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The Heart of Creation: The Art of Martin Ramirez  by Elsa Weiner Longhauser |
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He is a Mexican, about sixty-eight years old, who is classified as a chronic paranoid schizophrenic and considered incurable, having been institutionalized for over twenty years. His art activity dates back about six years. He is slight of build, greatly underweight, a former tuberculous patient who spends his time on his art. He does not speak to anyone but hums in a singsong way when pleased with his visitors. Conversation as an exchange of ideas is impossible. His manner of work is unique. When good paper is not available, he glues together scraps of paper, old envelopes, paper bags, paper cups, wrappers- anything that may have a clear drawing area. He often makes many small background studies, seashell and nature forms, which he stores in his shirt, in a paper shopping bag, in tied rolls, or behind a radiator, suddenly to be taken out and glued to an evolving picture. He fashions his own glue out of mashed potatoes and water—sometimes bread and saliva. He squats on his haunches, moving about the floor between two cots, using, stubs of colored pencils and Crayolas, drawing a little here, a little there. His drawing is kept rolled up and usually only a portion of it is exposed at any one time. He has recently shown considerable pleasure with groups of student visitors, to whom he displays his work with obvious pride. Written by Dr. Tarmo Fasto for the Public Relations Department of Stanford Research Institute Stanford, California, July 1954 I was first introduced to the work of Martin Ramirez in 1979 by Phyllis Kind in her New York gallery, and at once I was deeply moved and enthralled by its strange and poignant beauty. Art created by people whose lives have isolated them from art education, art criticism-from society even-has always fascinated me. What I find so remarkable is the expressive power that blends almost inexplicably with an innate understanding of formal elements and techniques to produce authentic and lasting works of art. “Transmitters: The Isolate Artist in America,” which I organized for the gallery of the Philadelphia College of Art in 1981 represented the paintings, drawings, and sculpture of twenty-one twentieth-century isolates. Four Ramirez drawings were included. and during the preparation of the show it became clear to me that the extraordinary achievement of this artist must one day be explored in a large-scale solo exhibition. Thanks to Phyllis Kind, I was introduced to a network of experts who, with enthusiasm, intelligence, and passion, search for, collect, support, and protect the work of folk and isolate artists. The existence of this network has made it possible to bring together sixty-one major works as “The Heart of Creation: The Art of Martin Ramirez.” What little we know of Ramirez has been pieced together from disparate sources in an attempt to reconstruct a life that, for the most part, remains a mystery. It was Dr. Tarmo Pasto, an artist and psychologist, who was responsible for discovering, encouraging, and, initially, collecting the work of Martin Ramirez. The art of the insane was of particular interest to Dr. Pasto, and he was instrumental in initiating a number of Bay Area exhibitions on the subject. Although alive today, he is gravely ill and unable to participate in this project, but we are in his debt for what information we do have about Ramirez. Pasto first met Ramirez at DeWitt State Hospital in Aubum, California. As a teacher of abnormal psychology at nearby Sacramento State University, Pasto arranged for the hospital staff to give a lecture-demonstration to his class; reading about abnormal psychology was one thing, but he believed his students could learn much more from firsthand observation of the inmates. During one of the sessions, a patient sitting in the audience removed a roll of drawings he had carefully hidden inside his shirt and silently slipped it to Pasto. After looking over the drawings, Pasto asked the clinical director if he might keep them; he also asked if he might visit the ward where the man lived and be introduced to him. When they met, Pasto discovered that Ramirez had accomplished his work with only the stub of a lead pencil—the kind that the ward dispensed to each patient. When Pasto came again, he brought Ramirez a box of colored pencils and encouraged him to keep on drawing. Up to this time, patient drawings were confiscated and burned at the end of each day, as the personnel were instructed to keep the ward clean. To prevent his drawings from being destroyed, Ramirez hid them under his mattress or inside his clothing. Pasto felt that proper art materials might enable Ramirez to develop his talents, as well as being the means of beneficial art therapy, and so he provided them. He became a regular, even daily, visitor, and for a time collected all the work that Ramirez produced. As word of the artist’s abilities began to spread, though, hospital staff members encouraged Ramirez to give them each a completed picture. Pasto’s interest led him to find out more about Ramirez, and it is from his notes that the only extant biography emerges.
