On Otherness and the Arts

I. The visual and material culture of outsiders—bikers, tattooers, carnies, and others—tends to orbit around, participate in, and influence aspects of the fine arts. Some of us become outsiders by nature of our births—into the wrong religion, say, or with bodies considered defective—and some of us have lifestyles that place us outside the norm. During the Middle Ages and into the Reformation, those born with unusual bodily attributes were thought of as mirabilia monstrorum, entertaining objects of amusement but also somehow touched by the hand of God.

The jester was also an outsider with a special role: a satirist who was allowed to tell the truth—within careful limits—to the monarch. This was a job that combined thespian talents with a literary ability to say the unsayable. He played the fool—or madman—to provide plausible deniability to his barbs—"he's so out of it he didn't really know what he was saying." George Gorse has written on the perception of freaks in this time period, with regard to its implications for social structure and government. The king was seen as the highest embodiment of creation, the zenith of perfection and purity in the image of God. The world of nature, including animals, was at the opposite end of things, the most base and least god-like. Freaks inhabited a place between, a realm in which irony is the basic tool for understanding the world, a tie to the jester's linguistic act. Gorse says this irony is made up of "self-conscious contradiction, sympathetic humor, a derisive scorn, fear and wonder."[1] This ability or license to tell the truth in a funny and shocking way is one that we are comfortable and familiar with in our contemporary culture in such cases as queer humor, or the humor of minority iconoclasts like Chris Rock. So, permission to humorously tell the truth in public is still in part reserved for those whom many see as other. Ricky Jay, among other things a noted expert on such matters, writes often of the 18th century German artist Buchinger, who was born with only rudimentary arms and legs, but went on to become a noted painter and magician and father of twelve. He was physically an outsider who used the arts to maintain a social status as an insider.

Before the Enlightenment philosophy was part of natural philosophy or what we would call chemistry and physics. Alchemists were philosophers using chemistry to distill purity. Gold was the physical material they were obliged to use, not necessarily their end. This is a system of opposed dualities; lead and gold—the base and the most pure—were only separated by a tissue of mystery. Both sides of such a duality are part of the same mutually dependent system, contingent and relative, and the divine falling through time together bound at the waist. They're conjoined twins, partaking of each other's existence. God's light is sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave. The notion of dualities is a theme in visual art as well. In the idea of the mold, 20th century Duchamp was interested, for example, in the idea of the mold, an object that embodies both a negative and a positive representation of an image.

The freak was "the comic foundation for the serious, heroic and tragic subject matter of morally elevated man."[2] The artist is the designated liaison between low nature and perfection. The freakish outcast has a foot in both worlds, usually as the artist's funny sidekick. The artist is man, creating the built world where beauty and ugliness, god and nature, virtue and vice, spirit and matter are forever at war and linked. Imperfect men—freaks and dwarves—are not worthy of participating in this struggle, so they stand outside of it, making pithy commentary.

In modern literature and contemporary pop culture this image is familiar to us. The Lilliputians in Gulliver, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Snow White's dwarves, R2D2, Santa Claus elves, Tattoo on Fantasy Island, all partake of this role. They define culture from the outside, through art and our imaginations. When Christian influence caused the expulsion of freaks from the courts of kings, they found their way to other professions, including the circus and all the other fields of the underworld, notably documented in Ricky Jay's book Extraordinary Exhibitions.[3] These include the magician, the con man, and the carnie.

II. How does one come to see oneself as an outsider, to place on the list of defining aspects of one's identity the idea of being an outsider? After the era of identity-based art of the 90s we have come away with an understanding that our identities are complex, that not just our class, ethnicity, religion or gender are givens, but that every other personality trait that affords us choices or lack of choice is part of our identity as well, and often in ways as compelling as gross physical realities. Ours is a nation of self-selected interest groups, tens of thousands of ways to see oneself as apart from everyone else. No other nation has so many clubs and associations. Each of us can align ourselves, literally or sympathetically, with a host of such splinter cultures.

