Draft:Rudy Rotter

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Rudy Rotter (1913–2001) was an American outsider and self-taught artist residing in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Raised in Milwaukee, he moved to Manitowoc in the late 1940’s where he setup a dental practice, while at the same time being active as an artist.

Upon retiring in 1987, Rotter moved the artwork from his office basement to a large 100-year-old warehouse . As the warehouse continued to fill with art, it was transformed into the self-designated Rudy Rotter Museum of Sculpture. Rotter created over 15,000 pieces of art over 45 years.

Early Life of the Artist

Rudy Rotter grew up on the south side of Milwaukee in an Eastern European immigrant neighborhood as the youngest of six children. The family arrived at the turn of the last century moved into a Polish speaking neighborhood where they built up seven small businesses before the Crash of 1929. This allowed the children to gain an education and enter the American mainstream. Rudy and his brother Peter became all-city high school football stars; an anomaly and special distinction for Jewish kids of their time. His family experience would later become a mythic-style tale Rotter fashioned and employed as the core concept of his art work.

In the early 1950’s Rudy began exercising his creative impulses as an inventor. His most notable accomplishment was creating the first sugarless chewing gum. By 1954 Rotter had embarked on making art, a pursuit that would occupy all of his free time for the remainder of his life.

Self-taught Outsider

As a self-taught artist, Rotter worked outside of the norms and expectations of the traditional art community. Although generally aware of the history of art, he had no formal art training. Instead he relied upon his inner muse to provide the substance and style of his art. Commercial success was not a driver; rather he possessed an inner compulsion to create, which he did daily.

Although lacking in art experience, he had some exposure. Rudy modeled for his sister’s art classes while an an athlete at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1930's. In dental school he attended human anatomy classes which included dissection. This knowledge was leveraged decades later in his drawings and sculptures.

Rotter was the unusual, but not unheard of, paradox of being an educated man who created naïve self-taught art.

15,000 Works of Art and the Rudy Rotter Museum of Sculpture

Rotter believed that the practice of art required constant and diligent hard work and commitment, and from this would come meaningful art. His creation of 15,000 works of art gave him the designation as the most prolific artist in the state of Wisconsin and possibly the nation. His compulsive daily production eventually resulted the filling with art of his 21,000 sq. ft. 100-year-old warehouse. This became the Rudy Rotter Museum of Sculpture. It was said that this densely packed warehouse/museum was an art environment unto itself.

Rotter’s pieces range from large mahogany bas reliefs based on the Old-Testament, to miniature machetes of imagined temples, to dignified seven foot standing wood figures. He also created paintings (usually on found materials), and assemblages, and finally drew thousands of drawings with Japanese oil crayon, and later magic markers.

After Rudy’s passing, and a partial roof collapse, the Museum was disassembled in 2011 and the art moved to another location, before being returned in 2015 in a non-presentable disordered state.

Variety of Styles – Consistency of Theme

Rotter began sculpting at the age of 43, making human figures in clay.By the late 1970's he was sculpting teak bas reliefs from scraps provided by a local yacht builder , and also during this period making small machetes of imagined grand monuments. His eclectic style was born out of his constant drive to create and experiment, and the use of found and scavenged materials. His unusual materials included his sister's old mink coat, scrap leather, shiny trophy factory discards, wallpaper samples, thrift shop finds, and more. In his last decade he drew images directly on to photographs.

Rotter employed a variety of styles over time. Although he expressed himself intuitively without preconceived notions of what he would produce, his work had a thematic consistency. He developed a cast of “characters” that appeared often in his artwork.

Obsessive Production

Rotter had strong views on the process and philosophy of art making. To him the joy was found in the process of creating the art. The act of making was more important than the resulting finished objects. Since the act of making art was paramount, he did not self-critique his completed work. When a piece was completed it was set aside and the next piece was begun. When asked what his favorite piece was, he'd answer “The one I’m working on now.” This mode of continuous obsessive production is seen among many outsider artists.

Over the years none of his work was discarded. The art began to completely fill the warehouse, which then became his self-designated museum; the scale and content of which fascinated and awed those who visited.

Humanism as the core of his art

The basis of Rudy Rotter’s art is a humanism augmented by a dreamlike expression. Rotter’s consistently invoked the theme of the nuclear family, and more broadly, the family of man. He used simplified images to express his strong feelings of interconnectedness and the familial love and joy he recalled from his youth.  

The figures are archetypal and rendered in a side-view or frontal-view. The drawings are composed of a limited number of lines or strokes. In his later work he devised "imaginary creatures" that became added vehicles for expression of human emotions.

From Early to Late Period

Rotter's Early Period (1958-1989) sculptures and drawings most often have entwined and physically interrelating figures. The figures are generally unclothed and without cultural references to time and place. Thus they become timeless expressions of a universal humanity.

With advancing age, Rotter’s strength declined, which lead to his Late Period (1990 – 2001) work. He transitioned from hard, heavy objects to light-weight materials. These included wallpaper samples, shiny metal trophy discards, commercial tile samples, and a variety of other found objects. Also, as he became older his art became increasingly abstract and playful.

The drawings from this period are basic images strongly rendered in efficient line and color. Each work is an interplay of literal subjects, boldly crafted materials, and in abstract formats. The artistic merits are as important as the content. His last decade may have been his most innovative.