Martin Ramirez was born in Jalisco, Mexico, on March 31, 1885. He worked as a laundryman. Being half-starved, he crossed the border into the U.S.A. in the hope of finding employment that would pay him so he could eat and send money back home. He was a frail man, weighing only about a hundred pounds, and about five feet, two inches tall.
He soon found that in America his life was so different from his life in Mexico that he became bewildered. The cultural shock was too much for him. He became disoriented, delusional, and had hallucinations, exhibiting all the characteristics of a schizophrenic. He was working on the railroad as a section hand, but the work became too demanding for his physical energies. He was picked up by the Los Angeles authorities in Pershing Square, where all the misfits, the drunks, the disturbed and other hopeless men, who had given up trying to make a go of, it went. He was placed in an institution in the Los Angeles area, where he was classified as a catatonic. That was in 1930. After seven months, Ramirez was transferred to Auburn, California, where he remained until his death in 1960. In the fall of 1968, Chicago artist Jim Nutt, who was teaching and running the art gallery at Sacramento State College, came across storage bins in the audio-visual department that contained thirty-by-forty-inch reproductions of art historical monuments. There, among the Fra Angelicos, Bosches, and Brueghels, was a group of actual drawings made by inmates of psychiatric hospitals. Fascinated by the Ramirez drawings in particular, Nutt learned they belonged to Tarmo Pasto, who used them as visual aids in his abnormal psychology class. Nutt’s interest resulted in an invitation to Pasto’s home, where he had the opportunity to view the entire body of Ramirez’s work. One year later, with Pasto’s help, he mounted a Ramirez exhibition at the college. In 1971, Pasto wanted to sell his Ramirez collection. He approached Nutt, who, in turn, contacted Phyllis Kind, his gallery dealer; together, they purchased the entire collection of approximately three hundred drawings. The ones already mounted on linen, Kind was able to exhibit immediately in her Chicago gallery; the remainder, in dire need of restoration, Kind undertook to conserve and frame. By introducing important collectors and curators to this work, by writing articles and lecturing, Phyllis Kind more than anyone has been responsible for elevating Martin Ramirez to his rightful place in twentieth-century art. At present, Jim Nutt and his wife, Chicago artist Gladys Nilsson, possess the largest Martin Ramirez collection. Over the years, they have deacidified and restored many of the drawings (some are so fragile, mere handling causes pieces to shred and fall away). For the most part, this private collection has never been seen publicly. A small selection was made available for “Outsiders,” a 1979 London exhibition, organized by the Arts Council of Great Britain. Otherwise, the works remain relatively unknown. Nutt and Nilsson are busy, highly successful artists, and yet, in their personal commitment to this exhibition, they have taken time from their own work to sift through the many drawings with me. Their desire to bring Ramirez into public focus has made them valuable allies in the curatorial process. This is the first time that such a large and comprehensive group of Ramirez’s drawings has been assembled for exhibition. Ranging in size from two inches to nine feet, the subjects fall into several categories. In making our selection, we wished to acknowledge the breadth of the oeuvre. That Martin Ramirez, a mute patient in a mental hospital diagnosed “paranoid schizophrenic, deteriorated,” was able to create this monumental body of work is a testament to the urgent power behind the creative drive—a power that, no matter how disadvantageous or restrictive the circumstances, will find a way to fulfill its inner vision. The eccentric view of life and history—often one’s personal history, played out in the guise of symbols—has inspired a bold and courageous expressiveness from the beginning of recorded art. When the artist is telling his own story, at some point his story becomes the story of man and, in turn, the story of all men. Martin Ramirez shows us, even when his artist’s tools are meager, that a commonality of spirit and language can exist and flourish and, in the hands of a born artist, soar. His need to work, and his need to protect that work from destruction, came from a very basic drive: he was an artist, and he wanted his work to be seen, enjoyed, appreciated. His eagerness to share with anyone who showed an interest may have been second only to his need to produce. Art, even when coming from the seemingly insane, is a gift to the world, and this is something that Martin Ramirez knew in the very heart of his creation.
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