 2007

This is the CD that accompanied the Art exhibition of the same name that showed self-taught African

Artists as artists and as part of a phenomenon that accepts and expands outside influences without

losing its roots integrities. The art should outrage purists and the music raises the bar as well.

9.- Back Roads to Cold Mountain

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings 2004

This CD plays like a mountain spring, clear cool and very very refreshing. The field holler in the first cut

is worth the price alone but there is much much more from black and white gospel to banjo and pure

blues. Despite the disparate roots the American feel to it is palpable.

10.- Bunny Wailer- Blackheart Man

Island Def Jam Music Group 1976/2002

I last heard this in college and so it was with a bit of trepidation that I played it again and with a sense of

relief and great enjoyment heard the power and intensity of its messages. They are still relevant in this

bashed up world. Jamaica is listening itself to roots music again and this CD has a definite Old Master

quality to it. Highly recommended.

11.- Nation Beat- Legends of the Preacher

Modiba 2008

I ran into this group through total serendipity this summer while surfing musical sites. At first I thought


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they were an army of drums and violins playing Mexican matachin music but then I heard the Brazilian

bottom come through. They sing Hank Williams songs a couple of times to a neo-samba beat. The vibe

is up and healthy and sinuous. They are moving up very fast.

Just In- Afrissippi

Blues and African combined. More later.

Books, Gallery News and Projects,

Books

Some relevant books we'd recommend:

1.- Art Brut du Japon

Collection de l'Art Brut Infolio 2008

This important new catalog is one of several that are

finally making clear to the field that there is a huge

number of artists unknown to the West who have been

making art for a while. Our knowledge of Asian

self-taught artists is woefully lacking. There is another

catalog we will list later that came out the same time as

this one of Art Brut artists touring in Japan with Japanese

self-taught artists. These collections open up again the

whole discussion on the validity of workshops and how

foolish it would be not to redefine what we think of as

'workshop' art.

2.- Mali Blues- Lieve Joris

Lonely Planet Publications 1998

A moving portrait of the Mali music scene by someone who went and met Bouboucare Traore and

became involved in the personal dimensions of culture clash as urban and rural combine in Africa.

3.- Exiles, Diasporas and Strangers: Edited by Kobena Mercer

INIVA and the MIT Press 2008

Essays dealing with emigres to other cultures who became involved with the arts and encouraged or

influenced the flowering of new modernist-based movements. Great for post-colonial views on cultural

hybridity.

4.- Three Eyes for the Journey; African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience-Dianne


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Stewart

Oxford Press- 2005

The most up-to-date and concise look at Caribbean religion and made clear in a way that can be

extremely useful to those who don't have a great familiarity with Caribbean African-rooted theologies.

There has not been a book like this one and it is indispensible to those interested in the African Diaspora

including the US.

5.- True-Born Maroons- Kenneth Bilby

University Pres of Florida 2005

Kenneth Bilby is one of the visionaries in understanding New World Religion and music. He is a

hands-on scholar and this book does not disappoint. He allows the Maroons from all time periods to tell

their own stories from mundane to visionary.

6.- 1491- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus- Charles C. Mann

Vintage Press 2006

This book tells you what America was the day before Columbus got there. It is told by a writer who you

reluctantly take leave of when the book is over. One point that blew me away in particular was that the

forests and landscapes of much of North America were under the agricultural custodianship of the

tribes. They were huge wild carefully tended gardens that were integral to living conditions. By the end

you see this country in ways completely new.

7.- Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art Fred Myers

Duke University Press 2002

Of interest to all those who want to know how art movements (in this case Aboriginal) take form and the

issues involved. It goes beyond just stories of exploitation into the very fabric of the culture itself.

'

8.- Ganga Devi- Tradition and Expression in Mithila Painting- Jyotindra Jain

Khantha Corporation 1997

A great book by a great and understanding writer about an indian self-taught artist who broke with and

expanded traditional women's art in India. Often heartbreaking and ultimately inspiring in a grand way.

9.- Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds: Built Environments of Vernacular Artists edited by

Leslie Umberger

Princeton Architectural Press 2007

One of the most important catalogs to come out in the American aspect of the field in the last year. If

one reads between the lines in this book one comes to realize how inesacapable the fact is that all work

by most self-taught artists especially when it is culturally rooted comes from an essentially environmental


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vision. The book has easily become one of the base-lines of our field.

10.- Netherland- Joseph O'Neill

Pantheon Books 2008

A novel about a man in New York who, sometimes despite himself, comes to see how cultures intermesh

and how the world resounds in times and places that seem only local on the surface.

11.- NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith

Yale University Press 2008

Based on the phrase by Ishmael Reed and in a show that opens at PS 1 in October this is a great

catalog of only for the essay by Greg Tate which is black music verbalized and the pictures but it goes

even beyond with an interview with Reed, an older essay by Robert Farris Thompson and an essay by

Danto among others. The major major flaw of this show is that it left out the self-taught African-American

artists and thus becomes an unwitting part of the injury it seeks to redress. Important and interesting

nontheless. For this reason the parts become more important than the whole.

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Documents

Autumn 2008 Field notes