An example of unusual subject matter can be found at the Owl House in Nieu Bethesda. In the Owl House, Helen Martins has created a fantasy world filled with owls, camels, mermaids and other invented creatures. The Owl House can also be used to illustrate unusual conceptual meaning Outsider artists attach to their work. Martins only aim was to fill her life and home with colour and light. Therefore she covered her walls with coloured, crushed glass and filled her house with lamps, candles and mirrors. Also, a sun motif is repeated throughout the house. The motif was copied from a furniture polish tin and the largest motif can be found covering the dining room ceiling.
On the other hand, Marcel Duchamp was undeniably aware of what he was doing with the creation of his controversial works of art. He was aware of how different his work was to that of many of his contemporaries and to those whom history held in esteem for their artistic abilities. Duchamp saw art in a completely different way to his contemporaries. He explained his ideas in The Creative Act (Duchamp 1957:1). Here he considers the artist as one “pole” in the creation of art and the spectator as the other “pole”. Unlike in the conventional view of art, Duchamp believes that the spectator decides whether the work is or is not art through their own interpretation. According to Duchamp the artist has no say in whether he will be “consecrated by posterity” (1957:1) or, that is to say, if he will be accepted by his audience and be lauded as an artistic genius to future generations. He believed that “art history has consistently decided upon the virtues of a work of art through considerations completely divorced from rationalized explanations of the artist” (1957:2). Therefore the artist can have his own intended reason for the creation of his work but the viewing public would have the final say about what it means and if it is acceptable or not.
Duchamp’s ideas did “not meet with the approval of many artists” (1957:2); therefore he created works to demonstrate his point and challenge those who had rigid perspectives on what art is or should be. His readymades are a perfect example of this. In 1917 Duchamp entered his work, Fountain into the Society of Independent Artists. The fountain was a readymade porcelain urinal signed with the pseudonym “R. Mutt”. The organisation was “supposed to show all works submitted” (Gale 1997:103). However, they did not have to hang all of the works. Duchamp was on the committee who decided which works these would be. Even this radical minded committee did not think much of Duchamp’s readymade and decided to ‘display’ it behind a curtain. Duchamp received the publicity that he had engineered when he exposed the committee’s deception. This afforded him the opportunity to write to the purposefully created publication, The Blind Man and to defend “R.Mutt’s” art. He argued that Mutt’s placement of an ordinary object in a new environment had “created a new thought for the object” (1997:103). This public declaration of his opinion introduced his ideas to the art world and gave them something new to think about concerning the definition of art.
Both the works of Duchamp and the Outsider artists have been rejected by their contemporaries. Both have been misunderstood as their art works do not fit into the artistic framework that society has created. However, the aims of both are very different. The main difference is in each of the artists’ relationships to their audience. The uneducated Outsider artists have no desire to create art for anyone else except for themselves as a form of intense personal expression. They are often reclusive people who are not even aware of social institution and therefore seem to shun it. However, they are really innocent in their ignorance. Duchamp on the other hand consciously created his works to challenge the reigning social views of his day. He knew exactly what the social values concerning art were and engaged himself in an intellectual manner to stretch the boundaries of society’s narrow definition thereof.
SOURCES
Duchamp, M. 1957. “The Creative Act”. Mindwebart.
<http://members.aol.com/mindwebart3/marcel.htm>
Gale, M. 1997.Dada and Surrealism. London:Thames and Hudson
Raw Magazine. 2004. “What is Outsider Art?”. Raw Magazine.
<http://www.rawvision.com/whatisoa.html>
