One Fine Show: “The Lost World, The Art of Minnie Evans” at the High
Welcome to One Fine Show, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum not in New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.
Lately, there’s been a vogue for art made without the influence of the art school-gallery-museum industrial complex. These days, such art is usually referred to as “folk art” and “self-taught art,” but they used to call it “outsider art”—a term that wouldn’t work in an art world that now seeks to be as inclusive as possible. The new language also aligns more closely with what people like about these artists. Their skills were forged outside of MFA programs, sure, but people are most attracted to the idea that this allowed them to be more in touch with themselves and the broader traditions of humanity. No matter what you call it, there’s always some subtle self-flattery there, too. Most people looking at this kind of work also haven’t received formal training, and no doubt many of them assume that if they were to pick up a brush, they might be able to make something just as good.
Though she was self-taught, Minnie Evans (1892-1987) cast off the outsider label in her lifetime. Her work is the subject of “The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans,” an exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta that collects more than 100 of her wild drawings from when she first started making art in the 1930s through to the end of her life. This major show brings together pieces from institutions and private collections, including that of Wendy Williams, who “owns the largest and most wide-ranging collection of Evans’s work in public or private hands,” according to the catalogue.
In 1975, Evans was one of the first Black artists to have a solo show at the Whitney, which led to widespread acclaim for the last decade of her life, but like other folk artists she worked for the most part in obscurity. Most of her work was done in crayon, which gives it an immediate intensity in color and texture, though it’s not naive or childlike in appearance at all. Rife with flowers, faces and supernatural beings, the works more resemble the work of someone who has just had a vision and needs to get it down right away, with the crayon being the only available tool to hand.
Evans did have visions—dreams so powerful that she couldn’t sleep at night. She became serious about art after the death of her grandmother in 1935, who saw the mythic elements in these night visitations where others dismissed them. It might be that she threw herself into art to keep thinking of them positively. Untitled (Angels, Centaur, Devil, and Janus Form) (c. 1970) depicts just what the title suggests, which might seem cluttered, ominous or overwhelming given the subject matter. In fact, between the colors and styling, these figures all feel totally beneficent. Most of them are smiling.
These come from no particular religion or discipline. Temple by the Sea (1955), a phenomenal oil work of geometric magic, explores her connections to Trinidad but alludes to a Hindu temple constructed there during her lifetime. The mandala wasn’t an influence but doesn’t weigh heavily on her. The spirituality in her drawings of flowers recalls that killer Hilma af Klint show at the Museum of Modern Art over the summer, but she feels none of the same need to be scientific. This impressive show should be no less popular when it arrives in New York this summer.
“The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans” is on view at the High Museum of Art through April 19, 2026. The exhibition will then travel to the Whitney in New York.
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