VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Menil Collection presents the exhibition Seeing Stars: Visionary Drawing from the Collection. On view September 23, 2011– January 15, 2012.

A unique and rarely shown facet of the Menil’s holdings is work on paper by self-taught artists. The Surrealists were particularly enchanted by what has come to be known as “Outsider Art.” They believed these visionary, folk, or naïve artists could access the subconscious and expresses with greater clarity and authenticity. In 1949, artist Jean Dubuffet, championed creators who “draw everything (subject, choice of material, expressive means, rhythms, spellings, etc.) from their own inner selves and not from the commonplaces of classical or currently fashionable art.”

This exhibition features outsider drawing, as well as drawings by established modern and contemporary artists who have consciously adopted an outsider vocabulary. Both groups work against traditional and academic methods of representation and mark making. They also share formal and stylistic tendencies that have continued to play a role in conversations about drawing in the 21st century; including repetitive and labor-intensive exercises, experiments with chance and automatism, and the construction of imaginary landscapes and fantastic illustration.

The show will feature Charles A. A. Dellschau’s watercolors and collages of flying machines in hand bound journals, and surrealist artist Unica Zürn’s compulsive line drawings, described as sitting on the brink of sanity. Lee Bontecou’s dreamscape drawings will be shown alongside drawings of tattoo designs by nineteenth-century artist I.E. Reiquer. Other works will include a double-sided scroll by Henry Darger depicting a magical universe he called the “realm of the unreal,” and a group of early Jackson Pollock drawings made while the Abstract Expressionist painter was undergoing psychoanalysis.

The show’s title is taken from the vision-altering concept of “seeing stars.” A medical symptom of hallucination, or concussion, it is related to the stimulation of the retina by the brain, which creates the illusion of points of light, colors or shapes. Like the work in this exhibition, it suggests that creative vision is most interesting when the eyes are metaphorically shut.

This show is organized by Michelle White, associate curator.

This exhibition is generously supported by the City of Houston.

Pictured:  Jackson Pollock, Untitled (Psychoanalytic Drawing), 1939–1940, Colored pencils and graphite on blue paper, 6 x 7-5/8 inches. © 2011 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, The Menil Collection, Houston. Photo: Paul Hester. (detail above, full image below).