Posted on March 5, 2025 by Melissa Stern

Insider Outsider

Adhemar Ahmad- portray 1969. Oilt, thin wooden board, unprimed canvas, staples. 32.5 x 24.25 2002

This past weekend New York saw the latest iteration of the Outsider Art Fair. Started in 1993, it has become a NYC institution and seems to be thriving after a few lean pandemic years. The Fair serves a field that has evolved a great deal over the past 30 years, and I really felt that this year more than in the past. As the number of now “blue chip” or “Old Master Self-Taught” artists dwindle, there’s been an influx of both younger artists and some who push against the definitions of self-taught in the first place. It’s a sticky subject and one that I have no answer to.

The Fair was packed to the gills with both art tourists and serious collectors. Sales seemed vibrant, and most dealers were smiling through their exhaustion. These shows are grueling: load in on Wednesday, open to the public on Thursday, close on Sunday, and load out on Monday. One can forgive the glazed expressions that take over exhibitors’ faces as they try to cover their expenses and make money/connections for their galleries and artists. It’s a six-day sprint.

Over the years I have found some of the most moving works at the show are presented by the non-profits that run art therapy programs for people in need. The Center for Creative Works in Wynnewood, PA, brought wonderful paintings by Eric Stewart. Acrylic on canvas, they are beautifully composed snapshots of urban life.

Eric Stewart-Basketball Series 3. 2024 Acrylic on canvas

Peninsula Gallery was at the fair for the first time. Director Eric Fallen explained that self-taught artists are not typically part of his program. He was introduced to Adhemar Ahmad, a bookseller and streetside chess player who has been on the street in Morningside Heights for decades and was immediately smitten by Ahmad’s work. It’s easy to understand why. Ahmad’s art was some of the most subtle and stunning work I have seen all weekend. Sophisticated compositions with an emotional resonance that was captivating. I hope and trust that all of Ahmad’s pieces went home with buyers. Truly unusual work.

Adhemar Ahmad minus line. Vinyl, 20 x 16 .2002

In addition to the work of self-taught artists, the Fair always has dealers who show historical works of art whose makers’ identities are impossible to know due to the passage of time and the personal nature of the work. These pieces were never intended to be for sale, and thus, the makers’ names were never recorded. There is something mysterious and potent about these works that record moments and histories of the past. We are detectives, tasked with making up our own stories about the who/what/when and where of the artworks. Keith De Lellis Gallery brought a number of these anonymous works, including this arresting hand-colored photo.

American Primitive Oil Painted Portrait Photograph. Painted photograph mounted on board. Original frame. C.1850. 13.5 x 11

Many booths seemed overhung and crowded this year. I understand that the economics of an art fair are tight, and the dealers need to show and sell a lot in a short period. But this year the fair walls felt especially cramped, not always to the advantage of the artwork.

Shrine Gallery always brings a single artist and devotes their booth to an immersive experience with that maker. This year, they brought the work of Arstanda Billy White, a self-taught artist from Richmond, CA. White describes his biggest influence as an artist is Van Gogh, saying “I’m the guy who is going to draw a picture of Van Gogh. In the painting, he’s yellow because that’s how Van Gogh wanted it, but I put him in black. I’m going to draw the whole thing, and then I’m going to draw my dad, the Golden Gloves Champion.” His paintings are bold, with vibrant gestural swaths of color, the figures pulsing with energy. The gallery showed his very droll ceramic sculptures as well.

Arstanda Billy White- That’s Me, Being Scarred and Afraid. Acrylic on canvas. 72 x 60. 2024

Arstanda Billy White- Untitled Self Portrait Glazed ceramic. 24 x 15 x 9 2024

It will be interesting to see how the Outsider Art Fair continues to evolve over the next few years. The show has expanded geographically. I will never tire of finding extraordinary art from around the world there. Increasingly, there’s been a welcome influx of art from other countries: India, the UK, Haiti, Japan, and Iran were all represented this year in what was at least initially a largely U.S.-centered fair.

The scope and definition of outsider art continue to expand perhaps better defined by what it is not than what it is. Whatever the boundaries of the genre, it is refreshing that work characterized as “outsider” continues to so compellingly invite us in.

