The Big Bush Circus
The Big Bush Circus Lands in EuropeMICHAEL PATTERSON-CARVER by JEAN-MARC AVRILLAImmersed in a society full of dissent, some American artists, in the tradition of the Naïve Art movement, are resisting a hold over their country that’s squelching certain freedoms. In doing so, they embrace a form of artistic activism that’s become almost antiquated today.The relationship between art and politics goes back too far to insinuate that these two highly sociable activities are not akin. Yet their very history seems to have distanced them from one another over the second half of the 20th century. In reality, history can no longer be dealt with by a factual reading of it, but rather in poststructuralist fashion, by analyzing the conflicts that underpin and structure our societies. As such, contemporary art offers an in-depth interpretation of history.Félix González-Torres has shed light on the polemic of Western genres — in particular, defending Gay and Women’s Rights — by creating situations that allowed activism to slip into our daily lives. It is precisely that same defense of minority rights that has driven the Guerilla Girls’ since 1985. We must also cite David Hammons for intentionally establishing an American landscape and evoking the relationship of the present to history, in his case, from the viewpoint of the African-American community he came out of. Contemporary art deals with history, but certainly not as explicitly as the educational posters evoking the colonial conquest of the elementary schools of yesteryear. Artistic ActivismIt certainly seems that the great Barnum of the Bush era has succeeded in breathing life into a kind of artistic activism against his own agenda. The American press astonishingly recounts the discovery of a hitherto unknown, self-taught artist in his 50s named Michael Patterson-Carver in Portland, Oregon, in early 2007. Walking out of a grocery store, Harrell Fletcher, another local artist, was bowled over by what he saw — Patterson-Carver standing by the road displaying his anti-Bush drawings like political placards. From that moment on, Patterson-Carver’s exhibitions spread like wildfire.I must admit, his work has the ability to surprise even the most powerful of art world muckety-mucks. First of all, by their explicitly treated subject matter — Civil Rights demonstrations, TV news reports of clashes, and perhaps the most emblematic, representations of a truly ferocious chronicle on political life in the Bush era, and since then, in the Obama era. Those works also distinguish themselves by their stylistic treatment, presented in the form of naïve watercolor drawings.In them, we can admire George W. Bush as ringmaster at the Republican primaries. A ten-gallon hat perched on his head, he’s flanked by a Republican elephant straight out of the Big Top and a character strangely resembling former advisor Karl Rove wearing an S-and-M type undergarment. Champagne flows like water below swinging trapeze artists in panties and boxer shorts. In the background, we find a torture stand with demonstrators dressed in black. That acid Bush administration circus turns up again in a scene in which the former American president, like some magician or freak show barker, opens a closet bearing the delicate moniker “Bush Skeleton Closet.” A Henry Kissinger figure rolls out the door in a wheel chair, wearing black gloves, along with a Hitler-like Saddam Hussein, and the inescapable Osama bin Laden. In the meantime, Bush’s Secret Service team looks under the rug and inside vases for the slightest whiff of danger.Creative OutpouringThe circus environment is a stylistic device widely used by the artist, as is evidenced in the drawing on the following page. The tiered background displays democratic and republican camps, like spectators at a concert, surrounding a long dais table where Congressional Banking Investigation witnesses are seated. These “witnesses” — in black suits and red ties, smoking cigars, sipping champagne, with butlers shining their shoes — are all undoubtedly bankers. As is typical of these political drawings, many details, words or names printed on signs, and objects placed on stage, enrich its quasi-journalistic content and make a veritable political narrative of it, an historicized chronicle of recent history.As a small child, Michael Patterson-Carver was profoundly shaped by the struggle for Civil Rights he saw going on around him. As an adult, he became an activist in that movement. The struggle has now moved to his art. The scenes are different here — dense, smiling crowds waving massive anti-war placards, defending Gay and Women’s Rights, defending fundamental human rights in the face of rampant fascism… The list is long. We’re not in the middle of the road anymore, but facing a flood of humanity or a wall comprised of American activists, their smiling faces filled with hope.Outsider ArtistMichael Patterson-Carver remains the activist he has always been. But he knows how to give form to that faith in his work. We might think this is what American critics call Outsider Art, a term we might easily translate as Naïve Art. The naïve forms of his drawings, his use of color, the prolific amount of work he produces, growing up in the home of an adoptive family, and the belated discovery of his work are the many elements that might associate him to that movement, whose most celebrated names remain Henry Darger or Martin Ramirez. But Patterson-Carver’s work includes neither narration nor compulsive writing. It seems much more interesting to compare him to a very influential artist in the United States with a highly political body of work — Diego Rivera.There may be quite a time gap between them. But Rivera’s legacy as a muralist remains strong today and the compositions of his Civil Rights series respond to the issue of mural painting with a political message. Michael Patterson-Carver’s strength lies in the tight relationship between his work and his life, which makes his works veritable tracts, veritable demonstration banners. Beyond the form, his work sheds new light on this relationship between American art and politics in the noblest sense.Michael Patterson-Carver’s work is represented by the Sorry We’re Closed gallery in Brussels and can be seen, for the first time in France, at the Galerie Laurent-Godin in Paris through February 6, 2010.Springtime for the Republicans, 2008, ink and pencil on paper, 38x50 cm.Sorry We’re Closed, Rue de la Régence, 65A 1000 Bruxelleswww.sorrywereclosed.comGalerie Laurent Godin, 5, rue du Grenier-Saint-Lazare,75003 Pariswww.laurentgodin.com
