Depending on the style of art your follow you might have heard of Scottie Wilson whose whimsically patterned birds and trees made it on to highly collectible Royal Worcester dinnerware.
You might have come across a Bill Traylor in a Folk Art exhibit. Arguably, if you see the rounded bodies and faces of an Albert Louden you will be reminded of similar figurative work in modern art galleries.
The surrealistic works of Friedrich Schroder-Sonnenstern might also look a familiar. If you browsed the Tate in St. Ives you probably saw some of the museum’s naïve art of Alfred Wallis.
Whatever label you or galleries apply, the Milwaukee Art Museum is headlining works by these and several other artists as Accidental Genius: Art from the Anthony Petullo Collection.Their commonality is that the artists are self-taught and have been considered by collectors and art historians as “Outsider Art.”
More than 300 works by these artists were amassed during the past 30 years by Petullo, a Milwaukee entrepreneur and art collector. About 200 of the pieces fill MAM’s major temporary exhibition hall now through May 6.
Because the artists in the collection had no art academy training, didn’t study in the studios of established artists, had other occupations, created art out of a culture’s mainstream or, as with some of them, expressed their artistic visions while in a mental institution, their work was occasionally labeled as “Art Brut” (raw art).
But forget the labels when walking through the exhibition. The artists’ works would fit many contemporary exhibitions. Indeed, Jean Dubuffet and Pablo Picasso collected works by Wilson. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and Atlanta’s High Museum of Art have works by Traylor. Established British painters Ben Nicholson and Kit Wood admired Wallis’ works which hang in the Tate.
Instead of labels, Adjunct Curator Margaret Andera has mounted the exhibit according to such themes as “draftsmanship,” landscapes” and The Influence of Pop Culture” and “The Gugging Artists.” The latter division referred to artists who first came to the area because of mental illness but stayed in the “Artists House” in a communal relationship.
Petullo is fine with the title accidental genius because he hopes visitors will understand that an outsider art title may mislead as to the quality of the art.
“Many of the pieces in my collection can be used in contemporary and modern settings. They can be intermingled with exhibitions that are not necessarily focused on self taught artists. In fact many are in contemporary exhibitions with no label,” he said.
When Accidental Genius ends in early May, the Milwaukee Art Museum plans to hang the works on a rotating basis because Petullo has donated the collection to the museum.
After first collecting an eclectic assortment of art, Petullo said he started focusing on self-taught artists. "I gravitated toward self-taught artists because they fascinated me with their inventiveness and their intuitive creativity,” he said.
He explained it became a passion and also a challenge because he wanted to collect museum quality art and enough works of each individual so that people could see who the artist was and the range of the artist's work.
“I realized that one day my collection would be in a museum – the Milwaukee Art Museum," Petullo said.
For more information visit Milwaukee Art Museum or call 414-224-3200.
Milwaukee Art Museum 700 N. Museum Drive Milwaukee, WI 53202
The Milwaukee Art Museum is about a 90 minute drive north on Interstate 94
For information on this and other area art shows vist art exhibits
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