Shut The Door And Listen From Outside
Steven S. Powers / Winter 2020 Catalog "Shut The Door And Listen From Outside" is a statement from Oblique Strategies, which is a set of cards each with a suggestion, directive, or constraint created by the artists Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt to encourage lateral thinking and to break creative blocks. With this in mind, as an art dealer or collector, one may think, how will this look if I see it indirectly? From a room away? Through a window? Obscured through a crowd of people? Or as I quickly scroll through Instagram? This question is not a shallow proposition—we often see a particular artwork from an off-angle or perspective—not in optimal presentation. Indeed, if we think about it, we likely first approached an artwork we came to love because it looked good "from outside." It had something special going on from a small section we gleaned through a crowd of people, or the composition came into focus as we came towards it from another room. As an artist, we may interpret this as another way of seeing. To purposely not see clearly or overtly—to create something anew based on partial information or hazy suggestions seen or heard. Or another way to look at a work in progress. View it from the side, across the room, or without glasses to see a fuzzy tonal map—does it still work for you?
Steven S. Powers / Winter 2020 Catalog
"Shut The Door And Listen From Outside" is a statement from Oblique Strategies, which is a set of cards each with a suggestion, directive, or constraint created by the artists Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt to encourage lateral thinking and to break creative blocks.
With this in mind, as an art dealer or collector, one may think, how will this look if I see it indirectly? From a room away? Through a window? Obscured through a crowd of people? Or as I quickly scroll through Instagram? This question is not a shallow proposition—we often see a particular artwork from an off-angle or perspective—not in optimal presentation. Indeed, if we think about it, we likely first approached an artwork we came to love because it looked good "from outside." It had something special going on from a small section we gleaned through a crowd of people, or the composition came into focus as we came towards it from another room.
As an artist, we may interpret this as another way of seeing. To purposely not see clearly or overtly—to create something anew based on partial information or hazy suggestions seen or heard. Or another way to look at a work in progress. View it from the side, across the room, or without glasses to see a fuzzy tonal map—does it still work for you?
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Branchard's work is held in several major museum collections including,<br />
MOMA, <strong>The</strong> Met, <strong>The</strong> Hirshhorn, <strong>The</strong> Philadelphia Museum of Art,<br />
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Albright-Knox Museum.<br />
Selected Bibliography:<br />
Harriman Marie, Memorial Exhibition, Emile Branchard. New York: Marie<br />
Harriman Gallery, 1938.<br />
Zabriskie, Virginia, Emile Branchard : March 26th through April 14th 1962.<br />
New York: Zabriskie Gallery, 1962.<br />
Bourgeois, Stephen, Exhibition of Painting and Drawings by Emile Branchard.<br />
New York: Bourgeois Galleries, 1919.<br />
Janus, Sidney, <strong>The</strong>y Taught <strong>The</strong>mselves : American Primitive Painters of the<br />
20th century. New York: <strong>The</strong> Dial Press, 1942.<br />
Cahill, Gauthier, Cassou, & Miller, Masters of Popular Painting, Modern<br />
Primitives of Europe and America. New York: <strong>The</strong> Museum of Modern Art,<br />
1938.<br />
Hemphill and Weissman, Twentieth-century American folk art and artists.<br />
New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974.
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