outsider art handbook

Outsider is a convenient catch-all term for art that unprofessional, uncool, unhip and lax on things like perspective and graphic accuracy. It resembles children's art, or can do; it resembles the art of the insane, or can do. It includes so-called naive art as well as clever experiments by formerly or otherwise mainstream artists. Like the term 'street photography' it is more use as a description of how the artist feels and how it can motivate the artist; it is what you might call 'a permission description'. And that is a jolly good thing as many people feel as they formerly did about writing pre-internet (the internet made writing democratic) which was that it was the preserve of the skilled and devoted and sunday painters beware....

So, having justified its own existence here are a few bon mot for would-be outsider artists:

1. Academic art training is like opera training. Do you like opera or do you prefer jazz, pop or world music?

2. Be untrained and proud of it. Art is about doing something with conscious limitation: a frame is the most basic and most powerful limiter. Use your inability as a frame; or at least be conscious of it as something useful rather than a negative thing.

3. If you run out of things to paint imagine looking through an electron microscope at something.

4. Don't over associate with the mental health issues surrounding outsider art. the moment you use some disability as a 'badge of authenticity' the art is using YOU not the other way round.

5. The quest for authenticity never ends.

6. Mainstream art is scared of religion, happiness, joy, spirituality (apart from death soacked versions of the aforementioned). Go anywhere mainstream art is scared to go...

7. Mainstream art is scared of smiles and eyes (look at the blank unseeing eyes on so many "20th century masterpieces"). Go there.

8. Be anecdotal. Tell stories. 

9. If you can master grey and pink you are ahead of the game.

10. Lines are nice to look at. There is a reason ancient art often involves two or three outlines.

Becoming not Being #3

Trying to 'maintain a position', looking back to more favourable days, repetition for the sake of it (which is the basis of much art) is when you know that becoming has shifted to being. However you may fairly ask: if becoming is the whole game how do I 'achieve' anything? You need to align your attempts at becoming with the static markers offered by the WEIRD world. Tests, exams, sales, books published, art works completed- all these are crude markers of success in the WEIRD world. They have value in as much as you cannpt escape your environment completely, yet, at the same time, if they oppress one and cause strain and anguish they must be relinquished immediately. All these markers are simply there to spur one on. The moment they do the reverse- ditch 'em. In aikido Takeno Sensei stated that one demonstration is worth a month of practice. And you can get ready for a demo in a few days of focused training. In writing, if you publish a book you learn 10 times what you can learn if you simply write a manuscript and leave it on your hard drive. Publishing immature or crap work may harm your static world 'rep' but you will learn from it...and that is worth far more. Having an art exhibition will teach you more about your work than simply beavering away alone (if you take it as a positive learning experience judged before what others say rather than a thumbs up or thumbs down from arbitrary critics).

Becoming not Being #2

What are the conditions that encourage Becoming? What are the conditions we have got used to that surround our goals and targets that relate to Being- to getting a steady state reward?

We aim at wealth- a target figure- and then find it's about 10% less than what would bring total happiness. This is a constant finding across income levels once you rise above the median income. We all crave 10% more- even the billionaires...and we actually try to justify it in rational terms. But the reality is: we know deep down that becoming is the source of contentment, not being, and an extra 10% is like an 'ungreedy' desire for change. Actually, with minimal mental effort, 10% less can bring about a similar INCREASE in happiness. As the playwrite Lloyd Evans so rightly observes 'When you move from poverty to wealth or from wealth to poverty (as long as you have no dependents) it can be fun. What isn't is the steady state of wealth or poverty.'

The goal is in the becoming, the transformation- because that is more in alignment with reality that some kind of imagined 'state of being'. We can be misaligned by over focusing on being. Or by a wrongly conceived attempt at becoming. Indeed one way of looking at certain crimes is that they are some vastly misjudged attempt at 'becoming'. 

