Outsider & Vernacular Art: The Victor Keen Collection

Description

In the last five decades the popularity of outsider art - works by artists working outside of the art establishment - has grown exponentially. Museums, galleries, and the public worldwide have embraced these powerful works. Victor Keen's Collection at the Bethany Mission Gallery, Philadelphia, is one of the leading outsider art collections in the U.S. Gathering masterful artworks from Victor Keen's collection, Outsider & Vernacular Art presents pieces from more than forty outsider artists, including such luminaries as James Castle, Thornton Dial, Sam Doyle, Howard Finster, William Hawkins, Martin Ramirez, Bill Traylor, and George Widener. In addition to these outsider artworks, the book also features folk art and vernacular art, including one of the best collections of delightful colourful Catalin radios from the 1920s to the 1940s. The more than two hundred colour images of these works are accompanied by essays from Frank Maresca, Edward Gomez and Lyle Rexer. Published to accompany a major exhibition at the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center in Pueblo, Colorado, in October 2019 - the first station of a travelling exhibi-tion - Outsider & Vernacular Art offers an exciting look at this universally beloved and revered art form.

Victor Keen owns one of the world's largest collections of outsider art. Frank Maresca is cofounder of Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York. Edward Gomez is a journalist, critic, curator, and senior editor of Raw Vision magazine. Lyle Rexer is a curator, educator, and author of How to Look at Outsider Art, among other publications.

"Outsider and Vernacular Art highlights the Victor F. Keen Collection housed in the Bethany Mission Gallery. Three compact, largely congratulatory essays introduce the volume's principal contribution--a catalogue of the collection that substantively deepens understanding of a still-emergent canon. Arranged alphabetically by artist, each entry includes a concise biography, a selected collection history, and color illustrations of the work on display at Bethany Mission Gallery. Knowledgeable readers will come away with a richer sense of the material that maps the breadth of vernacular, self-taught, and outsider art."-- "Choice"