Frank Calloway, 112, visionary artist
Frank Calloway draws pen, marker, and crayon murals on butcher block paper, some more than 30 feet long. Calloway is 112 years old and has lived in mental hospitals since 1952. His work will be featured in an exhibit at Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum. The Associated Press profiled Calloway and created a wonderful slideshow with Calloway speaking. From the AP:
Calloway views art as his job and sits at a table by a window drawing for seven to nine hours a day, usually wearing blue denim overalls and a crisp dress shirt, said Nedra Moncrief-Craig, director of Alice M. Kidd Nursing Facility, a state home where Calloway lives...Frank Calloway profile (CNN)
(America Visionary Art Museum director Rebecca) Hoffberger called Calloway brilliant and described looking through notebooks full of numbers he keeps and noticing that there was a definite logical pattern to the strings of figures. There is "an instinctive attraction to math that is so inherent in his work," she said.
Rows of numbers line the edges of some of his artwork, and he sometimes stops in the middle of conversations to methodically recite multiplication tables.
Calloway is content being quietly absorbed in his work, but he also enjoys talking if people ask questions, Moncrief-Craig said. He listens intently and responds at length in a deep, gravelly voice as he rocks gently back and forth, often punctuating the end of a story with a soft chuckle and a huge smile that lights up a broad face that has very few wrinkles.
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Wow! A Happy Mutant if ever there was one!
What a great piece to start the week!
TOTAL Happy Mutant, Jim! : ) Good call.
he's smiling because that's the Grand Unified Field Theory in the margins
which proves my theory -- you can go to grad school in art, or you can be a 112 years old african-american living in mental institutions and doing really great work. the choice is yours.
This sound almost exactly like Henry Darger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger
Outsider art is always interesting stuff. If you like this you'll certainly like Raw Vision.
When I was on the street Yuri at Outsiders and Others Gallery helped me with a show. I sold some stuff. Outsiders and Others doesn't exist any more but Spectrum, the local CSP, has a page about it. I'm very grateful for Yuri's help. I'm not a Happy Mutant.
Haha, want to know the secret to living to 112 and looking that good? A life free from sun exposure, free from the stress of worrying about your next meal or your future, under constant medical supervision, where you do nothing but what you love.
I don't know much about this guy's life, other than what was in the BB post, but I bet that if you could define a "unit" of happiness, and calculate how many units this guy has used, over his whole life... I bet it's a damned high score.
Something to think about, anyways.
ROADBETWEENUS @5, Yes, I love Henry Darger. We've posted about him on BB before.
NOEN @6, I've really enjoyed Raw Vision when I remember to pick it up. Great mag. Outsiders And Others looks like it was an amazing gallery. Wish I'd visited!
this is amazing. made my day.
A life free from sun exposure, free from the stress of... blah balh blah.. Be careful what you wish for, be very careful.
I highly recommend checking out Achilles Rizzoli, outsider artist who created 'architectural portraits of friends and family. He was a lot like Darger in his reclusiveness and sexual naivete.
http://www.amesgallery.com/ArtistPages/Rizzoli.html
There's a film biography out, but I haven't seen it.
Go Bawlmer!
I love AVAM- wicked cool place. The gift shop item selection made me wonder if John Waters was one of the buyers :P
Visionary Artist? I'm really don't think so. Another gimmick artist, perhaps.
There is a rash of this kind of art in this country today, and it's somewhat disturbing. I always though that art was supposed to communicate something, not just have an interesting or fun story behind it or have pretty colors.
My 2 year old nephew "paints" pictures, everyone oo's and ahh's and puts them on their walls, because they're pretty colors and a gimmick; "a 2 year old painted this!" There's some dog out there that "paints" and his prints sell for more than most artists could hope to get, because it's a gimmick and it has pretty colors.
I'm not advocating for the out-of-touch-with-reality "high" art crowd, they're the other polar extreme and are equally as regrettable. But let's please call a spade a spade; this is hardly visionary painting, my nephew is not a genius with a paint brush, and the dog is a joke. Go support your local artists, they're working hard and may have something interesting to say with their work.
@#13: You must be racist or an anti-mentite. How could you not call this insane geriatric's childish scribblings art???
Ace0415:
Art appreciation: You're doin it wrong!
H H! Yh lt's cll spd spd.
Ths drwngs r th wrk f n ld spd!
you are here to learn? OK: do not say such things unless: 1. you are eligible for the same appellation. 2. you are sure everyone in earshot is comfortable with that turn of phrase.
do not fail in this regard again.
With no offense to Mr. Frank Calloway, I've never understood the art world.
I've seen thousands of pictures EXACTLY like the one pictured above on hundreds of kitchen walls and refrigerators throughout my life and I guarantee you that all of them combined wouldn't garner more than a buck or two. So what is it about this gentleman and his art that is garning all this attention?
Could it be because he's both Black AND mentally unstable? Absolutely right it is.
Whatever.