What is the right form of becoming? One that involves learning. Instinctively we highly value education (even though what is offered is often a very poor version) because we know it is part and parcel of any serious attempt at becoming. 

When we are learning we are feeding back off experience, recalibrating all the time. We are moving ahead and like a cyclist once moving we don't have to worry about wobbling. The steady statist is like someone who cycles to a place and then complains when they fall off once the bike has stopped. Keep moving! You can enjoy the counrtyside much better when you aren't looking at the ground and wondering how to stay upright...

So a positive learning attitude is one condition of becoming. Another is letting go- after all, how much baggage do you need on your path to becoming something different?

Becoming not Being #1

Our current way of living in the western educated industrialised reductive and destructive West (WEIRD West) is fundamentally predicated on static rather than dynamic states as the cornerstone of reality. We value BEING over BECOMING every time. Of course we pay lip service to such sayings as 'it's not the destination but the journey that counts' but in the way we formally organise our lives and coerce ourselves into thinking we OVER VALUE steady states - ie. Being over the reality of Becoming.

Why? Because the act of 'thinking about things'- which is realy about creating communicable pictures to others and to feed ourselves in preparation for communication to others- this activity encourages us in several false supositions. It encourages us to believe that the snapshot is the reality rather than the ongoing movie.

Now a snapshot may capture a great deal, but it omits the most important feature: life. It's a frozen chunk of life rather than the real thing. And like something long left in the bottom of the freezer, not much nutrition.

Buddhism is quite clear on stating that change is closer to reality rather than a steady state. Most people who are not WEIRD western influenced also accept on a deep level the reality of change and becoming. 

Once you shift from a static perspective to a dynamic one, once you latch on to the 'becoming' aspect of anything, the conditions becoming needs, you start to loosen the ties of being. 

In his famous book Being not Having, Erich Fromm, rightly shifted attention away from mere possessions. Now we have to shift away from possesing a single unalterable state and embrace the cosmos is in constant change and all is becoming...something else...

changing institutions from the inside

I have a good friend who used to work in advertising. He was at first highly successful and told me his plan was to change things from the inside. As an outsider, he had seen advertising as something very lacking in creativity and quality. But somehow his efforts dwindled, his motivation palled and he ended up leaving the industry after only a few years. Everything that goes into a saltmine becomes salt was his verdict. The environment of advertising was actually a much more powerful determinant of adverts than the individual skills of the creatives making them.

Environment is constantly overlooked in an age of individualism. Even the rallying against 'structural racism' and the 'patriarchal system' overlooks the bigger picture which is that you can't change things from the insidie- however tempting that may be.

If you go to Hollywood expecting to convert people to sensitive european style films don't be surprised if you end up script doctoring a Marvel Film set in Paris, giving it a 'more local feel'. Environment is the single most powerful factor in affecting the outcome of what we do. I include what we wear, the thoiughts we are having as we do something, the people we mix with, the room you work in, the food you eat. Stack all that against a few stray words, a line of text echoeing around your skull and you can see how unequal the contest is.

Even if you chose to write a novel you are actually entering a world of very set stuctural parameters, there is more set in stone that you might imagine even in this oasis of creativity. The structures sort of spring into your mind unbidden just by thinking the words "I will write a novel".

Deep in the Sahara Desert, Dakhla Oasis in Egypt has an ancient temple called Deir El Haga. There, in the same place, is late period Ptolemeic Egyptian graphic art alongside very early wall paintings by Christians with writing in unformed Greek letters. The ancient art of Egypt is rigid and deeply carved; the Christian imgery is crude, almost childish looking, but leaps off the wall with its vitality. The temple, abandonned by the old Egyptian priests, was simply a graffiti wall for the new Christians. Having made their break from the culture they were now making their mark on it, conquering from the outside not the inside.

