The Philadelphia Wireman is the working name given to an unknown outsider artist responsible for approximately 1,200 small-scale wire-frame

sculptures Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

that were found by a passerby, abandoned on a street outside a transient home in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

in 1982. The artist is assumed to have access to the tools required to bend some of the heavy-gauge wire in the sculptures; it is hypothesised that the sculptures were abandoned after their creator's death. Nothing is known about the artist's motives. Many of the pieces resemble African art, and this plus the demographics of the neighborhood where the art collection was found have led some reviewers to speculate that the artist was

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

. In 1999, according to the Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, a gallery visitor correctly identified the street that the art was found on, and confirmed that he had seen an elderly black man making these sculptures circa 1970, but beyond that the artist has never been identified.

Composition of collection

The passerby, Robert Leitch, gave the work to the Fleisher-Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia, which currently holds some of the work. Nearly all the works are wire-bound bundles, except a few abstract marker drawings reminiscent both of

Mark Tobey Mark George Tobey (December 11, 1890 – April 24, 1976) was an American painter. His densely structured compositions, inspired by Asian calligraphy, resemble Abstract expressionism, although the motives for his compositions differ philosophi ...

and J.B. Murry. The artist tightly wound wire around objects including plastic, packaging, nuts, bolts, newspaper/magazine cutouts, electrical parts, batteries, coins and other items. Some bundles used rubber bands or tape to bind the objects together. Based on internal evidence, the collection has been dated to around 1970.

Exhibitions

The collection was first exhibited in 1985 at the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery. They have since been shown in venues including the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the San Jose Museum of Art; the Musée d’Art Brut, Lausanne; the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts; the Museum for African Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and the American Folk Art Museum, New York.

Motivations

The artist's unusual, possibly monomaniacal devotion to the particular demands of his chosen form has led to comparisons with artist Henry Darger. Exhibitors of the artwork frequently compare its construction process to that of Native American

medicine bundle Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...

s or African tribal fetish objects. One art historian has critiqued this tendency to attribute religious or psychological motivations to an unknown artist, writing that "fixations with alterity, especially through the narrating of oddities and difference, have long overshadowed utsiderartworks and in many cases, the artist’s voice."Porter, Trista Reis. "Resisting Canonicity: Translating Tradition, Community, and Voice in the Work of Three Artists." Diss. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2018. p.120.

References

Citations

Sources

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External links

Fleisher-Ollman Gallery

Wireman Comics

Dean Jensen Gallery
{{Authority control Outsider artists Artists from Philadelphia Anonymous artists Unidentified American people Year of birth unknown Culture of Philadelphia