A consummate collector, Anthony Petullo often takes time out of his busy schedule to contemplate the trove of artwork that paints the walls of his home, offices and the nonprofit learning center where he houses his collection. And, like the artists of which he is so enamored, one recurring theme perpetually defines Petullo’s art experience; the similarities he notes between himself and the outsider and self-taught artists †and the differences they mutually share with the academic art world.
“I am a lot like them,” exclaims Petullo with regard to his favorite artists. “Sometimes I can be a little crazy like some of them. I come up with some wild ideas. Sometimes those ideas work. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I get a feeling and I just run with it.”
And run he does.
In just three short years, after executing what the collector considers his first “true” art acquisition, Petullo had amassed more than 150 paintings by the most recognized and desirable outsider, self-taught, Gugging, nonacademic and naïve artists to have worked in the Twentieth Century. His collection had become the subject of a single-owner exhibition that toured the country, making stops at six different major museums, and he has since loaned works of art to numerous other shows and exhibitions as well.
Today, the author, co-author or merely the subject of three books, one that has sold out twice, the collector is taking time to breathe it all in.
Petullo terms himself a “self taught” †he has never participated in any art history courses while in college, been exposed to antiques or art or had any conventional artistic training. An entrepreneur for 30 years, Petullo was afforded a glimpse of the art world early on in his career working as a marketing man for Mobil, perhaps unknowingly laying the foundation for his later appreciation of art.
Years later, as a successful businessman in Milwaukee, Petullo was asked by a friend to volunteer at the local Lakefront Arts Festival, an art show sponsored by the Milwaukee Art Museum. It was there that he purchased his first piece of “art,” a nondescript painting by a “Sunday artist” that exhibited what he considered at the time to be desirable folk art qualities.
“That was it, I got hooked and started collecting ‘faux folk art,'” said Petullo with a chuckle. “One thing led to another and I started furnishing the house and then furnished all of my offices. My staff worked in sort of a mini museum,” commented the collector.
Petullo’s first exposure to nonacademic artworks came in 1989 while visiting London. It was there that he came under the influence of Monica Kinley, who housed an outsider archive, now the Musgrave-Kinley collection on loan to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. At the same time, he was also exposed to Professor Rodger Cardinal, now retired from the University of Kent at Canterbury, and his 1972 book Cultural Conditioning , one of the early books documenting outsider artists.
Questioning his then-current collecting direction and feeling a growing desire and internal calling, Petullo returned home with a fire burning from within. Soon after, the mystified collector received a phone call from Alex Gerrard, a dealer in London, who had taken Petullo under his wing. “Did you see the little mule in The New York Times, ” queried Gerrard, referring to a classic image by Bill Traylor titled “Brown Mule” that was featured on the cover of the January 1990 Sotheby’s Americana catalog.
“I suggest you buy it,” advised Gerrard.
Petullo took the dealer’s advice to heart. Unable to attend the sale or bid by telephone, he placed an absentee bid with the auction house, well above estimates, and claimed the lot for just under $19,000. The same week he also purchased an oil on paper by British outsider Alfred Wallis, titled “Schooners.”
Those two purchases marked a critical turning point in Petullo’s collecting habits and each would prove to ultimately become a cornerstone of the collection.
With a taste for quality materials established, the collector went on a binge. “That marked the point when I started buying really good work, the best of the ‘self taughts,'” he said. Fanning the flames and exhibiting traits often displayed by artists of the genre, Petullo began obsessively and compulsively amassing paintings at an alarming rate, 150 paintings in as many weeks, often acquiring large blocks of works by individual artists.
Three years later, Petullo came under the eye of Russell Bowman and Margaret Andera, curators at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and 95 paintings were selected from his collection to become the subject of the exhibition titled “Driven to Create: The Anthony Petullo Collection of Self-Taught & Outsider Art.” The exhibition opened at the Museum of American Folk Art in 1993 and later traveled to the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Akron Art Museum, the Arkansas Art Museum and the Tampa Art Museum.
Pieces from Petullo’s collection have also been included in numerous other exhibitions and loans, including the landmark Martin Ramirez exhibition that opened at the Museum of American Folk Art and recently closed in Milwaukee.
Now comprising more than 600 paintings, Petullo’s young but mature collection is more European in nature than American. “Two thirds of the art I own is European, and that is what makes it unique,” stated Petullo, who now defines it as a “fun collection, intended to be uplifting, curious and inventive.”
