Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their contributions come to light only posthumously. Often, outsider art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds. The term outsider art was introduced into the lexicon in 1972 by British writer Roger Cardinal as an English-language equivalent of the French art brut. By the 1980s, however, the term had expanded to encompass a much greater range of vernacular and “marginal” arts. This broadening was particularly important in the United States, where a rich vein of art that reflected racial, religious, and localised histories rather than psychiatric or spiritualist ones had grown independently from art brut. Known successively—and at times concurrently—as “popular painting,” “modern primitive art,” “self-taught art,” and “contemporary folk art,” works from the American scene were first made visible and analysed in the 1930s by Museum of Modern Art.
Henri Rousseau, born May 21, 1844, French painter who is considered the archetype of the modern naive artist. He is known for his richly coloured and meticulously detailed pictures of lush jungles, wild beasts, and exotic figures. After exhibiting with the Fauves in 1905, he gained the admiration of avant-garde artists.
Rousseau, the son of a tinsmith, came from a modest background. He was a mediocre student, and he left the secondary school in Laval without having completed his studies. He soon entered military service, in which he remained for four years. During his term of service, he met soldiers who had survived the French expedition to Mexico (1862–65) in support of Emperor Maximilian, and he listened with fascination to their recollections. Their descriptions of the subtropical country were doubtless the first inspiration for the exotic landscapes that later became one of his major themes. The vividness of Rousseau’s portrayals of jungle scenes led to the popular conception, which Rousseau never refuted, that he travelled to Mexico. At the turn of the 20th century, the original art of Henri Rousseau -a self-trained “primitive” artist- was beginning to emerge in France. Avant-garde artists, who were antagonistically disposed towards “Academic Art” (M. De Vlaminck, H. Matisse, G. Braque, P. Picasso and others), viewed Henri Rousseau’s art as a bridge across the distant past and present.
Mohanan Vasudevan, a self-taught artist from Kerala, who's art and life has a slit resemblance to great artist Henry Rousseau. Mohanan has served in Indian army in various states and retired later he started painting as a full-time artist. As a body of works, Vasudevan’s drawings depict his experiences and observations from rural and urban life in recurring symbols, shapes and forms. His visual lexicon includes scenes of people, plants, animals and linguistics. While some pieces focus on a single animal, such as a horse or bull, in other paintings depict scenes of individuals gazing at a lotus lake or gathering of animals and human in a conceptual cave.
His works range from single-figured depictions to more compositionally complicated pieces of multiple silhouetted figures. The confrontation of wild animals, single bull or horse head and other images that the evolution reflected Mohanan Vasudevan’s own maturation as an artist. The pieces from Mohanan’s last year of work brought together many of the visual themes he had developed by this time: merely minimal and abstract forms of horses, foxes, deers, birds, butterflies and wild animals, combination plant-animal apparently seems to concept of a new cave art.
Cave art is generally considered to have a symbolic or religious purpose, sometimes both. The most common themes in cave paintings are large wild animals, such as bison, horses, aurochs, and deer. Tracings of human hands and hand stencils were also very popular, as well as abstract patterns, called finger flutings. The most notable thing about cave art is that the predominant colours used are black (often from charcoal, soot, or manganese oxide), yellow ochre (often from limonite), red ochre (hematite, or baked limonite), and white (kaolin clay, burnt shells, calcite, powdered gypsum, or powdered calcium carbonate). Here, the artist attempts to recreate the essence of cave paintings can be seen in his paintings. Vasudevan's creation often seems to be featured stylised animals and humans, handprints, and geometric forms looks like engraved into the rock or painted in natural pigments like ochre and charcoal. Most often, the paintings show animals or hunting scenes. Sometimes the paintings depict hands. Rarely, there are also more abstract patterns. The geometric forms of his paintings probably represent abstract ideas or concepts that were important to creation. In the past, artists made paintings using materials like red and yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide and charcoal, but today, artists use paints and colours can be get from art stores, like pigments and acrylics.
