The Outsider Art Fair 2020

By CJ Dansdill

The Metropolitan Pavilion’s Outsider Art Fair celebrated its 28th year of activity with an excellent turnout in Chelsea last week and over sixty exhibitors from around the world. The Outsider Art Fair has been in operation since 1993 and has drawn a substantial cultural following and thousands of returning patrons. Specializing in the display of artists from the underground who are largely unknown, the fair is an inviting and dynamic excursion in discovery and creative celebration. The nature of the work and its presentation is naturally without pretension, and one feels at ease and comfortably curious when walking among the collections. Musée sent a writer to survey the scene and cover the few photography-related works in the diverse and vibrant array for stalls and pop-up galleries, most of which include painting and sculpture. Notable photographers featured at the fair were August Walla (1936-2001) and Vivian Maier (1926-2009). 

© August Walla. Art Brut KG. Vintage Silver Print. Courtesy of gallerie gugging.

August Walla was born in 1936 in Klosterneuburg, Austria, and has been celebrated universally for the poignancy of his cryptic genius and large body of multi-media work. Walla wrote thousands of letters and made hundreds of paintings using a wide array of materials. He created a mythological universe based on the intricacies of his life experience.
Walla was an odd and quiet child. His first drawings began to manifest when he was ten years old. After an episode of suicidal ideation at age sixteen, Walla was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He would be in and out of asylums for much of his adult life. His mother raised him as a girl to protect him from being drafted into World War II, which endowed him with an extraordinarily strange and perhaps fractured view of gender, conflict, and the world.
Walla’s chaotic illustrations have been misinterpreted as nonsensical child’s play. His extensive collection of complex, expressive writing and drawing demonstrates an intricate system of symbols and allusions that, upon close inspection, portray a deeply complex composition of a personalized universe and identity. Austrian psychiatrist Leo Navratil came across Walla at the Maria Gugging Psychiatric Clinic in 1970 and was immediately invested in his artistic talent. Navratil visited the Wallas at their Klosterneuburg home where August had covered numerous objects in the garden with mythical symbols and letters. In 1986, Walla moved to The Gugging House of Artists and took residency in Dr. Navratil’s Art and Psychotherapy Program. Walla remained there until his death in 2001. The room that Walla stayed in, which he painted the walls and ceiling of, remains untouched as a museum installment and tribute to his life and work. August Walla is known primarily for his paintings that themed around his made up mythology and language. Writing was his primary tool to connect to the world with. Lesser known of his legacy is his vast collection of pictures that he took of himself, his environment, and his art with a Kodak Instamatic. His photographs serve as a record of the era of his art, and perhaps also suffice as a kind of proof of his process and routine.

© August Walla. Art Brut KG. Interior with wooden boards. Vintage Silver Print. Courtesy of gallerie gugging.

© August Walla. Art Brut KG. Garden Hut. Vintage Silver Print. Courtesy of gallerie gugging.

Vivian Maier’s photographs were unknown and unpublished during her life as a street photographer. Her work was largely black and white self-portraiture, but she also accumulated a collection of 40,000 color photos from the 1960’s and 1970’s of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Over the course of her lifetime, she compiled over 100,000 negatives. Because she worked as a nanny and changed families as the years went on and the children grew up, her frequent change of residence, lack of access to dark rooms, and financial stresses left her with hundreds of rolls unprinted and undeveloped.
Just two years before her death, Maier’s payments on a Chicago storage space where she kept her films, photos, and negatives failed to renew, and the contents of the container were auctioned. Photo collector John Maloof was among the buyers, and he took it upon himself to establish her legacy. Since 2008, her life and oeuvre has been unearthed and showcased extensively.
Vivan Maier’s keen and scrappy eye for street scenes is slyly illustrated in her collected works that have been since showcased by her enthusiasts. Her work resonates as a humble and keen eye into the kind of fine art that is possible from unexpected places and people.

© Estate of Vivian Maier. Self-portrait, Chicago, June 1976. Courtesy Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

© Estate of Vivian Maier. Untitled, c.1970-77. Courtesy Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

© Estate of Vivian Maier. Untitled, n.d. Courtesy Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York