Outsider Art Roundup by Tim Anderson
Here is an article by Tim Anderson published in the news and entertainment weekly of the Twin Ports, Ripsaw. 
In the last few decades “outsider art” has become a buzzword in the art world. The works of the disenfranchised, the insane, the damaged or the developmentally disabled have undergone a renaissance of reappraisement, finding a new gallery spotlight for many who in other eras would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Like Grandma Moses with wacked out sensibilities, these artists often cut through the pretensions of “modern art” and express things purely and undiluted by the filters and preconceptions that burden most. Duluth (Minnesota) seems to be undergoing an “outsider” renaissance of its own, as evidenced by the featured shows here.
MARVILLA AT THE TWEED
Mark Arvilla is Duluth’s own treasure of “outsider” or “fringe” art. While going unheralded his entire life, he was only discovered years after his passing by talking head Michelle Lee of KBJR News 6 fame. In collaboration with his family and the Tweed Museum of Art, the work of Marvilla, as he signed his pieces, is a major collection of vast significance and beauty. Viewed chronologically, Marvilla began in a very detailed, precise form in his earlier works only to strip away those layers of exactitude to practice a more minimal, primal form of simple line and color. Many of the paintings are landscapes and they exude an ethereal, forbidding presence bordering on mystical, finding common ground with the landscape works of the French Nabis artists ande even later Van Gogh.
His later work is a treasure trove of mystical symbolism, frenetic in their composition and color. His final works are directly influenced by the spirit world, and are informed by his contact with a pyschic channeler and increased mystical preoccupations in the last years of his life. His last painting, still displayed on the easel it was found on, seems to be an essay in brdiging the gap between the land of the living and the world of the dead. Marvilla’s artwork wasn’t the only piece of the puzzle he left behind, and volumes of poetry, prose and the manuscript of his autobiography remain to flesh out the rest, as well as audio cassettes of his conversations with the psychic he grew close to near the end. The collection is large, and one hopes that an intrepid UMD student will see the potential for a thesis or monograph in what is certainly one of Duluth’s most interesting art stories.
So my question to the blog-o-sphere is what shall I do with this collection? It has been in storage since the Tweed Museum Show several years ago. Someone suggested a bon fire, others say hang on to them, others say try to sell them. I have no experience in sales…my space is limited and I just cannot consider destroying a man’s lifes work by fire.
Any one out there who may have a suggestion please leave a comment. Thank you.
