Exile on Main Street: nine American artists’ “exile on mainstream”

The nine artists featured in Exile on Main Street at Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht have done solo exhibitions before in Europe and in the US. Now, in a European first, their works are being shown under one roof. Although the artists are all American, it can be argued that this exhibition could not as easily have been put together in their home country, because of the type of content the artworks deal with. They tackle the taboos in art, either in style or context, by using confrontation, humour, sex, disgust, sarcasm, self-criticism and admiration in their artworks.

The exhibition was named after an album by the English rock band The Rolling Stones released in 1972. The Rolling Stones improvised the music of Exile on Main St. in the cellar of a villa in France under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

The music is inspired by jazz and blues tunes of the 1920s and 1930s. Although the acoustic quality is low, the band described it as their best album.

Their intention was obvious: they performed the music as they felt it and not necessarily in conformity with a certain style or genre.

Exile on Main St. album cover

The LP sleeve shows photographs of all sorts of variety artists: jugglers, belly dancers, circus performers and showmen. The obvious link with the theme of exile lies in the depiction of these outsiders/outcasts….

The director of the Bonnefanten Museum, Alexander van Grevenstein, curated the exhibition and the nine artists are his personal choice. The artists created their works alongside the mainstream as the artists’ artists. Although they influenced and inspired many other more ‘popular’ artists, they never became mainstream themselves. They generally worked in various forms of isolation and made ‘art for the sake of art’.

Their works don’t depict “stuff that dreams are made of”. Content is neither subtle nor sober yet the paintings or sculptures display a certain artistic quality and degree of sophistication.

In most cases, much time and effort was spent into the creation of the works, which all display different but striking techniques. They all deal with concepts which are considered taboos in art in a different way.

As a result they don’t fit into any academic categorisation, and albeit individualistic and diverse, they don’t have much in common with one another either.

The nine artists, Richard Artschwager, William Copley, Steve Gianakos, Alfred Jensen, Peter Saul, John Tweddle, John Wesley, H.C. Westermann and Joe Zucker, have been criticised in the art world as “bad painting”, “comic strips” and “cartoons”.

They escape any contemporary classification but don’t seem to care. For this reason, the exhibition looks like it consist of mainly nine solos from extremely diverse artistic positions in status, content, style, message, and technique.

Peter Saul has developed his own painting technique by which the canvas looks as if it had been spray-painted. In fact Saul meticulously uses brush strokes to create this feathered effect. He communicates his message in a colourful and accessible way though cartoon-like paintings. Most of the time his subjects are common concepts that are taken for granted in the art world, but which he disagrees with. He is shocking and confrontational and consciously avoids the mainstream. He says “To be not shocking means to agree to be furniture.” De Kooning, Duchamp and Pollock are often subject to his mockery.

Peter Saul

John Tweddle’s art is cynical and unsubtle. Yet it is able to amuse viewers at the same time. He questions the meaning of art by addressing taboos in art through sexual and vernacular colloquialism. Ironically, in his Poem, he crosses out inoffensive words such as ‘fun’ and ‘sale’. He communicates his negative view of art and life on the out-of-the-ordinary trapezoidal canvas.

John Tweddle is an oxymoron. He disliked the art world and felt like he never belonged to it, and yet his works were largely collected by the famous New Yorker Robert Scull.

With Tweddle, colours and compositions are a feast for the eye and his humourous approach is entertaining. The words and symbols he uses are not to be taken seriously. Not surprisingly, he says “I just hope God finds my life and art entertaining. And maybe…. you will also.”

John Tweedle

People play a central figure in John Wesley’s minimalist depictions. Using only a few pastel colours, the artist neither tells a story nor follows “the rules of the game”, defying his work to be categorised into any modern art stream.

John Wesley

H.C. Westermann combines irony and Americanism in a confrontational manner. In his series of paintings ‘See America First’ he depicts a brutal criticism of his home country. Yet he remains amusing and allows one to contemplate his critical take on America on a very superficial level.

H.C. Westermann

Richard Artschwager took the concept of ready-made to a more contextual level by meticulously creating and exhibiting a shipping crate for the artworks in the museum. (Wasn’t it already there?)

Richard Artschwager

The crate displays exquisite craftsmanship. He plays with the idea of ‘content’ by placing an object which usually stays behind the scene, literally ‘on the scene’. His later works are paintings of landscapes, in which he becomes more ambiguous. The contrast between his two sets of works nevertheless creates a harmonious effect.

Steve Gianakos loves playing with taboos, whether it is his conceptual surrealism (or is it?) or vulgarity in art. The meaning of his work is humorous and immediately accessible. His parchment-like collages of newspaper clippings are displayed without any frame, so that the various layers can still be seen on the uneven edges.

Steve Gianakos

By painting Betsy Ross as a pin up girl wearing the American flag, William Copley wants to satirise Americanism. For Americans, the seamstress Betsy Ross who sewed the first American flag, is as sacred a historical figure as the Pilgrim Fathers. He uses metaphors in all his paintings to reflect his ideas on politics, society and sex.

William Copley

Alfred Jensen plays with optic illusions approaching abstraction on big canvases. His inspiration from mathematics, physics and South American motives shine out in lively colours. His canvases resemble South American textile designs which are pleasant to look at.

Alfred Jensen

Joe Zuckerexpresses his art in a hotchpotch of styles, painting figures of piracy as if he has taken them from a child’s imaginary world. His scrolls are inspired by Japanese art and from a distance they look very oriental indeed. The scrolls are painted on both sides and the length of a scroll is too long to be rolled out in its entirety, which leaves the audience wondering about the deeper mystery of his stories.

Joe Zucker

All nine artists achieve their own individuality in their creations, which cannot be categorised in the mainstream. Their diverse methods and artistry however fit together well in this exhibition. What matters to them is to put their heart and soul in the essence of imagination and creativity, ignoring compliance to the rules. Exile on Main Street assumes the form of their ‘exile on mainstream’.

By Burcak Gursoy

Burcak Gursoy was born and raised in Istanbul and grew up in an art-loving family. Burcak first studied one of her other interests, Mathematics, at Bogazici University in Istanbul and worked seven years in Istanbul and Brussels and two years in Japan. Upon her return to Brussels, she studied Architecture and Design in Sint-Lukas (part of Leuven University) and graduated as an interior designer/architect. Burcak is now about to graduate from a Master in Art Management at Maastricht University and has spent the past six months as an intern at Bonnefanten Museum, doing research and working mainly on the Exile on Mainstreet exhibition. Burcak also gives guided tours in Dutch and English for the Exile on Mainstreet exhibition.

More information: Bonnefanten Museum website. The exhibition will run until August 16, 2009