Vasudevan deal with the characteristics of multi surfaced art work and its result can be seen in his works. The paradigmatic experimental work of art, perhaps, is one that is highly innovative in creativity, but it has not been entirely succeed in what it attempts and it remains outside the mainstream of artistic production. Here, the artist shall be contemplated about what is the purpose of incorporate with different material in art. The artist finds and hones their own techniques and experience It is through experimenting that we learn how to get the most from our materials. By practicing he developed the skills to create the colours, shapes and marks we intend on the surface. Experimenting with wide range materials is a better way to develop different visual elements and to try out different impacts as this artist has done. Understanding the properties of different materials and how they might be used can helped him make effective choices in his artwork. Vasudevan uses the multidimensional surface on the canvas which created with the fine sand find out from the nature in his village. It often creating a unique surface in which to work. Every works has a different quality, values, colours, opacity and surface texture. Each of those characteristics provide a different aesthetic quality when paint and other materials are applied on the canvas. When they are used in combination, vibrant visual images across the surface begin to happen.
In his works the horse is often a historic status symbol and a sign of wealth and high standing in society. In many cases, equestrian portraits command a sense of power – influenced not only by the strength of the animal, but by classical connotations of ancient Roman emperors. Horses normally symbolise freedom, power, courage, and wisdom in most cultures. A horse is often interpreted as a sign of liberty in dreams but can have gloomier meanings. In some Christian artwork, a white horse symbolises death, and a pale horse represents famine in the Bible's book of Revelations. Mohanan depicted the images of the form of powerful horses have been the cardinal dogma in his artworks. He painted them to allude to inner contemplation and as a ubiquitous motif.
As an artist, he has derived these images from the work of M.F Husain who was known as Indian Picasso an Indian painter best known for his brightly coloured works depicting horses, urban landscapes, and Hindu goddesses. When reading the keen observation on Mohanan’s paintings and drawings, can see kind of duality of human and creatures. There are plenty of twin images of human, birds, fish, horses those images reflecting the set of spouses.
Duality, in mathematics, principle whereby one true statement can be obtained from another by merely interchanging two words. It is a property belonging to the branch of algebra known as lattice theory, which is involved with the concepts of order and structure common to different mathematical systems. The Duality theory therefore states that the universe consists of two equal opposite halves, which are related by overlapping Galilean coordinates; and have exactly opposite matters, energies, masses, motions, accelerations, and gravities. But where Vasudevan's own statement that the tries here to articulate is about the dual personality or multiple personality of human being. Dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder) is thought to be a complex psychological condition that is likely caused by many factors, including severe trauma during early childhood (usually extreme, repetitive physical, sexual, or emotional abuse).
In his small paintings titled untitled, Vasudevan drawn kind of cosmic circles and geometric forms in various shapes and dimensions. The manifestation of the artist in his works which explain the boundary of the nations may be in the lack of better understanding on cosmic theory and cosmic philosophy. However, with advancement in quantum physics – scientists have now realised that the empty space inside the atom is not actually empty and there are electro-magnetic waves inside what was earlier perceived to be empty space. This electro-magnetic energy is also called as cosmic energy. The concept of circles in this sense stands for a framework that is more inclusive and more encompassing than “levels of consciousness.” These stages of growth are called “cosmic circles” because they refer to the entirety of human selfhood, the innate, God-given, or cosmic endowments of the self. We may also say, with Carl Jung, that these circles refer to levels of individuation—the harmonious growth of all the powers of the self. Assuming the presence of physical well-being, circle-making has to do with the symmetrical growth of the nonphysical factors of self. Circles attainment is inclusive of the life of the mind, emotional maturation, moral evolution, soul growth, and spiritual realisation.
In the study of art history, it is evident that self-taught artists have produced remarkable artworks, leaving an enduring impact on the art world. Artists such as Adolf Wölfli, Aloïse Corbaz, Bill Traylor and Frida Kahlo belong to such a genre. It should be recognised that artist Mohanan Vasudevan also has a lot to go through.
- Tensing Joseph, Visual artist & cultural Practitioner
