With something as emotionally infused as artwork, especially child art, an exhibit of works by autistic children is extraordinary; it is art serving as a creative outlet for those who are emotionally blocked. Autism, while still essentially a mystery, is on the rise, with current Department of Health and Human Services statistics showing that up to one in every 166 births yield children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
At the Slater Concourse Gallery in the Aidekman Arts Center, Cheryle Lee, a member of the Tufts Administration and mother of an autistic child, has organized "Opening the Doors: Art and Autism," an exhibit in collaboration with the Boston Higashi School.
On display until Dec. 17 are a variety of works by students at the school, which offers both day and residential programs for children and adults between the ages of three and 22. While the exhibit is a part of the Tufts University Art Gallery, it is a space open to the Tufts community, allowing anyone affiliated with Tufts to work with the gallery and curate an exhibit.
While the works are beautiful - sometimes intricate and evocative, sometimes portraying the sheer simplicity many adults envy in child artwork - there is an anonymity to the artists that takes away from their meaning. Labels only denote the names of the students, not their age, or any form of a short biography, which makes the work hard to understand, ripping it from its context.
It's difficult to give child art a context in the first place, of course, as there is a lack of intent, an undeniable separation from the lessons of art history, yet in viewing these children not just as "outsider artists," but as persons diagnosed with a serious, puzzling disorder, we must know more about them if we are to understand them.
Just as we enter a Van Gogh retrospective with the need for a mental biography - even a few key facts to understand his art - these artists are worthy of their own explanations. Why did Jonathan Govinden, whose astonishing depiction of a storybook-like skyscraper with hundreds of tiny windows, colored magnificently with comfort and control, choose to draw what he did? Who is he? What was his process? What would he say about his work? Questions entangle these small masterpieces until they are distant and unreadable.
The works have been loosely organized by subject, with a part of the wall devoted to animals, part to food items and part to the more abstract pieces, and the viewer must wonder why these particular works were chosen. In Christopher McClendon's painting of a banana, the colors are emotionally charged, and the blue shadow and green shading make a convincing case for a child with a fine understanding of color scheme.
The faces in other works smile widely; there is a keen sense of observation but also an inkling of the hand of the teacher, the prodding or guidance of a school project like, "Draw your favorite animal" or "What does a race look like?"
In an exhibit of work by autistic children, the question is raised as to the motive: Is it to show that this art is like any other child's art, to show the success rate of the Higashi School's practices, or to peer curiously into the mind and emotional capabilities of an autistic child?
Perhaps the works would be more accessible, presenting more opportunities for conjecture, if there were a series of works from each child, but instead, these were narrowly chosen. While brilliant in most cases, such as Michael Howard, Jr.'s delicately vibrating circles, and Hayato Maki's unidentifiable bead-like spheres which float off the page, drawn with the hard force of a fist, their beauty cannot be traced back to the artist's identity and show no evidence of an autistic character.
There has long since been a raging debate as to the value of art when the artist isn't aware of the world of art history, an issue raised when De Kooning was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, making his late works incredibly controversial. Similarly, children are classically free of the philosophy of aesthetics, the intellectual nonsense of historians and critics, but it is unclear if these children were prompted or if this is the product of simply being given a piece of paper and a pencil. These children are in a vacuum, and in an even tighter one considering the obstacles they face mentally.
Despite the inspiration factor and the purely aesthetic enjoyment viewers can gain from the exhibit, it's difficult to see the evidence of autism, whether it has been screened out by curators or taught out by the regimentation of the Higashi School.
No doubt, child art has its own unique significance - artists like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky are known primarily for their child-like innocence, always striving to make their way back to that stripped-away, frameless mode of thinking that precedes full consciousness and prejudice.
The unpolluted sweetness of Higashi student Jack Walker's amorphous shapes is enough for the eye to bask in but leaves the mind searching aimlessly for cause and effect, for a medical comprehension of the autistic mind's experience.
Opening the Doors: Autism and Art
At the Slater Concourse Gallery, through Dec. 17Aidekman Arts Center, Tufts University617-627-3518
