John and Maggie Maizels, UK - MEET THE COLLECTOR Series Part Thirty Five
John Maizels first published Raw Vision Magazine in 1989 with the express purpose of bringing the phenomena of Outsider Art to a wider public. With John at the helm, it is now a quarterly publication, read throughout the world. In part thirty-five of ‘Meet the Collector’ I interview John and his wife Maggie Maizels to hear more about their love of this art …
John surrounded by art and books, working on Raw Vision
1. When did your interests in the field of outsider/folk art begin? Were you and Maggie together when your interest started?
Although we had always been interested in marginal and folk expressions, we did not really understand the context until reading Roger Cardinal's ‘Outsider Art’ book in 1972 - the year it was published. The first things we collected were crudely printed Islamic prints during travels round the Middle East. We were always collecting things - dinky toys, flying ducks, garden gnomes, snow globes, zippo lighters… all sorts.
2. When did you become collectors of this art? How many pieces do you think are in your collection now? And do you exhibit any of it on the walls of your home or elsewhere?
At first I was inhibited from collecting as it was thought that outsider art was too pure to collect and should only be in museums. I first bought some work at the Outsider Art Fair in about 1993 or 1994. I bought three works by Richard Burnside. We have a lot on our walls and also outside in the garden. Sometimes we lend things for exhibitions, but it is very disruptive and takes a long time to recover.
3. Can you tell us a bit about your backgrounds?
We met at Chelsea School of Art in the late 60s and Maggie went on to the Royal College of Art. For some years I was quite committed to painting (large abstract psychedelic works) and Maggie worked as an illustrator for books and magazines.
John’s dinky toy collection
4. What is it that draws your eye away from contemporary art to outsider/folk art? Or do you collect both?
We are not really interested in contemporary art, since conceptual art came in the late 1960s, early 70s. It is incredibly boring and meaningless, in spite of the pretence of having any meaning. We used to like contemporary art before then - Post Painterly Abstraction - Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella, etc and UK based artists Peter Blake, Alan Davie and David Hockney.
5. What style of work, if any, is of particular interest to you within this field? (for example is it embroidery, drawing, sculpture, and so on)
Any style is a good style in outsider art – we really like all the different techniques that artists invent for themselves.
6. Would you say you had a favourite artist or piece of work each within your collection? And why?
Nek Chand is my favourite artist of all time. I was so lucky to have known him well and visited his Rock Garden in Chandigarh many times. He was a complete genius as well as being an extraordinary human being. His humbleness was accentuated by his massive achievement in creating a wonder of the world. It is a tragedy and a crime that the Chandigarh Authorities are content for it to rot away since his death.
Maggie's favourite artist is Oswald Tschirtner from Gugging. His drawing is unique in outsider art and has such a powerful use of space and line. We collected some of his work.
Nek Chand path in their garden
7. Is there an exhibition in this field of art that you both feel has been particularly important? And why?
The first big outsider art show in the UK, 'Outsiders' at the Hayward in London in 1979 was stunning and broke all attendance records, even though it was brutally slammed by every single art critic as daubings of madmen etc.
Why do you think it was received so badly? The 2006 Whitechapel outsider show got a similarly bad reaction in the press too.
Britain, or England anyway, is a very hierarchical society and disabled or uneducated people are right at the bottom of the social pile and therefore their work can not be taken too seriously. We have a very snobby art world that looks down on anything that is not well known or fits a current agenda. It has always been like that from the nineteenth century and we are way behind other countries in visual awareness. You can see that by the fact that for all these years there has not been a single public space to show outsider art in the UK. Roger Cardinal's book was remaindered and has been out of print now for almost 50 years. There is not a single Madge Gill work - even a postcard - in the Tate Britain collection, not even in storage.
8. Are there any people within this field that you both feel have been particularly important to pave the way for where the field is at now?
There have been many pioneers in this field from the early photographers of environments such as Seymour Rosen and Bernard Lassus, Jacques Verroust, to the first dealers like Phyllis Kind. But of course the most important have been the writers and theorists like Jean Dubuffet, Roger Cardinal, John MacGregor and Laurent Danchin.
