autumn 2008 field notes
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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
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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 scavin@cavinmorris.com.
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: MTanaka@cavinmorris.com.
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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