Outsider Art it Is Called

Outsider Art It is called "Outsider Art," because it stands outside the realm of "fine" art. It is painted by patients in asylums. It is created by prisoners in their cells. It is made up by untrained artists and thus considered self-taught. It also goes by other names: na f, naive, Art Brut, to list the most common. Tattoos were once worn by a select group of Americans, but now adorn all ages and backgrounds.

Computer nerds or geek were once laughed at and singled out, but now receive top billing in television commercials. Outsider Art once only hung on the walls of a select few who saw the energy and compassion within its frames. Now it is collected by the most well-known collectors. The question thus arises when something becomes popular or "in" does it continue to be "outside"? Can "Outsider Art" continue in the years to come? Confusion and disagreement surrounds the term Outsider Art in the United States.

The derivation comes from Jean Dubuffet and his peers such as Andre Breton who, in 1948, formed the Compagnie de l'Art Brut (Raw Art) to look for and collect works of complete individuality and uniqueness. The works were done by individuals who not only were untrained artists but most likely had no concept of other forms of artistic expression other than their own.

The Compagnie de l'Art's idea to collect this art developed when first seeing the creations completed by Adolf Wolfli in a Swiss mental asylum while under the care of psychiatrist xxx Morganthaler. This was not the first such instance of asylum art thus recognized: Dr. Hans Prinzhorn had displayed thousands of works by psychiatric patients in his 1922 book Bildernerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill), which became well-known with Surrealist artists (Cardinal, 14).

Dubuffet characterized "Art Brut" in 2003 as: Those works created from a solitary place and from pure and authentic creative impulses - where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere - are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professions.

After a certain familiarity with these flourishings of an exalted feverishness, live so fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade.

(Dubuffet) Michel Thevoz, the curator of the Debuffet collection, now housed in a museum in Lausanne added his dimension to this definition: Art Brut' or 'outsider art' consists of works produced by people who for various reasons have not been culturally indoctrinated or socially conditioned. They are all kinds of dwellers on the fringes of society.

Working outside fine art 'system' (schools, galleries, museums and so on), these people have produced, from the depths of their own personalities and for themselves and no one else, works of outstanding originality in concept, subject and techniques. They are works which owe nothing to tradition or fashion. (Dubuffet) Debuffet differentiated "Art Brut" producers from others who tried to enter the commercial market or had even the slightest contact with the peripheries of the artistic realm.

He put these artists into a category called "Neuve Invention" or "fresh invention." He said that works by these creators are comparable in power and inventiveness, but their greater contact with normal society and awareness of their art preclude inclusion within the strict "Art Brut" category. These "Neuve Invention" creators, he added, often create in their spare time. They are frequently eccentric and untrained artists trying to make a living from their work, some of whom have dealings with commercial galleries.

"Art Brut" artists, on the other hand, develop their own methods, frequently using very different approaches and materials. Further, they create products for their own personal worth, as a kind of "private theatre." They do not care about other people's opinions and often keep their work secret. Debuffet also considered "Art Brut" different than primitive "Naif/Naive Artists," who remain in the mainstream of painting proper, even if they do not exactly practice its style. After World War I, the cultured in Europe began developing an interest in self-taught creators.

Such artists such as Henri Rousseau, called "naives" (based on a negative idea of Rousseau's personality), were creating their artistic works throughout Europe but especially France. Whereas the Naive artists with their conventional approach looked outward to their surroundings for inspiration, the "Art Brut" creators peered inward to internal visions that meant something only to themselves. Artists and collectors familiar with European modernism brought the concept of self-taught art to the United States in the 1920s and '30s.

Initially, there was considerable interest in the Na f/Na ve genre, as well as earlier American folk artifacts. However, when institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art promised to support self-taught art, the genre quickly became commonplace throughout the country and artistic interest turned to Abstract Expressionism. Roger Cardinal has been one of the most well-known experts on this topic.

In his book Outsider Art, he disagreed with Debuffet's differentiation between "Art Brut" artists, who exist out of the mainstream, and other artists such as those called "Neuve Invention," who were supposedly on the fringes. He wrote "I can see what Dubuffet meant, but..