Exhibition History

Beginning in 1958, Rudy began showing in local and state-wide venues, such as libraries, the state fair, and local colleges. He also donated work to public institutions throughout the city of Manitowoc and continued to show in small venues though the 1990's. By 1978 he was in the exhibition "Grass Roots Art: Wisconsin" at the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

In 1996, Ruth Kohler worked with Rudy to acquire 100 pieces for the permanent collection of the Kohler Foundation. In 2003 his work was included in "Remembrance and Ritual: Jewish Folk Artists of Our Time" at the Andrew Edlin Gallery. In 2004, drawings on photographs were shown in "Create and Be Recognized: Photography on the Edge" at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and published in a book of the same name. In 2019, Rotter’s work was displayed at the Outsider Art Fair, in New York.

Various institutions have recently added his art work to their permanent collections. These include the Kohler Foundation, INTUIT of Chicago, Museum of Wisconsin Art, Haggerty Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin Green Bay, Rahr West Art Museum, and the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

While Rotter intermittently exhibited in small local shows, he felt that he was ignored at the level of recognition he deserved, and that his art was misunderstood by most. The Kohler Foundation acquisition near the end of his life was finally the formal validation he desired.

The Magic of Rudy's Art

The gallerist Debra Brehmer of the Portrait Society Gallery of Milwaukee, WI, succinctly sums up the experience of entering Rudy’s warehouse after his passing:

“To enter the warehouse, even in its present state, is to come in contact with a relentlessly committed spirit. Rotter believed that there was magic in the act of making things. To tap into these free forces of boundless potentiality, a realm without laws or limits, was to share in the fullest condition of humanity. The act of creating something, whether it was from a huge panel of Mahogany or some cast off metal pieces from the local trophy factory, provided an avenue of access to a spiritually infused state.

This is what unifies Rotter’s extraordinarily diverse body of work. For Rotter, it was clearly the act of making things that held the power, not necessarily the final “product” itself. Yet each piece acts a little like an icon or totem as it gently and often humorously emits material evidence of Rudy’s belief in creativity, hard-work and human intimacy. ‘Here,’ Rudy seems to be saying with each piece, ‘take this work of art and remember to value life.’”

The Current State of Rudy Rotter’s Artwork

A large portion of the artist's work remains in the same warehouse where it was created. The collection’s survival is at risk, In 2017 Rudy's son Randy was given control with the goal of highlighting and preserving the most significant works. The mission is to move the art out of the warehouse and to find an appreciative audience.

Visit the artist's information website for additional links and photos: http://rudyrotter.com.

Bibliography[edit]

·       John Michael Kohler Arts Center (1996). Rudy Rotter: Mahogany To Mink – Perspectives Series

·       Rajer, Anton (1998). Rudy Rotter's Spirit-Driven Art: The Odyssey and Evolution of an Artistic Vision | slide deck (lo res). Fine Arts Conservation. ISBN 0-9664180-0-X

·       “Rudy Rotter in His Museum,” YouTube video, duration 00:05:58ss, post by “Randy Rotter,” 08/04/2016, created in 2000 by KCPT, https://youtu.be/HniYABKi4Ys

·       Des Garennes, Christine (2002). Great Little Museums of the Midwest: Rudy Rotter’s Museum of Sculpture. ISBN-13: 978-1931599085 p. 50-51

·       Taylor, Peggy (2003). The Uncertain Legacy of Rudy Rotter | html. The Outsider magazine, INTUIT magazine. p 17-21.

·       Koplitz, Steve. Rudy Rotter – Biography, Wisconsin Museum of Art

·       Turner, John and Klochko, Deborah (2004), Create and Be Recognized, Photography on the Edge. Intro by Roger Cardinal. ISBN 0-8118-4432-3 p 90-93

·       “Rudy Rotter’s 17,000 works of art”. YouTube video, duration 00:02:38ss, post by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Mary Louis Schumacher), created 12-20-2016, https://youtu.be/HMFvcZOnnwY

·       Andrew Edlin Gallery (2003): Remembrance and Ritual: Jewish Folk Artists of Our Time, New York, NY

·       Fine, Gary Allan (2004), Everyday Genius - Self-taught Art and the Culture of Authenticity. Univ. of Chicago Press, ISBN-13: 978-0226249513 pp. 116, 119, 263

·       Krug, Don, Ann Parker, Roger Cardinal (2005). Miracle of the Spirit | html. ISBN 9781578067534. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p 53-61

·       Sellen, Betty-Carol (2016). Self Taught, Outsider, and Folk Art – 2016.  A Guide to American Artists, Locations and Resources. McFarland. ISBN-13: 978-0786475858

·       Rotter, Randy (2018). A Warehouse Full of Dreams. The Folk Art Messenger, Fall/Winter 2018. ISSN 1043-5026. p 8-11

External links[edit]

·       Web: http://rudyrotter.com

·       CV: http://rudyrotterart.com/documents/rudyrotterexhibitions.pdf

·       Kohler Foundation: http://www.kohlerfoundation.org/preservation/major-collections/rudy-rotter/

·       Essay: Portrait Society Gallery: Rudy Rotter

·       Article: The Outsider Complex Jewish Folk Artists Of Our Time, by Richard McBee – 2003

·       Article: Rudy Rotter - Biography, Museum of Wisconsin Art by Steve Koplitz

·       Article: Spiritual in the Material -- Inside Rudy’s Warehouse by David Luhrssen | Shepherd Express -- 2008

·       Article: UW-Manitowoc Gallery Features Rotter works – HTR Media – 2015

·      Essay: Who was Rudy Rotter, by Randy Rotter - 2018

·       Essay: Rudy Rotter’s Last Decade – Let the Joy Come In!, by Randy Rotter – 2018

·       Article: Folk Art Messenger: Rudy Rotter - A Warehouse Full of Dreams | txt only, by Randy Rotter, Folk Art Society of America - 2018

·       Essay: The Expertise of Rudy Rotter from Early to Late Period, by Randy Rotter – 2019

References[edit]