All photos courtesy of Melissa Stern

Posted on June 7, 2024 by Melissa Stern

Lubaina Himid- Street Sellers at Greene Naftali

Posture Master- 2023. Acrylic on canvas. 96 x 72

Rarely has there been a group of people as uniformly elegant and graceful as those who inhabit Lubaina Himid’s paintings, currently on view at Greene Naftali in Chelsea. Entitled Street Sellers, Himid has created a group of large, figurative paintings that pulse with vibrant color and life. These graceful, solo figures proudly present their wares to us–eggs, birds, musical instruments, and fish, as they move through the landscape.

Himid, who is of English and Zanzibari parentage, has frequently reached back into her African heritage to present stories from the history of colonization and slavery. Her retrospective at The Tate in 2021 featured a multi-painting retelling of the story of a slave ship called The Rodeur. In 1819, there was an outbreak of a highly contagious eye disease called ophthalmia. Slaves and crew members were stricken with blindness. To receive the full insurance value of the now “unsalable” slaves, 36 of them were thrown overboard.

Himid retold this story through a series of paintings that metaphorically reflect an underlying anxiety rather than solely the horrific events. The paintings are genteel and elegant. She transferred the setting to a loosely defined vintage ocean liner populated by beautifully outfitted Black people. It’s impossible to tell what era this is, though it is definitely the 20th century. The sense of mystery that compels the viewer to “read” this story is deeply compelling. The horror only comes when the viewer knows the story behind the drama.

Rather than portray historical events, Himid prefers to evoke them. This sense of the fluidity of time and place suffuses the current exhibition. It’s hard to really place the people in these paintings. Some of the outfits look vaguely 18th-century English or generic European; they certainly aren’t contemporary. Himid has made ten eight-foot-tall full-length figures, a painting format traditionally associated with aristocrats and royalty. Perhaps she is suggesting that these hard-working class people ARE true royalty.

Fish Seller: Safety or Danger. 2023. Acrylic on canvas. 96 x 72

They could be characters in a story rather than individualized portraits. I scanned the walls to see if there indeed was an overarching story, as there was with the Rodeur series. Himid has a background in set design, and many of her pieces over the years and in this show reflect that. There is a formality and theatricality to these paintings. The street sellers show off their wares, cavort and present themselves to us as if in the prologue to a play. I don’t consider the choice to not individualize the figures as a detriment to the work, rather, I feel like the entire exhibition is a magic show waiting to start.

Himid’s painting has become much looser than I had seen previously, atmospheric gestures and veils of color define the landscape within which each figure lives. She has always been a brilliant colorist, and these paintings pulse with gorgeous and rich color combinations. These deep jewel tones, not found in nature, evoke the imagined world of the Street Sellers. As always, bits and pieces of patterning appear in the paintings. These both define the space and jar the viewer’s expectations of the landscape and architecture.

Toy Seller. 2023. Acrylic on canvas. 96 x 72

The one off-note for me in the exhibition is the inclusion of uniquely made street signs. They appear to be cardboard, but according to the gallery notes they are on archival paper mounted on wood free-standing frames throughout the gallery. Each of the large paintings has a companion sign. One side of each sign is a crudely drawn cartoon of what is being sold in the larger work and a phonetic or made-up language advertisement for that item. The verso is a hidden message that I think is what we are meant to believe that the seller is thinking. It feels forced. The signs occupy an odd mid-point; they aren’t painted well enough to match the paintings, and at the same time, they aren’t rough enough to push the concept of contrast between inner and outer worlds. It’s a collaboration between Himid and her partner, Magda Stawarska, who has previously produced luscious soundscapes to accompany Himid’s work.

Plump and Delicious Birds. 2024. Screenprint, acrylic paint, etching ink. 365/8 x 29 7/8

Nonetheless, it’s a treat to see paintings as glorious as these. The Universe that Himid creates is both Joyful, colorful, delightful, and elegiac. The Street Sellers are a poetic portrayal of an imagined world of the past, yet one that feels completely contemporary.

Install view Greene Naftali

All photo courtesy of Melissa Stern

published in Art Spiel on Jan. 29, 2024

John O’Connor at L’Space presented in conjunction with Pierogi Gallery

Noahbot-colored pencil and graphite on paper. 83 x 69.5. 2013. Photo courtesy of John Berens

There is an astonishing amount of information in John O’Connor’s drawings. The work, currently on show in Chelsea at L’Space Gallery, explodes off the paper with words and numbers, names, logos, and dates. It’s information overload, and that is part of the genius of the show.