"Neuve Invention is no more than a buffer zone situated in between Cultural Art and Outsider Art proper - another disputed strip of land, another vexed border to patrol and defend! I hope that people will trample around for a bit, so that the line gets erased." The term "Outsider Art" and its all-inclusive nature thus became increasingly popular from the 1970s on. In the United States, another expansion of the term "Outside Art" occurred in the 1980s.

The term "Folk Art" once had been an expansive American concept that was sometimes divided into "Traditional Folk Art" or pre-industrial crafts such as Shaker furniture and quilts, and "Contemporary Folk Art" or non-traditional products of self-taught artists. Today, the terms "Contemporary Folk" and "Outsider" are used synonymous by a majority of people. Jennifer Borum, another specialist on "Outsider Art," stresses how much is contained under the term of "outsider" when used in the U.S.

"The purist notion that true "Art Brut" is culturally rootless, limited to four walls of the asylum cell, and must therefore be on the decline in the age of information, is simply not applicable in America." Here spontaneous creations of "Art Brut" may appear anywhere from the cover of an entertainment magazine, to the bottom of a skateboard, to a wall in a subway to a tattoo and to a design in an inner city Latino neighborhood.

As a result of its wide usage, the term "outsider" has thus become very hazy, with no one knowing for sure who is in and who is out. Every few years, an entirely new generation of individuals, all of whom would have fallen into the "Neuve Invention" camp in earlier decades create new artistic landscapes (Raw Vision). Compared to Europe, America was late on the scene to appreciate "Outsider Art" in all its forms.

It took the appearance of postmodernist ideas in popular culture and the mass media to be a catalyst (Rhodes 15). However, over the years, there have been some similarities among those creators who are known for existing outside of the mainstream. They are often the disenfranchised -- the mentally ill, prisoners or slaves. As a result, they also are frequently society's most poor and needy. Most have suffered a trauma of some kind that has encouraged latent artistic abilities. Henry J.

Darger, who lost his parents when he was a young boy in Chicago during the early 1900s, was placed in a Catholic boys' home. Later, he was transferred to an asylum for feeble-minded children, possibly for doing nothing more than masturbating. After a series of attempts, Darger escaped from the asylum when he was 16 and Shortly started composing an epic that recorded his secret struggle to understand how God could deny him his entire family and a normal boyhood.

Once he started this saga, he continued the writings and accompanying artwork for the next 60 years (Rubin 4). Eddie Arning of the United States (Rhodes 137), began drawing in 1964 after his symptoms of mental illness disappeared. His themes included the normal human experiences such as people eating, working and participating in leisure activities. He had a unique decorative style that used magazine illustrations and advertisements as source material but had his individualized personalized style that grew out of the years he had been hospitalized.

Although some people compare him to the pop artists, there are distinct differences, especially since Arning's work does not include the irony and wit of Pop Art. Instead, his images contain an honesty and visualization as the artist truly sees the real world. Only after a generation after slavery, Minnie Evans of North Carolina was raised by her grandmother in impoverished conditions. In 1935 at the age of 43, she began to draw and paint.

Her works emerged from dreams and visions she had since childhood, as her hands were being guided by the wonders of God to show divine presence in the world. Giant birds, biblical figures, complex flowers, mysterious faces, and other spiritual images adorned her pages. Once she began drawing, nothing stopped her, not poverty, or the claim by family members and friends that she was "crazy," or her lack of training as an artist (Farrington 203). Similarly, J.B. Murray lived nearly all his life in a rural, remote Georgia town.

In the late 1970s, the devoutly religious Murray seriously believed that God was sending him messages. Although he was illiterate, Murray thus began writing with any available instruments in undecipherable script and crosses. Despite the fact that he was later incarcerated and briefly institutionalized for his odd behavior, after he was freed he continued writing throughout his home's interior and sending prophetic inscriptions to members of his church (Padgelek). African-American folk art has been gaining acceptance over the past several decades.

Known by many of the above noted designations -- naive, self-taught, folk and outsider -- these artists have existed outside of the art schools and academies. They were direct descendents of the slaves in the past or now help people recall these horrible times (Farrington). African-American folk art first became recognized during the late 1930s when the Museum of Modern Art exhibited the works of self-taught artists William Edmonson and Horace Pippin.

