A Rare Look at Wolfli’s ‘Outsider Art’ Exhibition

Known as the first and foremost practitioner of “outsider art,” Adolf Wolfli spent his entire artistic life confined in a Swiss mental institution. Yet in the space of 30 years (from 1899-1929), he created a body of art encompassing 3,000 drawings and 25,000 pages of text, images and musical notations.

“It’s kind of unbelievable, because he came from such a deprived, depressed background with no formal education at all,” said Phyllis Plous, curator of the UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, where a rare exhibition of Wolfli’s work opens Wednesday.

The traveling exhibition, “The Other Side of the Moon: The World of Adolf Wolfli,” consists of 85 pencil and colored pencil drawings and collages of landscapes, cosmic battles, and imaginary travels around the world. Also included is a taped interpretation of some of Wolfli’s musical notations.

“Those who know anything about it know how rare it is to have a chance to see it without going to Switzerland,” said Plous of Wolfli’s work, which has been shown in the United States only once before (in a traveling exhibition in 1978-79). Plous added that because the drawings are done on fragile newsprint, this may be the last time the works leave Switzerland. (Their permanent home is at the Adolf Wolfli Foundation in Berne.)

“They’re pretty fragile for much more travel--this tour is probably it,” Plous said.

The exhibition’s showing at UC Santa Barbara completes a five-stop U.S. and Canadian tour.

GRANTS: The California Arts Council has awarded a total of $1.9 million to 194 organizations and schools as part of its Artists in Residency Program. The program is designed to bring artists and the public together in either school and community settings and social institutions. The awards were made in several areas of the arts, including music, dance, literature, media arts, theater, visual arts, folk arts, and crafts.

The L.A. County groups receiving grants--ranging from $3,600 to $10,400--for resident artists in the visual arts are the Long Beach Museum of Art, Korean Youth Center of Los Angeles, Los Angeles’ Self-Help Graphics & Arts, Santa Monica’s Olympic High School, Los Angeles’ Fairburn Avenue Elementary School, Santa Monica Alternative School House, Pasadena’s Sequoia School, Los Angeles’ Hilltop Nursery School, and the Boys/Girls Club of Venice.

AUCTION: Focus On AIDS II, a photography auction and benefit for AIDS Project Los Angeles and the City of Angels Hospice, will be held Monday at 7 p.m. at the Palace, 1735 N. Vine St., Hollywood. Items to be auctioned include rare vintage and contemporary photographs by Rebecca Blake, Greg Gorman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts.

The event is the second such benefit put on by Focus On AIDS, a volunteer group committed to raising funds and awareness to fight Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and care for those suffering from the disease. Tickets are $50 dollars each and can be obtained by a phone call to (213) 652-5204.

OPENING: In his “A Conversation on Collecting,” noted art collector Richard A. Manoogian says his collection “is probably broader and much larger than most American private collections. I don’t know if that’s good or bad or just an obsession.” Whichever may be the case, Californians can see a portion of his collection--63 19th-Century paintings, including Hudson River and Impressionist landscapes, trompe l’oeil still lifes, genre scenes, and figure paintings--at San Francisco’s M. H. de Young Memorial Museum’s “American Paintings From the Manoogian Collection,” which opens Saturday.

Organized by the Detroit Institute of the Arts and the National Gallery of Art, the traveling exhibition features works from every major school and tradition in American 19th-Century painting. It includes paintings by Thomas Cole, John Singer Sargent, George Caleb Bingham, Raphaelle Peale, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, Jasper Cropsey, Sanford Gifford, Thomas Worthington Whittredge, Albert Bierstadt, William Harnett, William Merritt Chase, Maurice Prendergast and others.

CONTEST: Black Gallery is holding its fourth annual photography contest, with $1,500 in cash and prizes being awarded in four categories. The contest is open to both professional and amateur photographers, who may submit black-and-white or color prints in the categories of photojournalism, landscapes, conceptual photographs and portraiture. The entry deadline is Oct. 28. For more information and entry rules, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Photo Contest ‘89, Black Gallery, 107 Santa Barbara Plaza, Los Angeles, Calif. 90008; or call (213) 294-9024.