Ladies and Gentlemen,
The days are shortening, like the trousers of an eight year old schoolboy. And it's been some time since The Museum of Everything climbed onto a high horse to wax of unlyrical.
Yet the events of the last week have inspired us to communicate a specific memory about a specific art-thing. Voilà our summary.
T' was Frieze Week last week. Now t' is gone.
In the contemporary void which remains, The Museum of Everything dwells lovingly on that hypermarket of visual materialism, the oft' overblown objectification, the fiscal concepts, cocktails, cockerels, and the soirées, oh the soirées, filled as they were with flotsam, jetsam and recreational drudge.
Inside that wigwam they call Frieze Masters, The Gallery of Everything presented its much anticipated assembly of rare works-on-paper by the under-discovered Bohemian figuratist, Josef Karl Rädler, and that Mexican mega-star of monochromatic memory, Martín Ramírez.
The installation, in our mother's words, was a marvel to behold.
As The Gallery of Everything dodged plaudits from the likes of curator Norman Rosenthal, artist Anish Kappor and rocker Jarvis Cocker, the Mexican Embassy hosted a talk on Martín Ramírez with writer/curator Chloe Aridjis and James Brett AKA the flaneuristic of the Everythings.
Cherry on the icing on the tip of the pinnacle was an eternal series of archways by Ramírez: a final evanescent masterwork which graced the rear of the booth and led thousands of devotees and well-wishers into the cocktail-shaking hands of the Bar of Everything.
Horseradish vodka and French 75s were delivered by the litre-road. Happy hour started daily at 11am. We were not short of international support.
Should you, dear reader, be interested in acquiring artworks by our two astonishing artists - be they the modest double-sided portraits of Josef Karl Rädler, or the mighty museum-quality mindscapes of Martín Ramírez - we would be delighted if you emailed on ge@gallevery.com or visited www.gallevery.com
All proceeds go to support The Museum of Everything, which (we hope we do not need to remind you) is a registered British charity and the world's only travelling in institution for the untrained, unintentional, undiscovered and unclassifiable artists of modern times.
However, there is much more to say and now is the time to say it.
Our two extremely gifted creators, Josef Karl Rädler and Martín Ramírez, were virtually during their lifetimes. They did what they did in different eras on opposite sides of the planet. Yet they shared a common trait - for both lived their adult lives in the confines of psychiatric hospitals.
We tend not to talk about hospitals too much. We aim not to pigeonhole our artists. We do not throw words like schizophrenic across the room in a fit of pique. We believe pathological definition stops us from seeing the truth of an artist's private visual language.
Not everyone feels the way we do. Feast your weary eyes on The Asylum.
This was the booth of Mr Helly Nahmad Esq. It was, depending on which way you looked at it, a mock-up of a real 20th century asylum, or a committee-vetted-mise-en-scene of a unreal one.
Either way, it was an imagined imaginary trope, immaculately executed, finely tuned and production designed to imperfection. Accompanying it, an esoteric type-written text suggested to every viewer/visitor that herein lay the inspiration for that prolific post-modernist magpie, Jean Dubuffet.
To make its point, although this was in fact the point, that late lamented's lesser canvases were arrayed in tight opposition, their prices in the mid sixes, as if to say to the one percent and all: come on dears, bring a little post-modernist bonkers into your front room and own a touch of the touched.
Regular followers of the Museum of Everything may here detect more than our customary snobbery and chippiness. They may even be aware of our mixed feelings on that mighty Francophonic wine-seller. For while we muchly admire and respect the pseudo-democratic consciousness of Jean Dubuffet, while we are to some extent his protogenic disciples, we do not worship him as our cross-Channel brethren do.
We dig how he branded an emerging truth and brought it into 20th century light. We love his unrelenting urges and mimic his intensive need to know. Yet we like a lot less how he walled in a ghetto, fetishised its formats and denied its discoveries the right to the title of artist.
Yet if that high Priest of Appropriation kept the nomenclature squarely for himself, it's a little by-the-by right now. For at Frieze Masters, amidst the the lazy-leaning Cranachs and bow-and-arrowed Native-Yanks, a darker, more insidious crime was being committed in the name of common-sense commerce.
Here's what you need to know:
Dubuffet's art is not Art Brut. Dubuffet's art is Dubuffet's art. Nor, arguably, did Dubuffet invent Art Brut. What he did was invent the concept of Art Brut. In fact he got so turned on by it , he developed it into a brand.
Rumour has it he even plundered the name from a bottle of bubbly.
What is unquestionable is that this unbound visuality, made by authors who rarely considered their produce to be art, became his life's mission. He sniffed it out like a fanatical truffle-pig. It inspired his own making and volumes of rampant meanderings. He revelled, somewhat fascistically, in its so called purity and authenticity. He visited madhouses, hospitals, farmscapes and slums. He was totally and utterly voracious.
Dubuffet saw the equivalence and brilliance in private anti-cultural art making. He brought art back to its origins and into our visual domain. For that, we are eternally in his debt. We at The Museum of Everything would not exist were it not for the insight and fervour of Jean Dubuffet.
But Dubuffet was not mad. If you wanted to, you would call him a verbose, obstreperous, strategic, prolific, erudite, melodramatic and well-connected arsehole. But not a madman, absolutely not.
And inspired as he was by his anti-cultural discoveries, he would never have crassified, glamorised and bastardised their institutional safe/unsafe-houses simply to flog a few handfuls of market-driven also-rans ... even if they were his own.
For anyone who has woken up on the wrong side of it all, who has questioned the day, who has tortured the night, who has known mental unhealth, or a brain which won't budge, who has been labelled disabled, unable, a fool, who has popped pills or shot up, who has laid down for months, years, decades, for anyone who knows or has known those of us with something, a something which fetters, inhibits, destroys, for those who are carers, for families and parents, for those who celebrate difference, for makers and shakers at The Museum of Everything, we urge you, all of you, stand up, be insulted.
The Asylum insulted Jean Dubuffet.
The Asylum insulted his visible and invisible creators.
The Asylum insulted the art fair, its artists, its galleries and its visitors.
The Asylum, quite simply, insulted us all.
The Asylum was as offensive as a reconstructed concentration camp at an Anne Frank memorabilia sale. The Asylum was as irresponsible as a hundred African-Americans picking cotton outside the anniversary screening of Birth of a Nation.
Are we being too reactive? Perhaps.
When The Museum of Everything brought The Gallery of Everything to Frieze Masters, we did it to showcase the work of two treasured describers. We hoped to communicate the meaningfulness of their materiality to tens of thousands of visitors, and to the many significant artists, curators, writers and museums in attendance.
We did not do this project to make money, although it would be nice to sell something and cover the costs. We did it because it is what we do. We did it because we absolutely believe there is no difference between our artists and any artists.
For this is not about art. This is about having a voice. And a powerful uptown gallery using the language of the vulnerable to cash in on a moment is, in our opinion, too much to bear.
Hence this email, not to the press, but to you.
Yours in Everything,
The Museum of Everything
For more information on The Gallery of Everything or to read the Press Release, please CLICK HERE.
(c) The Museum of Everything 2015