The early Christians went out into the desert (actually to the salt mine of Wadi Natrun) in order to break from the old order. I am less interested in how right or wrong their actions were (reading about early Christians such as Peter the Bigot may put you off a bit) and more interested in how they made a decisive cut with the old culture. They were not going to change it from within, they were going to do their own thing even if it meant a life of poverty and obscurity. Then of course they got noticed and eventually the Roman Empire converted to this obscure desert religion and spread it everywhere.

All things exert their own gravitational pull on you. An environment is field of great but invisible strength. In order to break free of something you have to change your environment. This is one origin of the ancient idea of pilgrimage and going on a journey to achieve enlightenment.

Many of the problems of the current era- the soaring mental health problems for example- are a function of environment. They cannot be fixed, only fled from, or weathered in some way. If you can escape this environment you may have more of a chance than someone who cannot. For those observing there is always a feeling of 'how can we change things for the better'? The first step is to build on the outside, do your own thing, give up on the attractive notion of changing things from within...

building an underground home

Underground homes are increasingly the way to go when land prices rise beyond the insane.

The simplest troglodyte-dwelling is a cave- and people still live in such houses along the Loire river and other parts of France. These houses often have a normal frontage with windows and the cave extends over several floors and not so far back as to tunnel into cold damp rock- though of course some take advantage of the limitless possibilities of expansion.

My own experience of cave living is sleeping in paleolithic caves both in the UK and in the Sahara. Typically those caves have big wide openings and perhaps tunnels going back into larger areas behind. The open area is under a convenient overhang so you never get wet. You can live very comfortably in such a cave and use the dark tunnels for storage or maybe for religious or artistic purposes.

A house is really just a freestanding cave, and we are, more or less, simply cavemen with mortgages. However if you return to the trog lifestyle you can be a caveman without a mortgage.

how much do you trust 'the system'?

In one Bruce Willis movie- die hard 4 I suspect- a wimpy hacker who is 'against the system' is told off by Mr Straight Guy Bruce that 'there is no system- only people'- and as the hacker's actions against the system are manifestly hurting ordinary people we cannot but agree.

The Unabomber was against the system and ended up killing and maiming people. Though in the book Harvard and the Unabomber we discover that the bomber's murderous impulses preceded his ideology. He was looking for a cause to 'justify' what he really wanted to do- kill folk. I have met soldiers who joined up because it was one place you could kill someone without being arrested. That's one benefit of being inside the system...

But Bruce Willis apart, the system does exist in as much as group thinking can take control of an individual and get that individual to do things they probably wouldn't do otherwise. The group- nation, family, company can project a personality that suits its aims very well. And that 'persoanality' like a natty readmade suit on a hanger, is just waiting for some sucker to put it on.

Just as an actor can 'get' a character from wearing one key garment- a hat or special boots- so, too, can the group communicate how to act through a few elements of the personality on offer. Have you ever wondered why people believe clusters of the same things? Because these notions are simply parts of the off the peg personality they have taken up.

Of course they could also have experienced things which lead them to certain beliefs- but if they refuse to accept it is because of the early experience that they believe X, and that their belief is entirely logical etc, then they are in the grip of a group belief projected through them. The group feeds off us as a parasite feeds off a host.

Is this all bad? By no means. The system helps us get what we want very efficiently. But every now and then it oversteps the mark. We start living the lives the system wants rather than what we want. One example is the way rent and bills now account for half of salaries in parts of the UK and many other developed nations. Incomes of course have not risen accordingly. So instead of being able to live quite comfortably on a couple of days work a week we now need a full time job. Or else you start living in a different way, away from the big cities. So you start moving away from the norm, leaving the system.