It’s O’Connor’s first solo show in eight years, and clearly, he’s had a lot on his mind. It is a dense exhibition, and you need to either give yourself a lot of time or come for two visits, as I did. The drawings, all made with colored pencil and graphite, grapple with huge questions– philosophy, ethics, politics, linguistics, and history, all the while appearing as visually appealing pop art. It is only as you attempt to decipher the code or puzzle the underlying logic that you begin to understand that there’s something very different than fun “pop” drawing going on here. His interests roam all over the intellectual map, from chess strategy to the writings of Plutarch.

Car Crash-colored pencil and graphite on paper. 85 x 69.75. 2023. Photo courtesy of JSP Photography

There is a particular obsession– and I use that word as a compliment– with cause and effect, both philosophical and visual. As in the piece Car Crash 2023. O’Connor has taken the “chain” theory from Newton’s Law of Physics- rapid changes in kinetic energy are transferred from object to object. OK, car crash=chain reaction, that sounds simple enough. But O’Connor takes it onto another realm by saying, “I thought of this as analogous to the societal transfer of wealth from poor to rich. This process is evident in products and assets– vehicles whose practical function is incrementally usurped by their form as luxury objects.” He has re-imagined the chain effect of a multi-car crash as an analogy to capitalist desire and status. The “crash” begins in the upper left-hand corner and as the crashes continue the cars become more and more expensive, they are interspersed with cartoon and fictional cars, logos and seemingly random words and slogans. The entire drawing spirals into the center, where it all dissolves into an abstracted “wormhole” that, in O’Connor’s Universe, takes you back to the beginning. The entire drawing thus becomes an infinite loop of consumerism and advertising.

If this all sounds like a lot to put into one drawing, well, it is. Many of the works in this show seem to be almost made in a fever dream. They all have deep underpinnings, and the ideas, as well as the visuals, come spinning out at you with force field energy. Some of them feel to me a visualization of the way the brain makes connections. It’s an interesting dichotomy because these drawings must have taken an enormous amount of pre-planning and time to create, but the impact is instant and visceral. The very process that he uses to make these–colored pencil and graphite–is time-intensive, and when you see the dense color-saturated surfaces, it is a little mind-boggling that they are pencil and not paint.

The use of advertising images and fonts of every imaginable type reflects the bombardment of commercial imagery in our world. O’Connor faithfully reproduces recognizable slogans and typefaces. He has a particular fondness for the sounds of old comic books and TV shows (CRUNCH! BATMAN! NEW!). His mastery of the reproduction of these many iconic visual/verbal images is remarkable.

Echo, Day Five- colored pencil and graphite on paper. 89.5 x 70. 2023. Photo courtesy of Photo courtesy of JSP Photography

Echo Day Five (detail)

Echo reminds me of one of my favorite childhood word games- The Rebus. This is a puzzle where words are represented by both pictures and letters to spell out a story. I love the dance O’Connor does between the amusing and the profound. The subject matter of his work is deep and dense and heady, yet the images are infused with a pop art sensibility. You’re a little dazzled by the visual games, and the more serious content sneaks up on you as you try to “read “the game.

Installation view of the gallery. Photo courtesy of Melissa Stern

Beyond his stunning drawings, there is sculptural installation in this show that feels like O’Connor’s peripatetic brain jogging off into another direction. Words flow up, down and around hanging shapes. They don’t feel completely in dialogue with the drawings, despite their common theme of the use of words. The sculptures feel a little thin. Entirely worthy pieces, just not quite as powerful as the drawings.

Get yourself well-caffeinated and put on your thinking cap before you see this show. The work is provocative and offers no easy answers. And that fits perfectly with the state of the world.today.

thE mAn- colored pencil and graphite on paper. 14 x 9. 2023. Photo courtesy of JSP Art Photography

Man Bites Don Bites Man- at L’Space through February 17th. 524 West 19^th St, NYC. Presented in partnership with Pierogi Gallery

*John O’Connor is quoted from the catalogue for the exhibition. 2023

Posted on November 29, 2023 by Melissa Stern

Kismatores! (Portrait d’Arié Mandelbaum) (Kiss my Ass! [Portrait of Arié Mandelbaum]), 1982, Graphite lead, color pencil, and collage on paper. 59 x 46 7/16 inches
Detail of above drawing.