Jona Frank, a Los Angeles photographer, published a book titled High School, in which she documented how teenagers survive by joining a group—whether of a few odd individuals or formal large groups like ROTC. (The 90s satirical troupe PomoAfroHomos used to do a skit called The Just Us Club, drag queens so obnoxious that only each other could tolerate them). Frank documents The Vampire Bunny Trio, three girls who agreed to meld their identities with at least two or three media characters, to dress like them and act as an amalgam of their personalities. One, for instance, was a conjoining of Mulder (from the X Files) and Lestat (from Anne Rice) and another character. The following is their manifesto, a touching assemblage of TV-sound-bite rhetoric, adolescent angst, and outsider logic:

"…the supernatural, the paranormal, and the bizarre beckon us toward the truth of our existence. The three of us want to be abducted by aliens and taken away to another planet that is completely different from earth. We know that normal is just a six letter word and that normality is a myth. The beautiful blue darkness of the evening is our comrade in this struggle and the vampires and other creatures of the night."[4]

A perfect, silly example of outsiders as a self-selected culture that gives existential meaning to life and stands in binary opposition to a perceived world of rejection and incomprehensible values. Admittedly, suburban teenage angst is not the same as a lifetime of outsider status, but neither is it irrelevant to this research. What are the values of these adolescent outsiders? One key

aspect is unease with received values, or an inability to find one's way into the realm of the acceptable. A second is an artistic talent or temperament that is unable to be channeled. The Bench Crew is another High School group, the most beautiful and stylish teens, whose schoolyard roost is unapproachable by anyone less perfect. The flip side of the Vampire Bunnies, the mainstream values of Colleen of the Bench Crew are summed up with, "…your package is the car you drive, the clothes you wear, the you grades…"[5]

III. Ten-thousand-year-old corpses have been discovered frozen in Alpine glaciers covered with tattoos, so this practice has been with us since humans evolved. In Tongan "ta" means hand, "tata" means to strike with the hand twice, and "u" means color, so tatau means to strike twice with the hand with color, which describes the earliest mechanics of tattooing. The first known usage of the word tattoo in English was recorded in the diary of Captain James Cook in 1769 during his voyage to the Marquesas Islands. The text reads, "…they print signs on people's body and call this tattaw."[6] Sailors on the voyage later introduced both the word and reintroduced the concept to Europe. It enjoyed a brief turn-of-the-last-century popularity among the British aristocracy, but until the past decade or so was always associated with the so-called underclass: sailors, soldiers, carnie workers, criminals.

How does one come to see oneself as an outsider, to place on the list of defining aspects of one's identity the idea of being an outsider?

Wikipedia's entry for tattoo reads, "tattoos have served as rites of passage, marks of status and rank, symbols of religious and spiritual devotion, decorations for bravery, sexual lures and marks of fertility, pledges of love, punishment, amulets and talismans, and as the marks of outcasts, slaves, and convicts…to symbolize their belonging to or identification with particular groups," (emphasis mine). Historically, a decline in traditional tribal tattooing in Europe occurred with the spread of Christianity. Tattooing often declined in other cultures as well, following European efforts to convert aboriginal and indigenous people to Western religious and cultural practices that held tattooing to be a pagan and heathen activity. A poll conducted on-line in July 2003 estimated that 16 percent of all adults in the United States have at least one tattoo. The highest incidence of tattoos was found among that traditionally outsider group, the gay and lesbian population—31 percent.

"Drawings made for tattoos are the autographic evidence of this most extreme visual art and cause us to question a variety of assumptions forming the foundation of our society. The capacity of a tattoo to shock or alienate the uninitiated, and the deliberate self-marginalization of tattoo artists, has largely prevented recognition of their skills by the art historical establishment."[7] This quote is from Don Ed Hardy, a tattoo artist who went to Japan after art school and apprenticed with the masters there. On his return he worked primarily in the Bay Area and Hawaii, and he is more responsible than anyone else for the popularization of tattooing.

Based on the material covered so far, and on Hardy's writings on the history of tattoo, the following forms an initial attempt to posit a theory of fundamental attitudes and behaviors:

a. Initiation. An informal circle of people who are accepted as peers through their accomplishments, knowledge, reputation and expertise. Think of the character played by Viggo Mortensen having his Russian prison tattoos examined by elders in order to be accepted into the London underground in Eastern Promises. (The flip side of this is the Nazi tattooing of Jews in the WWII camps—a deliberate insult and violation of Jewish tradition).

b. Self-marginalization. A voluntary embrace of a subculture preferred over a mainstream existence.

c. Visual art or performative-based culture. Whether as a form of visual culture such as tattoos, or an extended understanding of theater as in large cons or carnival barkers.

