From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 01/08/03-04:24:31 PM Z
The term outsider art was adopted when the brilliance of certain artists
working privately, out of the commerical mainstream, in very individual
ways of their own contrivance, accrued a certain mass.
That is, Grandma Moses was an icon, and what was his name -- Hirschfeld I
think (not the one who does theatre cartoons, the other, earlier dead one)
was quite well known, but then, perhaps as people lived longer, or the
economy provided a tiny bit of wiggle room -- or simply as we got more
dealers, and art press, and museums (after all the "folk" museum in NYC,
which had Darger show among others, is maybe only 30 years old) and
people realized the work could be sold, it acquired this umbrella term .
There was also the fact that while this "Outsider" concept was blossoming,
the "mainstream" of art, as directed by Clement Greenberg's formalism,
"inevitable progression," etc., became increasingly thin gruel.
Not that brilliant art doesn't occur in the mainstream, it does -- when
I've had some more sleep I'll name a few. And not that crap doesn't get
glorified as "Outsider Art," oh it does, or rather it begins -- the last
Outsider Art show at the Puck Building was far inferior to the first only
a few years before. It's Murphy's law or somebody's -- a market attracts
all kinds of hangers on.
In fact I think the term, as first defined, sort of an inner vision,
solitary genius in isolation, is already corrupted. I've seen gallery
shows CLAIMING to be outsider art that were like first year art school
blah blah blah imitations.
Perhaps these people would have done that garbage anyway at home if they
didn't see a market for it -- no. I take that back. They wouldn't.
However, I doubt calling the Salon des Refuses Outsider Art is
analogous... They were a group of people working on or around the core of
Paris art center, who knew and inflenced each other. Many of them had
shown with regular salon or equivalent before, studied with the authority
figures in the field... So their new ideas were ridiculed. So was
Whistler, who was hardly an outsider artist.
The outsider artist is by definition a solitary self-taught idosyncratic
figure. Uneducated in "academic" art, probably unaware of current
trends. My own theory is that once you've held a Winsor Newton Series 7
brush in your hand, you are barred from life from "outsider art," tant
pis.
As for what is art --- Art is what I say it is -- and Christopher has hit
the nail on the head again. I also agree absolutely with Galina -- when
friend's children ask me should they be an artist, my stock reply is if
you can ask that question, NO.
Judy
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