Although there is not yet a good deal written about Phillip March Jones (American, 1981), his artwork has already been labeled as Outsider Art, Art Brut, emerging, contemporary and cutting edge.
In one way or another all of these handles issued by curators, gallerists, judges and jurors hold some truth, but because they tend to pigeonhole or marginalize, none offer a way to grasp the whole of this self-taught, Lexington-based artist.
For me, Jones is particularly intriguing. Not only does he assimilate multiple styles and media, he also employs and possibly even transcends antimodernist strategies in an effort to engage us on a more conceptual level.
No Outsider
Jones is no outsider to the art establishment; he curates corporate collections, runs an arts collective, works as an artist along side other artists, operates in a very commercial and connected environ on the Internet (see Blackthumb Art and Design at www.blackthumb.us).
His educational background includes the following institutions of higher learning: Emory University and the Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne where he studied political science, and the rural design studio at Auburn University where he experienced his first design classes at the age of 24.
Has he been labeled an outsider because this education was outside the academic fine arts genre? Or is it the simple fact that such terms, along with naÔve and primitive, are often used to describe the self-taught artist?
Whatever the case, it should not be overlooked that Jones' education has groomed him to understand precisely how to connect with his audience.
Flat imagery, garish colors and awkward compositions might at first glance signal that Jones does not know how to draw or paint, but in fact they operate as alluring devices to engage the viewer.
For example, in many of Jones' works there is a recurring image of bird-like form that appears harmless and theatrical. While Jones does not see this as a constant symbol, the form is a simple way for him to speak directly to us, to communicate something very specific.
"For me this figure is the simplest way to represent the animal world when working really flat. By adding a beak, the figure represents something that is not human-the other," he said. This form dominates a work titled "Living Drawing Series I," although Jones appears to have lessened the illusion for a more formal innovation.
Antimodernist
At first glance, "Living Drawing Series I," made me want to label Jones a modernist artist, specifically an Abstract Expressionist, working toward a pure painterly aesthetic on a large, flat surface devoid of any other content or meaning. When in fact this work is imbued with message, laden with content and commentary about what Jones thinks is a misconception in our Western culture: the notion that humans and animals are somehow separate and distinct from one another.
Drawn, spilled, spitted, splashed and swirled on a plastic material known as Yupo, the materials that make up this work (euphemistically referenced as carbon and water or mixed media) stand as a metaphor for the primordial soup from which Jones believes we all are born.
The plastic surface on which they are mounted does not allow the materials to absorb or adhere as they might to paper or canvas. For Jones, suspending these materials in a state of limbo adds yet another dimension to the metaphor making it more alive, more current, more relevant and more accessible. "It is heavy with meaning," Jones said.
Like an Abstract Expressionist, Jones places extraordinary value on the materials and the formal aesthetic, but employs them using a strategy that commands our attention go beyond that dimension of the work.
Another such strategy is his use of text. Originating from very personal journal entries, these elements entice the viewer to step closer and engage. Yet, in this living drawing, Jones transcends this particularly antimodernist approach, which stems from the 1980s concept of mixing visual languages, by relegating these journal-like entries to pure graphic elements with no connection to a specific narrative.
But, Who Is His Audience?
Although Phillip March Jones is from Lexington and lives in Lexington, he has only recently begun exhibiting his works here. "Living Drawing Series I" was part of an exhibition, titled "Wall-to-Wall," held earlier this summer at the Lexington Art League in the Loudoun House Gallery, where he is now included in the "Election" exhibition on view through August 24th.
Last year, Jones participated in the Woodland Art Fair. Albeit a joke at first, he has been accepted to exhibit again this year.
At the fair, he earned an award bearing the label "Cutting Edge," which was in my opinion our local attempt to categorize Jones, nominally placing him at the forefront of something, but also holding him carefully at arms' length from the norm.
But Jones does not intend to stay there. He employs techniques that attract his viewers whether seemingly naÔve, overly aesthetic, commercial or very personal as in his journal entries. He clearly understands that if his artwork is to convey its message, he must first hook the viewer and challenge you to engage.
He told me a story about how a woman at last year's fair who was so attracted she wanted to buy one of his Yupo drawings, which, by the way, are now selling in London for approximately $2,200. He had purposefully dropped the price point on the works at the fair in order to generate interest.
The woman was really unsure about the purchase because she was not certain that the drawing would match her couch. Jones refused to sell, demanding that she go deeper in her understanding of how, where and when art operates. The woman was outraged, but Jones, satisfied that he had gotten his message across, told her that he would even give her the work if only she promised to look for another couch to match it.
Many of these terms are far too broad to sum up here, but as a tickler, here are the basic highlights.
Art Brut
Coined by Jean Dubuffet in 1945. In French the term means "raw art." Used to describe the work of artists working outside the established art world. According to The Oxford University Press, Dubuffet ran an association called the Compagnie de l'Art Brut "to seek out the artistic productions of humble people that have a special quality of personal creation, spontaneity, and liberty." In its purest form, Art Brut refers to artwork made without the thought of financial gain or public recognition, but rather of a pursuit of inner, subjective obsessions of the artist.
Outsider Art
Coined by British art historian Roger Cardinal in 1972 as to describe the work of artists working outside the establishment of art and artists who had no academic art training. Although not entirely accurate, the term is often used synonymously with Art Brut. Used today, both the terms have lost some of the pejorative connotations and are used to classify or categorize the self-taught artist, whose work often holds similar stylistic attributes.
Modernism
As referenced here, the term refers to the artistic tendency that emerged in the 1960s and was, in part, formed by American critic Cement Greenberg. Writing about Abstract Expressionists (AE) like Jackson Pollock, Adolph Gottlieb and Hans Hofmann, Greenberg introduced this tradition of pure painting, which challenged the notion that a painting had to be about some other illusion or narrative; he clearly stated that the formal elements (the paint, the canvas, the frame) of a painting were the only elements of any significant consequence.
Antimodernism
The term has been in use since the late 1970s, although Webster has not yet found it a place. In this form, upper case and all one word , Thomas McEvilley employs the term asa it refers to a specific phase of Postmodernism, the first phase, wherein modernist tendencies like AE were renounced as frivolous and irrelevant, devoid of meaning. In a reaction to AE, artists began to employ specific strategies to imbue their work with meaning and content beyond the materials and pure aesthetic.
The Jones Shop
The Jones Shop is an artist collective run by Phillip March Jones from June '07 to May '08. It was a collaborative effort by a number of artists whose only commonality being is that they were self-taught artists living and working in Lexington, Ky. The group still functions underground and includes: Bruce Burris, Ben Fryman, Nathan Jones, Latitude Artists, and Ike Moody.