Ours is a nation of self-selected interest groups

d. Lifestyle that is parallel to and separate from a mainstream that is largely unaware of, unwilling to acknowledge, or romanticizes that culture.

e. Usurpation of mainstream forms to other ends. Bastardizing of standard electronic machinery to make guerrilla tattoo machines; use of mainstream theatrical spaces for performances, demonstrations and lectures, or halls for exhibitions. (Hardy: "…machines were traditionally manufactured in small quantities by makeshift cottage-industry suppliers, or hand built with parts ingeniously adapted from various items intended for other uses.")[8]

f. Insular, trade secret nature. "Machine tuning, setup, and sources of good components were jealously guarded secrets, shrouded in superstition, and penuriously passed from one practitioner to another. Until very recently, information about every aspect of tattooing was submerged in a community of artisans who primarily viewed one another with a mixture of distrust and jealousy. Grudging admiration or outright respect were hard won. The basis for much of this was simple: lack of codified or reliable information in a formalized setting and competition for a common market." Pigments that were safe and effective were passed from predecessors and to confidants. This is parallel to how magic was passed on, as Ricky Jay describes in Extraordinary Exhibitions.[9]

g. Self-supporting. A way to make a living that is self-sustaining, mostly legal, and outside the bounds of the IRS and public economic system. My father was a used car dealer in New York. He once introduced me to a guy who had figured out a way to turn back odometers that was undetectable. Nobody was allowed within 10 feet of any car he was working on to maintain his trade secret. He charged top dollar and was famous and highly respected on Jerome Avenue, the wholesale center in the Bronx.

h. Location. Fringe and working class places are usually the locus of these professions. Tattooing was originally in penny arcades and barber shops, until shops began to be set up near army and navy bases, amusement parks and red light districts.

i. Itinerant nature. Traveling tattoo artists often worked with circuses and carnivals, or sailed from port to port. Hardy: "It was crucial for them to carry a working set of flash, so many filled small bound albums of watercolor paper…that could fit in a pocket." In Extraordinary Exhibitions, there are many posters that were printed in multiples with a blank space where time and place could be printed on an ad hoc basis for traveling exhibitions.

j. Innovation and tradition. "While lip service was given to variety, few shops featured anything startlingly unique. As in any art, those with the talent and ingenuity necessary to expand the field were in the minority."

The capacity of a tattoo to shock or alienate the uninitiated…has largely prevented recognition of their skills by the art historical establishment.

k. Mythology of heroes, villains, and amazing characters.

l. Showmanship. Putting on a good show and developing a memorable persona are critical to success in magic and in tattooing. The tattooers' ability to "draw a tip" (attract a crowd) depended as much on personality, spiel and presence as on the actual quality of the work. "Performance is a vital component of the medium," says Hardy. In the past being heavily tattooed oneself was necessary, as well as affecting an old salt persona, or a biker persona. From the turn of the century practitioners took professional monikers called needle names, such as Doc, Sailor, Captain or Professor. The English artist George Burchett referred to his studio as "my surgery." An amalgamation of "medicine man, raconteur and fantastic" imagist was key to the sort of shamanistic identity of the artists. Ricky Jay includes the amazing names of many performers, such as a South American trio "whose huge excrescences extruding from their chins gave them their stage moniker The Monstrous Craws."

m. Separation from clientele. "Don't be a sucker for your own game." This admonition comes from the world of con artists, with the suggestion being that falling for the praise of your clients is a trap; one should be honest with oneself about the quality and importance of what you do.

n. Rhetoric. A tattooer's rhetoric is one of his most important tools. Often shop signs and casual discourse employ the florid or bombastic forms of the carnival sideshow barker. A peculiar and particular vocabulary or even dialect is another aspect of outsider culture.

o. Transgression. Finally, a sense of transgression appears to be a constant. Participation in an ancient, obscure, and more or less forbidden activity is a defining aspect of this career.