And what if schools, instead of imparting positive notions and real knowledge start pedaling information that is false? It's a subtle thing- if it wasn't we'd all be in agreement about it. Some kids are survivor types- they can transit any kind of school system- or none- and still get somewhere where they want to be. But other children are more sensitive to environment. A school that feeds a negative self image will do them no good. Of course it isn't the school in a vacuum, it is the lifestyle and kids that go with it. Parents must make an effort to add to whatever the school is doing - that is one plan - but my own experience during periods of homeschooling versus periods of government schooling and private schooling is that the traditional model of the parents 'knowing best' has more or less broken down with regard to Government schooling, is still there to some limited extent with private schooling (you are forking out hard cash after all) and is strongest when children are home schooled. Though I was far less efficient as a conventional teacher than the government school teachers (some of whom were superb) the fact that we were now an autonomous unit with Mum and Dad in charge made for much more harmonious living. Bizarrely the buried premise of the state is that your parents are in some way 'the enemy' and not to be really trusted. I once took my son into A&E in a hospital in the United Kingdom and the doctor assumed a conspiratorial matey manner with my son before asking him if I was really his father. Perhaps his experience had taught him to be suspicious- but a structure which permits and encourages this suspicion cannot be said to be on the side of parents - it is the system making a home for itself at the expense of family life.

Spinoza famously wrote that all things desire to persist in themselves and groups are no different. The state, or its looser existence- the system, must get bigger and stronger or weaker and less influential. It should be viewed as a livingh organism in its own right. And that is fine when the system is decentralised, when the state is small, but the internet has added impetus to the increasing centralisation of life. This means the number of 'winners' in the system is ever decreasing. If you look at bullfighting, formula one, novel writing and hollywood movies you'll see a pattern- the top ten are multimillion pound generators- everyone else is more or less an amateur. Uber is the new pattern for turning a former profession into an affiliation of amateurs making pocket money while the organisers create a new corporation- a new system.

Every hunter gatherer can be a winner (in the pre-agricultural phase). From pre-colonial accounts the quantity of game in the wilderness was vast, far more than today. Though I am not advocating a return, even if it were possible, to the hunter gatherer lifestyle, the fact is for most of human history mankind were hunter gatherer/forest gardeners and not farmers or industrial workers and certainly not call centre operatives.

Being a 'winner' is not simply self-help hyperbole. It means having competence and significance in life. It means having a life that seems meaningful and purposive. And any way you cut it, the larger the organising entity of life the harder it is to find meaning and purpose. Big systems need cogs- either consumer cogs or worker cogs.

During lockdown we have seen how large supermarkets and Amazon can pretty much keep a country going- people who work in these industries will be rewarded and work harder (maybe even subconciously) to replicate the condiitons of lockdown- this is how any system 'grows'. It lives 'through' its key players, who allow themeslves to be taken over by the systems ambitions.

Now, when you are a 'survivor type' none of the above makes much difference. You'll get to the top, or at least a micro summit that feels pretty good, whatever the system is. The system is very very slow moving - like swimming through seaweed infested sea, and if you're a strong swimmer it won't make much difference. But not everyone is a strong swimmer...

Finding one part of 'the syetem' you agree with- say a certain charity, environmental group, business or leisure activity and then focusing on that while ignoring the negative sides of the system may be the best way to approach these matters. It takes a lot of energy to 'fight' the system and go against things with years of momentum behind them. Crime is one way to fight the system and that certainly doesn't pay. Another is to join the protest industry- but that package includes maintaining and fueling an angry mindset. So either you ride some minor wave of the system or find a way to run a parallel existence- offgrid or alternative in the widest sense- without incurring the slow motion wrath of the system.

So, to return to the initial question, how much do you trust the system? Maybe the way to think about the system is to imagine it as surfing a series of waves breaking on a tricky beach. You might find a big wave to ride but then you can see it breaks on the rocks. Other waves peter out and set you tumbling long before you reach the safety of the sand. As you get closer you might see it makes sense to ride a series of smaller wvaes going in your direction. So I guess the answer is: decide on your destination and then use existing mainstream ways to reach it while you can and use alternative methods when they don't work. So only trust the system within a limited and defined destination in mind. But for more general things such as providing meaning and purpose to life- forget it.