Black Mountain Misfits

Library

People and works, so far

This grows one entry at a time, honestly. There is no attempt here to look like a complete archive — only the people this site has actually written about.

People

  • Agnes Martin1912–2004 · PaintingA hand-drawn grid at the scale of a standing body.
  • Atsuko Tanaka1932–2005 · Painting, performanceWore two hundred bulbs, then painted the wiring for fifty years.
  • Chalk portrait of Charlotte Brontë by George Richmond, 1850.
    Charlotte Brontë1816–1855 · FictionCatalogued a room until it became a sentence about belonging.George Richmond, 1850, National Portrait Gallery, London. Public domain.
  • Portrait of Chiharu Shiota.
    Chiharu Shiotab. 1972 · InstallationRooms of thread holding objects that belonged to strangers.Photo: John-240, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
  • Eva Hesse1936–1970 · SculptureNineteen attempts at one form, in materials that agree to age.
  • Gertrude Stein photographed against an American flag backdrop, January 1935.
    Gertrude Stein1874–1946 · Poetry, proseSaid the noun four times so it would come loose.Photo: Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress. Public domain.
  • Louise Bourgeois photographed in New York, 1996.
    Louise Bourgeois1911–2010 · Sculpture, installation, drawingRooms built from salvaged doors, which protect and trap with one wall.Photo: Oliver Mark, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
  • Ruth Asawa1926–2013 · Sculpture, arts educationOne looped wire, until the boundary and the opening are the same act.
  • Yayoi Kusama photographed in Copenhagen, 2015.
    Yayoi Kusamab. 1929 · Painting, sculpture, installationRepetition used until the self loses its edge.Photo: Susanne Nilsson, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Themes

  • RepetitionRitual, obsession, labour, pattern, survival. The same mark made until it stops being a mark and becomes a condition.
  • Enclosurenot yet a threadRooms, bodies, domestic space, cages, containers. Architecture that protects and confines with the same wall.
  • Erasurenot yet a threadDisappearance, silence, anonymity, removal, self-invention. What is taken out, and what the removal leaves behind.
  • Interioritynot yet a threadPrivate worlds, thought, memory, psychological space. The room inside the person.
  • Material memorynot yet a threadCloth, wire, paper, thread, dust, handwriting, found objects. Matter that has held a life and shows it.
  • Misfit knowledgenot yet a threadLearning outside institutions and across disciplines. What you find when nobody assigns you a lane.
  • Quiet systemsnot yet a threadStructures that steady rather than overwhelm. Form used as ballast instead of as a trap.
  • The door inside the trapnot yet a threadWork that transforms confinement without pretending it never happened. Not escape. Conversion.