Interest in such artwork, however, decreased in the 1950s, and did not come alive again until the mid- 1980s. Over the following two decades, more and more people grew to desire this "vernacular" art that is, as expressed by connoisseur Paul Arnett, "a language in use that differs from the official language of power and reflects complex intercultural relationships charged with issues of race, class, language and education." To keep themselves busy and occupied, prisoners have also produced arts and crafts.

Similar characteristics that sometimes promote outsider status such as social inequality, poverty, lack of education is indicative of many of these individuals as well. Often the censorship of the institution is just the impetus needed to urge the prisoners to express themselves. "In Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America." Art Journal, Winter, 1997 [electronic version.] the author Phyllis Kornfield, writes about artists in prisons who are either self-taught or have had some training.

One of the most able artists in her book is Daniel (Stretch) Watson, a college graduate who has been drawing since high school. His brightly colored superrealistic images are included in surreal compositions that provide commentary on present-day social matters. Watson says that his works are his way of contributing to society while he serves a life sentence for murder. The prisoners often portray the sights of their everyday life behind bars. Arthur Keigney started carrying a gun and holding up banks as a young teen.

He's been incarcerated since 1971 for maksed armed bank robbery. In prison, Keigney became interested in painting. While in Massachusetts state prisons, he painted such works as "Haircut, F-Ward," a self-portrait of himself getting a terrible haircut in the cell. A woman prisoner named Elaine Butler completed pictures of inmates in her facility lying outdoors on towels, which she sarcastically called "Mabel's Beach." Some prisoners make artwork for other inmates, others for gifts and family. Spiritualists and mediums have also had their artwork considered as outsider products.

The medium Helene Smith's typical personality transformed radically when she went into her trances. Through her powerful male spirit, she showed in word and artistic expression the other worlds she visited. Sometimes, she would travel to Mars and even speak Martian while automatically drawing automatic (Rhodes 144)-- "the pencil glided so quickly that I did not have time to discover what contours it was making.

I can assert without any exaggerations that it was not my hand alone that made the drawing, but that truly an invisible force guided the pencil in spite of me." Outsider Art" continues to evolve along with changes in society. A new form of work, for example, called "recycled folk art," transform pieces of trash into new treasures. In Mexican-American Texas communities, houses are adorned by objects, colors and symbols that reflect a history over the past to present days.

Many of the visually rich barrio decorations are made from everyday castoffs such as Styrofoam cups, tires and tile chips. Brightly colored trucks and cars, tree swings, and televisions act as shrines to the Virgin of San Juan. Windmills and whirligigs are made from soda cans, butterflies from scrapped tin and muffler robots from used auto parts (Cerny) Folk art from various other American cultures include such oddities as Elvis-looking alligators, banjo chickens, tin-men statues, flag creations and Americanized versions of Irish, Japanese, Syrian, French and many other cultural traditions.

Bebo is an artist that lives in Kingston Springs, Tennessee. He cuts critters out of old barnwood and paints them with tractor paint. The critters range in size from 1 foot to over 12 feet. W.C. Rice has a christian cross garden in Prattville, Alabama., near Montgomery. In Wisconsin, visitors see grottos, sculpture gardens and personal statements running across the length of the state from the very religious messages of Holy Ghost Park in southwestern Dickeyville to Fred Smith's patriotic masterwork in north-central Phillips.

When "Outsider Art" was first defined by Cardinal, there were only a few collectors. Mostly, they were interested in artwork from mental institutions. However, "Outsider Art" is becoming very popular in the United States. Museum shows and fairs specifically highlight their work. Regardless of what specific genres one puts under the umbrella of "Outsider Art," (na ve, folk art, etc.), there is agreement that the creators have to be outside of the mainstream. However, the line is often very fine.

When outsiders are institutionalized, they are separated by mental or physical barriers. However, in many cases other self-taught creators often move close to the mainstream. Some self-taught creators, beyond those in institutions, do not want to be in the limelight. No one knows about their work. When other outsiders are noticed and achieve a new status, they do not wish the economic gain and notoriety associated with fame. Yet they may feel more a part of the mainstream and lose their anonymity.

This does not mean that their work will alter or that they move to the inside circle. However, they may be clearer about the interests of their "insider" audience. Purposely or unconsciously, they may change their approach or step within the inside boundaries. The mystique of outside art lies in its anonymity and elusiveness. Once it.