IV. Bikers and Customizers

Journalist Jordan Smith wrote: "The modern era of the so-called 'outlaw motorcycle gang' began in 1947, in the wake of a 4th-of-July-weekend brawl between members of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club and the Pissed Off Bastards (southern California) at the annual Hollister biker rally." The press asked for a comment from the American Motorcyclists Association, the country's oldest rider's-rights group; the AMA explained that the brawl was not representative of mainstream cyclists: "Ninety-nine percent of bikers are law-abiding citizens, but there's that last 'one-percent' that are not—those folks are nothing more than outlaws." That epithet instantly became a point of pride for outlaw riders nationally, who embraced it even as a logo. Like gay activists decades later, who embraced the previously vicious term "queer" and turned it into a point of pride to deflect the power of the word, and also to distinguish their activist generation from an older, more sedate gay population, bikers who saw themselves as outsiders reveled in a status that now had a name, values, a reputation, and an in-group status. Over the past half-century, motorcycles have become design fetish items, from hand-made choppers to high-end luxury items on display in major museums. The cult of the outlaw biker has gone the route from mediated social reality to myth that is taken literally back on the street.

A related figure is the late Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. Roth was a southern California character who achieved enormous underground and brief aboveground acclaim from the 1950s through his death in 2001. At a retrospective of his work at New Langton Arts in 1999, dozens of young artists confessed to staff that they became artists, in part, because of early exposure to Roth's work. He showed these kids throughout America that there was another, darker side of life that could be thrilling. His alternative to Mickey Mouse was Rat Fink, a dirty, lecherous, fly-infested vermin antidote to the saccharine Disney mouse. Roth's main claim to fame was custom car detailing, pinstripes and flames and all the related stylings that became requirements for hot rods. His influence was vast;

the more eccentric and mannered his car designs became, like the Orbitron, the more he was admired. T-shirt airbrushing was another of his innovations. Roth was a hustler, a blue-collar artist whose ideas were stolen throughout his career. What began as a small coterie of beatnik-backyard-mechanic-surfer artists became a culture of outcasts that included people like his contemporary competitor and friend, the post-mortem legend: Von Dutch.

As mentioned in the checklist above (c.), it is interesting to note Roth's impact on painting and in a circle of admiring artists sharing related values. Robert Williams is a widely shown artist in the Roth tradition. He founded Juxtapoz magazine, and was part of Zap Comix, a mix of California car culture, cinematic apocalypticism and film noir that helped to create a new genre of psychedelic imagery along with artists like Big Daddy Roth. In his own words, "The energy and power we could think of we would do. Anything unbelievable, we thought we were going to jail, that we were bordering on sedition." And finally, Ed Roth said of him, "He's the finest mechanic I know of, including Picasso and Rembrandt and all of those guys…I think he's a gentleman in his personal life, but when he draws, he draws like a kook." Words like "kook" are part of a beach (in-group) dialect in which a kook is a novice surfer, extended metaphorically to mean "out of control." Roth was also a classic larger-than-life showman, often appearing in public in top hat and tails. His itinerant lifestyle took him from car show to car show throughout the country, where he usurped mainstream forms from automobiles to clothing design to toys for his own aesthetic and commercial ends.

V. Conclusion

The world of performers and promoters depicted in Extraordinary Exhibitions is a world that frequently aligns with the nature of one-percenters—from one-percenters to tattoo artists to the people who share a common interest in the nexus of surf/comix/cars. Showmen and artists inhabit these fields. Many of these people have no other options, owing to a wildness of spirit or a talent for abstruse performances, a love for the open road, sociopathic behavior, membership in pariah ethnicities or other unnamed factors. They have always formed a small army of magicians, acrobats, con artists and performers, an army that invades not in force but in tiny cells, not delivering terror but its opposite, small thrills, art from new sources and postures.

They wander in search of those willing to suspend disbelief, the naïve or greedy, catering to the need for wonderment in the general population, the intuition that there is another way of being in the world that is more fun, more dangerous and less predictable than that offered everywhere else. ♦

Notes

[1] George Gorse, Review of "B. Wind's A Foul and Pestilent Congregation: Images of 'Freaks' in Baroque Art," The Sixteenth Century Journal, 30 (1999), pp1081–1084.

[2] ibid

[3] Extraordinary Exhibitions, Ricky Jay, Quantuck Lane Press, 2004

[4] Jona Frank, High School, Arena Street Publishing, 2004

[5] ibid Frank

[6] Diary of Captain James Cook, 1769

[7] Don Ed Hardy, Pierced Hearts and True Love, The Drawing Center, 1995

[8] ibid Hardy

[9] ibid Jay