Although he entered the marketplace at a time when outsider art was just beginning to come into its own, the collector quickly discovered that neither he nor his fellow collectors were the first to discover the genre. Believed to have been the first to formally recognize the stylistic tendencies of the outsider was German doctor Hans Prinzhorn, who collected thousands of artworks by psychiatric patients and in 1922 published them in his book Bildernerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill).
Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee and Jean Dubuffet and other Modernists of the day studied the works and often formed collections of their own. One artist who was particularly affected by the works Prinzhorn presented was Dubuffet. Together with other Modernist artists of the period, including Andre Breton, he formed the Compagnie de l’Art Brut in 1948 and began to collect works that reflected individuality and inventiveness of untrained artists. He sought out artists so far outside the cultured art world, they had little to no understanding of art other than what they personally created.
Dubuffet coined the phrase art brut †French for raw art †and compiled a vast collection of thousands of works that was eventually granted a permanent home in Lausanne, Switzerland, at Collection de l’Art Brut in Château de Beaulieu, now regarded as the premier art museum devoted to the genre.
Dubuffet’s characterization of the outsider is still regarded by many advanced collectors and curators as definitive: a “work produced by people immune to artistic culture in which there is little or no trace of mimicry.”
“Broadly speaking,” explained Petullo, “this definition applies to many of the ‘untouched’ artists in my collection.”
Among mainstream collecting, however, the “terminology surrounding the outsider is highly controversial.” Terms such as “folk, primitive, naïve, visionary, spiritual, untutored, art brut and outsider” are all too often used. “So I simply call my collection ‘self taught,'” he said.
The Petullo collection is best known for the extensive assortment of European and American self-taught works, with a special emphasis placed on artists from the United Kingdom, such as Scottie Wilson, Alfred Wallis, James Dixon, Madge Gill and James Lloyd. “I don’t know anyone else in America that has a James Lloyd, and I probably have 15 of them,” said Petullo of the artist whose miniexhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum recently closed. “He is a very naïve guy that works in a Pointillist style. He got the idea by looking at magazines with a magnifying glass and noticing all of the dots that made up the illustrations. He just figured that is how you create fine art.”
There is also a strong emphasis on the work of European self-taught artists, including Adolf Wolfli, JoHann Fischer, Josef Karl Radler, August Walla and artists from the Gugging psychiatric hospital near Vienna. “Of course, it is a very subjective collection,” he said, “featuring only those things that appeal to me.”
A standout is Radler, institutionalized in 1893, whose double-sided watercolors usually depict portraits of fellow patients partaking in various activities in and around the hospital. The backgrounds and edges are generally covered with script, more often than not descriptive revelations addressing other patients. He often signed his artwork “The Laughing Philosopher,” believing himself to be both a great thinker and a great artist. After his death, piles of his watercolors were discarded by the hospital staff, only to be discovered by the husband of one of the nurses and salvaged.
Approximately one-third of the Petullo collection comprises American works and included are some of the most renowned artists in the field, such as Bill Traylor, Henry Darger, Minnie Evans and Justin McCarthy. The absence of many artists that mainstream outside collectors covet is noted in the collection. “A lot of them just don’t appeal to me,” stated Petullo, “I am an imagist. I see the image †if it strikes me, I buy it. It comes from the heart.”
A significant portion of the collection is housed in the city’s historic Third Ward, in a spacious refurbished factory that Petullo has transformed into a nonprofit study center and gallery devoted to the genre. It is open to groups that want to view and discuss the art, and to student educational groups. Students from New York, Florida and California have viewed the collection.
Speaking from his home, Petullo, a trustee for the Milwaukee Museum of Art for the past 14 years, described the paintings that currently blanket the walls of his office: “I’m surrounded by art, literally.” Bill Traylor’s “Blue Man” is a favorite. “There is an Albert Loudon pastel and ‘Four Bathing Beauties’ by McCarthy is right in front of me. There is a Morris Hirschfield, a Sylvia Levine, two Scottie Wilsons, Albert Lauden’s flowerpot, a Patrick Hamen oil, and right in the middle of all of them,” he said with an audible pause, “there is a John Sloan watercolor.”
“If the collector truly loves the art, and has not succumbed to the pressure from other people,” said Petullo, “then the collection will most likely be a fairly accurate reflection of the collector’s personality.” Anthony Petullo’s collection is obviously one that comes from his heart. And, it is anything but ordinary.
The Anthony Petullo Collection of Self-Taught and Outsider Art is at 219 North Milwaukee Street, Third Floor. For information, 414-272-2525 or www.petulloartcollection.org .
