“Lady Eureka and the Lion-Lamb Portrait” is inclusive of Outsider Art and its sub-categories. But first, a brief description is required for the terms Outsider Art, Folk Art and Naïve Art to determine if “Lady Eureka and the Lion-Lamb Portrait” series is a hybrid convergence of Gothic style and Outsider Art.
“Lady Eureka and the Lion-Lamb Portrait” is a performance art sub-titled “Theatre of the Absurd” as it ironically depicts contemporary Gothic and Gothic Lolita sub-cultures, which are outside of mainstream art. Outsider Art has emerged as a successful marketing category since the Nineties. The annual Outsider Art Fair for “self taught, visionary and outsider art” has taken place in New York since 1992; I visited the Outsider Art Fair in 2000 to see an international audience appreciating wide range of Outsider Art, from authentic folk art to emulated Naïve Art and particularly to see pieces from William Hawkins, whose paintings are now represented in the Museum of American Folk Art and the High Museum of Art.
Outsider Art was coined by Roger Cardinal, an art critic in 1972 described Jean Dubuffet’s “Art Brut” as art that rejects contemporary art values. Dubuffet championed the art of the insane and artists in the margins of society as examples of avant-garde art challenging established contemporary art practices.
The difference between Outsider Art and Folk Art is that Folk Art typically embodies traditional forms and social values of an indigenous culture, where Outsider Art has a marginal relationship to society’s mainstream. Folk artists produce art works with little or no academic artistic training, nor a desire to emulate High Art. Along with painting, sculpture, and other decorative forms, costumes are also included under Folk Art. The Gothic Lolita garments are hand sewn and worn by Lady Eureka. Members of the gothic and Elegant Gothic Lolita sub-cultures often make elaborate costumes for special events. For example, the Lolita Fashion Day on the first Saturday of June in New York City.
Folk Art is relevant to Naïve Art as both include untrained artists. However, unlike Folk artists, Naïve artists aspire to High Art status and interact with the mainstream art world. Naïve Art is characterized by a childlike simplicity and has become an acceptable art style of artists who did not receive formal education in an art school or academy, such as Henri Rousseau. ‘Pseudo naïve’ or ‘faux naïve’ art describes the work of an artist imitating Naïve Art, such as the reference of the “GothLoli child-like figure” in “Lady Eureka”, to represent Liberty and Freedom from autocratic oppression, combined with the Dark, wild lion-like and Light, domestic lamb-like natures of the “Lion-Lamb” in the “Peaceable Kingdom”.
Since the medieval period, Gothic style sought to bring the viewer into a fuller understanding of some of the more grotesque incidents of the human psyche, such as the crucifixion or the mystical aspects to the understanding of God, as represented by Christian symbolisms of “Salvation”, “Hail Mary and the “Lion-Lamb” images. Lady Eureka name references Hick’s view in the “Peaceable Kingdom” of the “Light” in all living beings and the world, speaking to that which “shines from within every one of us”. Eureka is the inner “Light” of insight gained by facing our deepest fears, which results in sudden clarity emerging from the depths of chaos and the midst of darkness.
Therefore, by integrating Outsider Art and its various sub-sets, along with the historical reference of Gothic Art, “Lady Eureka and the Lion-Lamb Portrait” is a conscious expression that renders it to be ultimately a ‘faux naïve’ art expression and aptly sub-titled, “Theatre of the Absurd”.
END NOTES:
http://www.sanfordsmith.com/outsider.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_Absurd
http://www.artpromote.com/gothic.shtml
http://www.mediumatlarge.net/2009/05/lolita-fashion-day-june-6-at-kinokuniya.html
