Details

Title

The Taxonomy They Feel for One Another

Artist/Maker

J. J. Cromer (American, born 1967)

Date

2007

Medium

Mixed media on paper

Dimensions

30 x 44 inches

Credit

Gift of Grey Carter and Linda Ortega

Accession #

2010.170

On View

Currently not on view

J. J. Cromer exemplifies an emerging group of unconventional artists with little or no formal training in visual art. However, they have more knowledge about the art market than their predecessors who occupied the boundaries of the field of “outsider” or self-taught art. Cromer’s drawings and watercolors are intricate and often operate simultaneously on both a diminutive and a grand scale. In this work, which addresses Cromer’s concerns about environmental destruction, the artist has worked his bold colors into a monochromatic matrix of rhythmic forms that are often repetitive but never static. He juxtaposes the hippo’s bulk with the detritus of tiny polymorphs at his feet, while collaged images draw one’s eye away from the surrounding abstractions into their tiny, alternate-reality universe.