Gabritscevsky is an « esprit
singulièrement lucide » dont la vie a été « dérobée ». - attributed to Pierre Chave
My introduction to the art of Eugen Gabritschevsky was through seeing this portrait of his dog Luce almost ten years ago, and its radiant affection and stylistic panache have colored my responses to what I have seen and learned since. Gabritschevsky has long been pigeonholed as an outsider by art critics, which gives permission to give short shrift to his work or condescend to him. Now, the first major exhibition of Gabritschevsky's work in New York City is on view.
I am not convinced that the term ‘outsider
art’ explains much about Gabritschevsky's work or anyone's. The term and its French equivalent (art brut or rough art) were coined by critics and artists for purposes of marketing and exclusion exclusion, more than
for aesthetic purposes. It's a hair-splitting distinction for describing much of 20th century art. I
suspect that artists - or anyone else - are called outsiders when someone is uncomfortable with sharing their corner of the universe with them. Gabritschevsky was a
tormented man but, as is often true when confronted with human vulnerability,
this is about us, as much as about him. A brilliant man, confronted with a
bleak diagnosis, who chooses a new outlet for his energies, is someone I want
to share my corner with, just as he shared his with his beloved dog, Luce.
Why
not call Odilon Redon an outsider artist? Redon declared "Everything is
done by the submission to the coming of the unconscious” and that art was "the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible." Redon created hybrid creatures that
floated in air or grew from unlikely hosts. Like Gabritschevsky, Redon drew freely on dreams and nightmares for his imagery and, again, like Gabritschevsky, he was keenly interested in evolutionary theories and in insects, botany and the world revealed under a microscope. You could argue that Redon’s imagination was voluntary, whereas for Gabritschevsky's was the stuff of emotional disconnect, but how much of this is rooted in our
expectations?
Gabritschevsky’s
gouache images of winged insects, and fantastical butterflies, are
magical creatures, not monsters.. A series of precisely detailed abstract and
geometric forms that blend into a harmonious whole, convey benign emotions unlike the artist's anxiety-filled paintings of human or hybrid human-plant forms, with their air of menace.
The backgrounds, filled with subliminal
reminders of earth and sky, ground these extravagant flyers in a recognizable world. The Russian-born Eugene
Gabritschevsky (1893-1979) knew these flying creatures well.
He was a precocious student, drawn to
entomology, the study of insects. Forms, their appearance, their adaptation, their
evolution or their disappearance were the stuff of his researches, the same ideas that preoccupied contemporary artists. After earning advanced degrees in biology and genetics in
Moscow, he did postdoctoral research at Columbia University in 1925. His work on mimicry and genetic mutations in insects earned him a post at the
Pasteur Institute in 1927 but his mental state deteriorated. After being diagnosed with
schizophrenia in 1929, Gabritschevsky was confined to a mental hospital in
Munich. Without a laboratory, he still had art
Even after two decades spent mostly confined and and in relative isolation, Gabritschevsky could still summon imagined worlds other than the phantasmagorical ones he created using a signature device of his (seen here in attenuated form) the proscenium or theatrical arch that distanced himself and the viewer from his more frightening visions. Sometimes, they have seemed to me as
though Gabritschevsky used - seriously and/or tongue in cheek, - the Rorschach tests
(ink blot) that came into vogue during the 1920s, tests he might have undergone
himself. Although their validity has since been questioned, their
ambiguity has kept them alive in the netherworld of pseudo-science, never quite
debunked but never quite acceptable. Rather like 'outsider art.'
For more about Eugen Gabritschevsky at The Blue Lantern read Artist Of Loneliness.
Eugen Gabritschevsky: Theater of the Imperceptible, on display at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City is the first in-depth exhibition of Gabritschevsky’s art, composed of more than eighty artworks (gouaches,
drawings, and watercolors on paper), a film, publications, and archival
documents.
Images: are by Eugen Gabritschevsky are from the Museum of Modern Art, Toulouse, France, uhnnless otherwise noted.
1. Luce the Dog, 1947.
2. Papillon, 1941.
3. untitled butterfly, 1941.
4. untitled, 1950, Galerie Chave, Vence, France.
The Errant Aesthete, subtitled Essentials for the Cocktail-swilling Set, was a website that often featured the work of Ernst Hass, and although the website no longer publishes, you can still explore Suzanne's archives.
