Note to Anne Marie G. on Flickr

Yeah, Flickr is a pretty amazing phenomenon, I have waxed poetic about it quite a bit, both on the web and to people in my life.

The thing about it that is so interesting and compelling is that attraction and discussion on Flickr is on the basis of aesthetics, pics of cats, visual diaries, self portraits. The visual component drives it and critique is a powerful underlying theme. Not to mention a liberal dose of empathy, which tempers the impulse to flame.

As a result, there is a softness to the duologue (as a whole) which makes the interaction a lot more ‘adult’ in many respects than many of the other ‘online communities’ out there (digg, techdirt, slashdot, DKOS), and this creates an enviornment akin to a civilized cocktail party where there is no need for the expensive ‘glad rags’ and the pretense of success.

I registered and was accepted to the ‘outsider art’ Yahoo group and checked it out. Funny thing, without the visuals of Flickr is seemed a bit pale. I have an extensive background in Art History (up to the mid 90s) but I am not in the biz per se. I used to shoot the collections at Christie’s auction house in the early 90s and have an acute understanding of ‘art within historical context’, but this ‘outsider art / brut/ raw’ seems a bit like the wild west as it relates to interpretation.

I was telling the owner of this gallery I have been doing this web stuff for that it created an intriguing opportunity to ‘create’ an ‘outsider artist’ from scratch, starting with geography, a know reclusive person who was real and now dead, writing out a biographical time line, the creating the work on the basis of ‘events’ from that life, and beginning to ‘discover’ the art in basements, yard sales, attics and bring this ‘unknown outsider artist’ to the light of the world.

He though I was insane. But it is an interesting premise. Kind of a ‘trailer park’ forgery of an unknown artist. I could have a shop, and do the ‘Kostabi’ riff, manufacturing an image and a personality built on the template of an illusion.

I am going to propose to this gallery an idea for a curated show at the end of the summer / early fall for a show using submissions from ‘outsider artists’ who are posting their work on Flickr. I think it would be a very interesting process.