9. Where would you say you buy most of your work from: a studio, art fairs, exhibitions, auctions, or direct from artists?
We don't buy much work these days, but a lot of our collection did come directly from artists.
10. In the year 1996 you wrote the book ‘Raw Creation’ – how did this come about and have you got any plans for any further books?
Raw Creation was a bit of a miracle at the time. I gave a presentation with slides and photos - they had never seen things like that in those days. I was working as a school teacher and Phaidon the publisher said they liked the idea, but wanted an art historian to write it as I had never written a book. I said ok, you find one, but they couldn't because nobody knew enough about it in those days, so they came back to me. They still tried to design it like some novelty book and I had to have a battle to get it taken seriously. I got badly ripped off on the contract, so never made much from it.
L-R, Ben Wilson, Aloise Corbaz, Madge Gill, Oswald Tschirtner and Nek Chand
11. In 2014 you held an exhibition celebrating 25 years of Raw Vision magazine at the Halle Saint Pierre in Paris, which is a fantastic achievement. Can you tell us more about the magazine, it’s beginnings and where you see it going for the next 25 years! How do you think Raw Vision has survived over the years when other magazines in this field have folded?
Yes that was such a lovely exhibition to do and thanks to Martine Lusardy at Halle Saint Pierre who was able to use a whole year's budget on transporting so much work from the US that had never or hardly ever been seen in Europe before. Over 80 artists were shown in what must be the largest outsider art survey exhibition ever mounted.
The magazine was started out of my obsession with outsider art and the need to tell people about it - to show that there really was a real art, an art that wasn't commercial or superficial. Nobody knew about it at all and I just wanted to tell the world. After reading Roger Cardinal's book we went to visit the Palais Ideal and from then on every summer we went round Europe looking at different creations and collections. I was lucky because my parents were living in Switzerland, so we visited the Collection de l'Art Brut many times and I even made my own guidebook to it. One of the main reasons Raw Vision has been able to survive all these years is because of the generosity and support of wonderful people like Sam Farber, Bob Roth, Rebecca Hoffberger, Dick Rosenthal, Frank Maresca, Phyllis Kind, Audrey Heckler and Marilyn Oshman. I tried to get support from all over Europe for it, but had no luck. So I went to New York for the first time and after a few days had enough interest to keep going. Since then these great people have always helped us out and made sure we can keep going.
Ben Wilson’s ‘King and Queen’ in the garden
12. Can you tell us how you got to know Nek Chand and about the Nek Chand Foundation that you set up?
The Nek Chand Foundation was set up in 1997. Nek Chand had been on a tour of the US and when he returned he found out that the staff at the Rock Garden had been taken away in his absence and hundreds of statues had been vandalised. He had serious enemies in the corrupt Chandigarh Administration - one of the main ones was murdered by other criminals while the Chief Engineer was eventually arrested. The Nek Chand Foundation sent student volunteers to live for one month at the Rock Garden and help Nek Chand with his work. Over the years we have sent several hundred volunteers and it helped to keep Nek Chand and his creation safe as the authorities knew the world was watching and the volunteers always had press coverage. Since his death though, there has been no accommodation made available for volunteers and the Administration have gone back to their old tricks.
The Foundation was set up with Sara Burns who is an American collector living in London. She had good connections with the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, who financed its establishment as a charity and she went to Chandigarh to negotiate with the administration there. The original agreement was that there should be a sister charity to the Nek Chand Foundation to work with in Chandigarh, but it turned out it was a front for government officials.
13. A conflicted term at present, but can you tell us about your opinion of the term outsider art, how you feel about it and if there are any other words that you think we should be using instead?
The strange thing is that the term 'Outsider Art' was a suggestion of Roger Cardinal's publishers who didn't want him to use the term art brut and not even his own preferred title that I have only just found out was Raw Creation, the same as the one I chose for my own book. Roger begrudgingly accepted and gave the title 'outsider art' a mark of 6/10. It has since conquered the world and for all its faults and mis-meanings it is the best we have. There seems no point for people to keep complaining about it.
Maggie Maizels in her studio