Farb Hernandez (Jo), Espacios Singulares

Jo Farb Hernández, director emerita of the American nonprofit organization SPACES (Saving and Protecting Art and Cultural Environments), gave a lecture about Espacios Singulares (Singular Spaces) at the Harinera cultural centre in the Spanish city of Zaragoza on September 14, 2019.

The lecture focused to a large extent on preserving Julio Basanta’s art environment the Casa de Dios, which is located in the vicinity of Zaragoza. But in her lecture, Jo Farb Hernández also discussed the meaning of the concept of "art environment", a topic she has analyzed on various other occasions, including in the introduction to her groundbreaking book Singular Spaces (note 1).

Since these texts are not always easily accessible to the general public, I am grateful that she has agreed that the portion of her lecture about the concept of Singular Spaces can be published here, in Spanish and English.

Jo Farb Hernández: Espacios Singulares

...I would like to spend a couple of minutes discussing the definition of art environments. These works have been described as folk art, outsider art, art brut, visionary art, intuitive art, or as garbage. In fact, they are difficult to classify. In the United States many earlier scholars used the term "folk art" to distinguish them from contemporary works of art made by artists with academic backgrounds and training. But proposing a link to folk art implies that these works are linked to a collective inheritance, reflecting shared community standards and aesthetics, transmitted from generation to generation.

In contrast, these monumental environments and structures are based on a personal aesthetic. Each of these spaces is unique, and each transcends all characteristics of regional style or historical conventions. In contrast to folk art or mainstream contemporary art, there is no connection between one work and another; the works are different in form, in material, in plan, in focus, and in intent.

Art historian Roger Cardinal has compiled a list that provides a broad summary of the range of possible manifestations of these sites; they include architectural structures built from scratch, modifications to existing buildings, decorated interiors, exhibitions of the maker’s own paintings or sculptures, assemblages and accumulations, landscaped gardens, embellished plant or rock formations, yard displays, inscriptions, personal museums and collections, and monuments, tombs, and shrines. Investigating these works is, therefore, a challenge for most art or architectural historians, who prefer to classify each manifestation of art by period or style: singular spaces fail to cleanly correspond to any of these types of academic classifications.

In mainstream art, the concept of “environment” did not appear as a generally-accepted genre until the 1950s. This delay in recognition may perhaps be attributed to the fact that historically such constructions were often identified as capricious curiosities or expressions of madness, and - in contrast to mainstream or folk arts, which usually served either to reinforce society’s norms or to mount only superficial challenges to the status quo - often generate controversy, not only due to their themes but to their audacious placement in the public sphere. Further, monumental constructions or sculptures constructed with recycled materials - particularly with materials that could be characterized as trash or garbage - also did not historically fit within the form nor scale of what was commonly thought of as "Art".

In most cases, the studies of these singular spaces reveal the work of a single and passionate worker (an artist in my eyes, but not always in the eyes of the creator), who typically began expressing their creativity in the later years of his or her life, after developing certain related skills, following a vocation, and making a life for him / herself and family. Although some artists work faster than others, most art environment creators dedicate at least a decade, and up to 40, 50, or even 60 years of their lives to their creations. It is rare for artists to voluntarily stop working on their sites; typically it becomes such an overwhelming preoccupation, almost a calling, that only illness, incapacity, or death will finally bring its development to a close.

.In general, the artist’s intention is that the works should be viewed and understood in their entirety as interrelated components, and not as a collection of distinct works. Therefore, the works grow within the context of the site itself, as well as due to the multi-dimensionality of the interaction of the elements: this creates a potency that is lost if any works are moved or if they are removed from their surroundings, or - even worse - if the space as a whole is destroyed.

But this is not just any site. Fundamental to this discussion is that most creators of art environments build on or within their own immediate and personal spaces: these are their own private homes, their yards, their farms. The only pressures impinging on the building of art environments are those resulting from the individual creator-builder’s own availability of time, energy, and resources. And because they are building within their personal habitats, the sites are full of their own histories, connections, and experiences, and this fusion of art with life becomes a total synthesis, generally unmatched in any other circumstances. Art environments reveal not only complete commitment to the work and a blurring of divisions between art and daily living, but an open reflection of the maker’s life and concerns.

Builders of art environments certainly may allude to folk, popular, or mainstream cultural references—as members of their communities, it would be impossible for them to avoid the influences of the omnipresent visual images transmitted through a variety of educational, ecclesiastic, and mass media organs—but they owe less allegiance to these traditions and the desire to produce anything functional or marketable than to personal and cultural experiences, availability of materials, and a desire for creative self- expression. These artists use the experience acquired throughout their working lives and use some of the same tools as in their previous work, learning through trial and error, adapting to changes, opportunities, failures, and the abundance or scarcity of materials, improvising and integrating elements into the very essence and structure of their work, as they work.

Although the creators’ initial intent may have been to build for themselves, their personal, individual spaces reveal significant public ramifications on a variety of levels, not the least of which is that they assume a new social identity within the community as their visible works expand. The lives of the creators change as they change the shape of their personal spaces, not only because of the physical constructions but because of the new interactions that result from their work, modifying their relationships with family, neighbors, and visitors.

As these places are very complex, they are usually not completely comprehensible or visible from a single perspective; what at first is seen as something chaotic and disordered evolves, after multiple visits and through multiple perspectives, to an understanding that the environment will often reveal rhythms and patterns that blend and separate, merge and realign, in gestures akin to those found in improvisational jazz.

The breadth of this type of assembly suggests that it is a general worldwide response to “making do” with locally-available materials. These expressions are not an isolated phenomenon: thousands of these types of constructions, each different and unique, have been documented around the world.

Although the works of self-taught artists are beginning to be included within a wider definition of art, the reality is that their situation is precarious in comparison with arts of other genres. Their physical instability and exposure to the elements is often aggravated by the lack of support by public and governmental agencies, let alone the omnipresent danger of vandalism; works of art in other categories are not subject to such immoral destruction. It is therefore important to emphasize that it is not sufficient to merely appreciate or document these art environments, but also to involve oneself - over a period of years, or even decades, if necessary - in political action to help preserve them. Every success achieved is a positive step forward toward progress in widening the very definition of art. And, as this happens, singular spaces will become included within the parameters of what we consider important works of art and how we treat them, and we will no longer have to think twice about deciding to save and preserve them, as it will become the most natural thing in the world.

Note

1. Jo Farb Hernández, Singular Spaces: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments. (Raw Vision, SPACES, San José State University), 2013. ISBN 978-0-615-78565-3.

Here is the Spanish version of above text

added to OEE-texts October 2019