LAMBERTVILLE, NJ.- On Saturday, December 1, Rago Auctions hosts Curiouser and Curiouser: Fine and Outsider Art. Exceptional Objects.

Curiouser and Curiouser: Saturday, December 1 at 10:00 a.m., 371 lots
Rago’s Curiouser and Curiouser auction is filled with beautiful, intriguing and remarkable objects, as well as significant discoveries.

The most important of these discoveries is a major find in the American folk art field: the forty-three inch high figure of a young boy (lot 1124), exceptionally carved and painted with great sensitivity, purchased over 20 years ago in the Buffalo, New York area. Hitherto unidentified, only attributed as of production of the print auction catalog, this sculpture, ca 1840, has now been confirmed as the work of Asa Ames (1823-1851). Relatively unknown until the American Folk Art Museum’s 2008 exhibit Asa Ames: Occupation Sculpturing, today Ames is an icon in the folk art field. Despite the acclaim and publicity that followed this exhibition, no other works by Ames have surfaced until now. It is fitting that the curator of Asa Ames: Occupation Sculpturing has examined and authenticated this figure. We are grateful for her scholarship and expertise.

A few of the many outsider artists presented in the sale are Morton Bartlett, Vestie Davis, Lonnie Holley, William Kent, the Philadelphia Wireman, Royal Robertson, Daniel E. (Don) Rohrig (a Rago discovery), Jon Serl, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Mose Tolliver, and a particularly fine selection of work from Purvis Young, including a number of his books. The fine art selected by Marion Harris, specialist-in-charge, and Miriam Tucker, Rago’s partner-in-charge, includes work from, among others, Jon Brooks, Harrison Cady, Robert Winthrop Chanler, Huang Guang, Sergei Isupov, Alan Macdonald, Mu Jun, Judith Schaechter, Maurice Sendak, and Newbold Trotter. The rarity here is probably the six original panels from the first underground comix story penned by Joe Coleman.

Notably, the sale brings to market seven automatons and the selection of articulated artist mannequins for which Curiouser and Curiouser is known, with palm-size to life-size human figures, as well as a handsome articulated horse. Other highlights include: a monumental and graphic American folk art fan embroidered with political, encrypted messages and four enormous mid-century American woodblocks used to print broadside circus posters. There is other carnival, circus and sideshow art, along with medical, scientific and botanical items; advertising art; propaganda art; erotica and more.

"Collecting has always been part of human culture, spanning centuries and geography while ranging in purpose from pleasure or profit to posterity. I am delighted to be part of Rago's Curiouser and Curiouser auction featuring fine and outsider art and exceptional objects. Always interested in the hunt and discovery, I am particularly pleased to present a hitherto unidentified folk art figure by Asa Ames along with group of illustrative paintings with a Japanese theme (lots 1056-1061). Undiscovered and unseen for the last 50 years, they offer an insight into the obsession of self-taught artist Daniel Rohrig." - Marion Harris; Specialist-In-Charge, Curiouser and Curiouser

"Major institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have all presented major exhibitions of outsider art this year, featuring once unknown and now iconic artists such as Morton Bartlett, Lonnie Holley and Purvis Young – all of whom we are also pleased to offer in this sale." - Miriam Tucker; Rago Partner-in-Charge, Curiouser and Curiouser