While navigating the world of art, you will likely, come across the term ‘Outsider Art’. Vague sounding and often misused, this genre is in fact both specific in its designation and relevant in the world of Modern and Contemporary Art. In addition, it often is not accompanied by some of the astronomical price tags that ‘Insider Art’ can demand.
Many definitions float through the art world for Outsider Art. In its broadest meaning, it is used to connote work that was made by an artist who was not officially indoctrinated into the world of art-making through formal education. This definition, however, is only half right.
In its purest form, Outsider Art is art made by someone who probably doesn’t know they are making art, or even, what art is. Historically, the grandfather of Outsider Art is Dr. Walter Morganthaler, who documented the artistic output of his psychologically disturbed patient in Switzerland around 1900. His patient, Adolph Wolfli, was spectacular in his creative genius, and created monumental work that act as totems, of a self-contained, made-up world. Working with colored pencils- a trade-up from simple graphite thanks to Dr. Morganthaler, Wolfi’s works on paper monumentalize his fantasy version of real places- such as a body of work depicting his take on the famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel (1905). Later, his work became increasingly megalomaniacal, twisting into a more complex and grandiose e version of himself as king of his complex and absurd, yet consistent world. (link)
Similarly, Dr. Hans Prinzhorn, a German Psychiatrist, collected the works of his many patients and published the now classic book, Artistry of the Mentally Ill in 1922.
With its roots in a strict documentary interest by these two doctors, this type of art was formalized into a genre when the French artist Jean Dubuffet brought it into the art world. Debuffet was a Surrealist painter and sculptor. Surrealism was a radical art movement centered in Paris in the late 1920’s, which vehemently rejected tradition, was interested in Freud's writings on mental states and sought to make art through automatic processes in the hope of discovering a more ‘authentic’ form of expression. The art of mental patients was naturally interesting to this group. Dubuffet started collecting art of the insane, forming what is now a public museum housed in Lausanne, Switzerland, and formalizing the genre as ‘Art Brut’ or ‘Raw Art’. Through this designation, Dubuffet highlighted what he considered this art’s outstanding quality: that it was uncooked by the process of culturization. The fact that its artists had never been formally trained, or even educated in many cases- lent it authentic and vital expression and was the major contributing factor to its beauty and success as a genre.
Jean Dubuffet not only coined the term Art Brut, he also founded the “Collection de l’Art Brut” in Lausanne. The collection there encompasses works collected by Dubuffet himself as well as works approved by the official Art Brut committee. In his Art Brut Manifesto, Dubuffet stated that "Art Brut was works produced by persons unscathed by artistic culture… These artist derive everything- subjects, choice of materials… from their own depths and not from the conventions of classical or fashionable art….”
It is significant that Dubuffet preached the gospel of Art Brut in the United States in the 1950’s. In 1951, he gave a speech at the Chicago Art Institute promoting his new project, and in 1952, many Art Brut pieces were installed in a sixty acre space called “The Creeks” in the Hamptons where they were hung next to the work of such luminaries as Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning and Clifford Still.
Art Brut is the originator and contains the sprit of Outsider Art but is a very specific and limited group of art and artists. Originally, the term Outsider Art was meant to be the English Equivalent of Art Brut. Outsider Art was first coined by Art Historian and professor Roger Candinal in 1972. He stated: “I believe that the paramount factor in the critical definition of the creative Outsider is that he or she should be possessed of an expressive impulse in an unmonitored way which defies conventional art historical contextualization”.
Outsider Art has an expanded definition still originally intended to signify art outside of the art/culture world. Ironically, the term has also come to be used as a marketing tool and an entire art fair exists just for Outsider Art. (www.sanfordsmith.com/outsider_info.html)
Other terms have come to be connected with Outsider Art, such as ‘Folk Art’. However, Folk Art must be kept outside of this genre, because Folk Art is by its nature connected to a tradition, and Outsider Art is the result of a singular, often idiosyncratic, extreme and personal vision of the world. Folk Art is still connected much more closely to history and accepted techniques of art making, whereas Outsider Artists often use non-art materials or mix media in unorthodox ways.
Outsider Art is relevant for several reasons. As collectors of Modern Art, Outsider Art is firmly grounded in influencing modern artists, thanks to Dubuffet brining the art of the insane under examination as a viable and respectable genre. What did Art Brut and later Outsider art have that did and still continues to resonate with the Zeitgeist of Modernism? It must be remembered that with the twentieth century one major change in art history was the sudden, radical rejection of classicism. This means the entire history of art was turned on its head when it was discovered that perspective drawing, the tedious task of insisting on the illusion of three dimensional space on a flat canvas and symbolism based on literature were now on equal standing with personal expression, subjective visions and emotional or self created symbolism. Today, it is not radical to think we each are capable of creating a work of art, but it was the co-mingling of the high and low that changed and changes our current culture from that of the 1800’s and Outsider Art rides that line perfectly. Modernism began with breaking the rules, and Outsider Art was the beginning of a cannon that created an avenue for artists to look to realize a new rule existed- that it was okay to break rules. No longer was only oil paint the only acceptable medium- why not collage images from the newspaper? No longer were only themes from Classical literature acceptable reference points- you can now create personal symbolism and reference what you had for lunch yesterday. The personal, the low- brow and the subjective all enter and now happily exist in Contemporary Art, and it is started with Art Brut and Outsider Art.