Detail of above drawing.

Much about Mandelbaum is obscured by the fact that he was by several accounts a habitual liar, and this leaves massive gaps and red herrings in his autobiography. What can be verified is thin; what is known creates a puzzle perhaps best gleaned from the work itself.

But I buried the lede: Mandelbaum was murdered, and his corpse disfigured after he delivered a stolen Modigliani painting that turned out to be a forgery to underworld figures who had hired him to steal it. He died in 1986 at the age of 25. What survives is a huge archive of drawings and notebooks, 57 of which are being shown at The Drawing Center. I find it curious that the wall text and press release make little to no note of Mandelbaum’s crime dealings and the cause of his death. Rather than being sensationalist, they are to me, essential elements in creating a full portrait of this elusive artist.

Primarily a portraitist, Mandelbaum’s drawings in this exhibition range in size from a diminutive 5 x 7 to a life-size 68 x 52. While there are a few portraits of women drawn from a bar in the northern part of the city, most of the drawings in the exhibition are of men. There are some family members, most notably a huge portrait of the artist’s father, Ari Mandelbaum (pictured above), which deserves more discussion. But mostly, the portraits are of famous gay men- Piero Passolini, Francis Bacon, Werner Maria Fassbinder, George Dyer, Arturo Rimbaud and (rumored to be gay) Nazis. Mandelbaum had a fascination with and was drawn to transgressive artists, political and military strongmen, denizens of the night, crime figures, his own Jewish heritage, and, yes, Nazis. A psychologically complex combination of interests, to be sure.

Because of his opaque biography, we don’t really know what the connection was in his mind, as well as the nature of his marriage or lifestyle. It is strange to me that there seems to be so little recorded about Mandelbaum. He died in 1986, and there must be people still alive who knew him. But after exhaustive online research, I found nothing more than sketchy outlines. The inclusion in his drawings of Yiddish, German, and French text, as well as collaged porn photos and Nazi iconography, makes it tantalizing to armchair psychoanalyze the work. Rather than opine in the dark about his artistic motivations and life, I leave the work to speak for itself, as apparently did the artist and those who survived him.

Composition (Mishima, Bacon…), 1980 Ballpoint pen on paper, 6 9/16 x 9 1/4 inches

George Dyer, 1982 Graphite on paper 59 x 47 1/4 inches

Pier Paolo Pasolini(Antonello de Messi_e, Pietà,1477-1478), 1980 Ballpoint pen, marker, and collage on paper 20 3/8 x 28 inches. Pasolini n_°8, 1980, Ballpoint pen on paper, 19 11/16 x 27 1/2 inches

Most, if not all of Mandelbaum’s portraits appear to be painted from photographs, albeit with some subtle tweaks. Mandelbaum often added in aspects of his own visage to his “sitter’s” image or added cartoons of himself sneaking into larger compositions. Appearing and re-appearing over and over again is a chilling portrait of Joseph Goebbels, Hiltler’s chief propagandist and a virulent anti-Semite. Mandelbaum portrays Goebbels in profile, his mouth open in mid-yell, the image taken from an infamous speech of May 1933. His teeth have been removed from the portrait, an interesting artistic choice that opens the door to all sorts of theories of the artist’s intent.

Goebbels, 1980, Ballpoint pen on paper, 18 1/2 x 21 9/16 inches

Gueule cassée et autoportrait (Broken face with self-portrait), 1980, Ballpoint pen and collage on paper 19 11/16 x 27 1/2 inches

Drawing with the simplest of implements- ballpoint pen and pencil, a little gouache, and a smattering of collage, Mandelbaum shows an intuitive and fluid style. His compositions are sophisticated, often using large areas of negative space balanced by jam-packed spaces to move his narratives forward. He regularly alternates deeply dense areas of marks with those that are sketchier, focusing our attention on the faces and moods of his sitters.

This long overdue exhibition is by turns terrifying, sad, provocative, and brilliant. Mandelbaum, possibly a tragic but undeniably complex character, has left us with a body of work that raises more questions than answers. To me, that is always a sign of great artwork.