Call me cynical if you wish, but I happen to think that the art world is full of shite. Art is supposed to be subjective not objective, yet it's completely the opposite and full of people who think they're above the rest of us "mere human peons" just because they happen to think, and others blindly follow their lead, that a monkey with a paint brush is "brilliant". "A mere mortal could NEVER understand such things..."
I really liked the profile on Mr. Calloway and I'm glad that he's getting so much enjoyment as well as therapy through his art work and for that more than anything else, it pisses me off that the snobish art world, where if he were on the streets outside of their "art houses" he would be looked down upon, are basically using him.
The money that he'll be possibly "making" won't do him any good in the long run. At 112, everyday is a blessing, and the odds are longer for his day to day, so who really gets all the "thousands" that the snobs are saying his work is worth? They say that it goes to the State, as if they need it or even deserve it. It wouldn't surprise me if his "lawyer" pulled some slimy crap and ended up splitting it with the art house snobs. And as they say in the art world, you're more famous dead than alive, so you can only imagine how much these drawings would be worth then and I really doubt that those thousands of dollars would go to the State.
Again who decides that amount? Someone with a hypenated last name who looks down their noses upon the rest of us little people? Yep. Trust me on this - living in Northwest Portland, Oregon, where probably more people of this nature live per capita than anywhere else in the world outside of Marin County - I've dealt with more than my share of these people.
I've always looked at life through a different lens, if you will, where NO ONE is above or below anyone else. You should be judged by the way you treat your fellow man, not by how much money you have, where you went to college or, as in this case, how much you "know" about art.
Again, whatever.
It would be interesting to see just how many of these "art critics" would take Mr. Calloway into their own homes to live. I would be willing to bet no more than one, but probably, and sadly, zero.
Again, kudos to Mr. Calloway. I hope that someone is looking out for him and will manage his money that he will be getting, but I still don't think it's right for a bunch of "bree and champagne" arseholes to use this sweet old man as a "will you look at what I discovered" type of personal feather in their pretentious caps.
So...... My three year old nephew, who draws similar pictures must be a math genius?
Warning! Warning! Philistine Alert!
'My three year old child could do that!'
How many times have I heard this one? Yeah...my three year old cat could paint like Jackson Pollock if I drenched him in paint and threw him at a canvas. You're missing the point.
There's a reason it's referred to as 'Outsider Art'...because it fits in a niche outisde traditional art/aesthetic theory. Largely due to the fact that it's made by people who stand outside of 'normal' society.
Also...I doubt that your three year old child can devote many hours a day to produce a set of notebooks that have a "definite logical pattern". A definite logical pattern indicates some sort of vision.
Sure...the guy ain't Rembrandt but he's still freakin' interesting on his own terms.
If you don't like it, don't buy it. Complaints just bring more attention to it.
Art posts always bring out the art haters, especially from the "I think the art world is a scam" camp. Well, sometimes it is.
There are snooty intellectuals and blue chip collectors who alienate the general public. A lot of art can only be understood within contexts that are pretty exclusive to the field-it's hard to figure out without some prior knowledge, so it further alienates huge numbers. On the other hand, the general public is expected to dislike and distrust new art because they've heard it's supposed to offend (the shock of the new).
Bear in mind that art continually presses boundaries, including those of taste. This will draw fire.
So, the art world is full of shit sometimes, but when art does its job and speaks to you it is a transcendent thing! If it fails, then you react accordingly (or look closer). To trash the world of art because your sensibilities have been offended is to shut the door on future positive experiences.
Some people think outsider art provides an opportunity to peek into the mind and soul of a unique individual living beyond the "rules" of the art world. And yet, they are like traditional artists in that they also tend to break with established ideas about content, form, composition, etc. Neat, huh?
#13--you sound a tad bitter. what's wrong? mmmy nd dddy wst thsnds n yr prstgs rt schl jst t fnd t tht y sck?
who are you to say that this mans art is meaningless? have you talked to him about his work and what inspired it? this man has more knowledge and experience than you will probably ever have. You can't define art, sshl!
Any time you happen to be anywhere near Baltimore (read, the tri-state area), the Visionary Art Museum is the thing to see! Admission gets you into another very strange gallery next door as well, with some beautiful grafted trees and a gigantic ball made of bras. Also worth checking out is the Baltimore Museum of Industry. Either is 10x better than basking in the consumerism and murky waters of the Inner Harbor.
It's actually quite easy to define art; abstract human communication though a medium. This stuff definitely falls into that category, I never said it didn't. I was just saying that when art has little more to say than the gimmick behind it's creation I have a problem taking it seriously. Other's don't seem to have a problem. I don't buy arguments art's absolute subjectivity either; there's an equal part objectivity in things as well, we just find it far more satisfying to never have our opinions questioned any more. Great that you like this guy's art, you can like it all you want, but he's not visionary and he has little to say with his art. It's not an insult or put down, it's just the truth, backed up by objective ideas and ideals, nothing more nor less.