Worlds Colliding: Bringing the outsider artists in

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The 16th annual Outsider Art Fair begins outside the confines of SoHo’s Puck Building.   The sidewalk on Lafayette Street is lined with art for sale.  Bucket of Babes, You Sexy Muthafucka, large canvases with bright colors, found-object sculptures, an art gallery disguised as a truck, vividly-colored alien spacecraft, crowds of the curious and the customer: there’s plenty of action on the outside.

       

Seemingly only a dozen feet and a $20 entry fee separate the outsiders from the insiders, or at least the customers.  The gulf that separates the artists and their artworks is broader still, the divide a fitting metaphor for the contemporary art market.

Take Ross Brodar.  Brodar rents a 24-foot truck, loads it up with paintings, and parks it out in front.  Brodar may consider himself an outsider artist, but the committee of dealers that decides who gets into the fair disagrees.  It has ousted at least three artists for insufficient “outsiderness”. 

      

 

“I get 50 artists a year who say, ‘I’m crazy and I want a booth,’” Sanford Smith told The Wall Street Journal.  “We only allow galleries, established galleries.  We want them to come with vetted artists that they know.  I’m sorry.”

2003 was the first year that the fair banned work by any artist.  The market for outsider art had become hot.  And as is true of most markets, increased demand leads to increased supply, often at the expense of quality.  The hotter the market became, the more artists saw “outsider” as a desirable label.  Dealers urged stricter standards to police the fair.  And for good reason—the flood of wannabe outsiders threatened the fair’s credibility, perhaps even the very market for outsider art.  Several artists, including Brooklyn artist Joe Coleman, were banned for not meeting “outsider” criteria—even though neither the fair nor the outsider art field have ever been able to specify exactly what those criteria are.

Chicago gallery owner Ann Nathan dropped out of the 2003 fair after she was asked not to show Coleman’s work.  In the same year, Carolyn Walsh’s Sailors Valentine Gallerywas disinvited in part for showing the work of artist Matt Lamb, a “savvy and successful businessman with a keen awareness of the art world and marketing techniques” that disqualified him as an outsider artist. 

The contemporary art world is fueled by marketing and money.  Art functions as a product in our consumer society, governed by the inescapable law of supply and demand.  The value of an artwork is based upon repute: of the artist who creates it, the galleries which market it, the critics who sustain it, the collectors who buy it, the organizations that advocate for it, and the museums that collect it.  Since each of these participants benefits from an increase in the price of the artwork, once the work enters the system, value must be maintained, or the reputations and judgment of the players are threatened.

     

“This material is very collectible,” Carl Hammer, a Chicago dealer on the fair’s advisory committee, told The Wall Street Journal.  “What happens when people collect these artists and spend thousands of dollars and then find out they aren’t really outsiders after all?”

So what’s the problem if the market for outsider art is driven by the same market forces that drive the contemporary art market?  Who gets hurt?  And why should we care?

•  First, the art suffers.  The great appeal of outsider art is its informal nature.  It’s unfettered by conventions and laden with powerful, sometimes bizarre, imagery.  It’s exotic and challenging.  The very attributes that make the art unique are being subsumed into the art establishment.    
•  Second, the creative process suffers.  In labeling the artists and art as “outsider,” we risk seeing the creative process of the outsider artist as different to that used by “normal” artists.  Outsiders remain on the outside.

Might it be better to stop using the label “outsider artist” entirely?

For me the answer is simple.  Our local mental health association administers the annual exhibition of artworks created by persons with mental illness, mental retardation, and developmental disabilities.  I’ve attended the exhibition in the past and had the opportunity to meet with the artists and their families.  The true outsider artists?  I don’t think they would view themsleves in those terms.  Just people like you and me, struggling with life’s problems.  This year I think I’ll buy some of their art.  The prices are cheap compared to the NYC fair, but that’s beside the point.  My purchase is an act of affirmation, a statement of inclusion. 

Let’s end the debate about the meaning of outsider art.  Let’s bring the outsider artists in.  

Related links from The New York Times:
Visionaries in a Bubble, Safe From Convention  by Ken Johnson, January 25, 2008
Outsider Art Fair 2008 Slide Show 

Related MadSilence posts:
Inside Out – NYC’s Outsider Art Fair
Liking It Raw

~TAB

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Filed under Art, Culture, Inspiration, Outsider art, Street art

Tags: outsider, raw