Artists as Outlaws
Artist as Outlaw Day is annually celebrated on January 19. It’s a day to celebrate the subversive artists, the people who challenge the status quo and speak truth to power even when the going is tough. There are also the artists whose works are known to challenge the way society functions and demand something different. It’s these artists and their works that we celebrate on Artist as Outlaw Day.
Jean Michel Basquiat
His street art alias SAMO was shorthand for "same old shit", and his canvases of choice were the buildings of Lower Manhattan. In December 1978, notable NYC news and culture paper, The Village Voice, published an article about the "hundreds of pithy SAMO aphorisms splashed on choice spots in Soho, Noho, and the Village, East and West", revealing the "two sharp, personable teenagers" behind the work. Basquiat and Al Diaz revealed their identities and spoke openly about SAMO for the first time. Instead of randomly tagging buildings with inane phrases, Basquiat had something to say. And the conscious placement of the work in the art district was also a statement: the work of SAMO wasn't just 'graffiti'; it was street art. By 1980, Basquiat and SAMO collaborator Al Diaz had parted ways, and Basquiat subsequently started painting.
William Burroughs
Burroughs’s ragged masterpiece, Naked Lunch, brought to social notice themes of drug use, homosexuality, hyperbolic violence, and anti-authoritarian paranoia.
Banksy
With the social and political commentary in his work, Banksy embodies the artist as an outlaw.
Jack Kerouac
Kerouac’s embrace of the social bandit can be seen as a political gesture away from the dichotomy of the conservative capitalist against the revolutionary communist, helping to open the political space of the outlaw rebel.
Salvador Dali
To the dismay of those who held his work in high regard, and to the irritation of his critics, his eccentric and ostentatious public behavior often drew more attention than his artwork. Influenced by his reading of Freud, Dalí increasingly introduced suggestive sexual imagery and symbolism into his work. He submitted Dialogue on the Beach (Unsatisfied Desires) (1928) to the Barcelona Autumn Salon for 1928 but the work was rejected because "it was not fit to be exhibited in any gallery habitually visited by the numerous public little prepared for certain surprises."
Why We Love Artist as Outlaw Day:
Artists deserve to be celebrated
Artists see the world differently. They encourage us to imagine a different kind of world with different laws.
We love thought-provoking art
Artists who live as outlaws are the ones who challenge us to think outside the box. They actually live outside the boxes society puts us all in.Rebellious art brings change
The world is filled with many different issues today. It’s the rebels who encourage everyone to put pressure on the people in power and bring about the necessary changes.
