What Is "Outsider Art"? (Part 1)

Who creates it? What exactly is it outside of? In a general sense, Outsider art is created on the fringes of society without regard for traditional visual genres. To bring more clarity to the issue, we have to go back to the artist and collector who was one of the first champions of “outsider art.” Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) famous French artist from the 20th century, was disillusioned with the established, mainstream art world and found great creative energy within the art of the mentally challenged and those who created art on the fringes of culture and society. In 1945, he coined the term “Art Brut”, (or “raw art”) for those artists who were not conditioned by academic training, museums, and society about what art should look like. Dubuffet noted: “It may be that artistic creation, with all that it calls for in the way of free inventiveness, takes place at a higher pitch of tension in the nameless crowd of ordinary people than in the circles that think they have the monopoly of it. It may even be that art thrives in its healthiest form among these ordinary people, because practiced without applause or profit, for the maker’s own delight; and that the over-publicized activity of professionals produces merely a specious form of art, all too often watered down and doctored.”1


It should be noted that Jean Dubuffet was only one of many European avant-garde artists who looked for forms of expression outside of the academic tradition. His interest in self-taught painters was echoed by the Cubist interests in tribal art, the Surrealists interest in Oceanic art and the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist interest in Japanese prints. Many of you may not be aware that Henri Rousseau, whose paintings you are most likely familiar with, was a self taught painter who caught the eye of the avant-garde, specifically Picasso. Henri Rousseau worked as a toll booth collector to earn a living. His coworkers, knowing his passion for art, and believing in the power of his work, used to let him leave work early so that he could work on a painting.

To make matters more complicated, Rousseau is best considered as a naive painter, as opposed to brut. Naive painters are self-taught, but live within the bounds of culture and society. Brut painters know nothing of society, nor are they concerned with it. They paint their inner world. Naïve painters typically have had no exposure to art. However, sometimes based on religious fervor, sometimes due to a personal trauma, they pick up a paintbrush or sculpting tool one day and then never put the tool back down until they’ve created thousands of works. Driven by pain or passion, they find something in their creative endeavors that enlivens them.

As you encounter paintings that don’t fit a particular style, notice how they are categorized by critics and art historians. The ubiquitous term “folk art” can mean many things—from naïve styled New England portraits of the middle class in the 1700s, to wooden decoy ducks, to weather vanes to paintings by the mentally challenged or even to simple pastoral scenes painted in bright and flat colors.

Similarly, outsider art may contain many forms of art that would appear as complete visual opposites. As the term has evolved over the last fifty plus years, one can only guess what might be included in its future definition.
How, for instance, do you classify an outsider artist who becomes extremely popular, enough to where corporations are paying the artist for his pieces, and thousands of posters are being made of his work? What is this artist outside of any longer? Can the term still be used?

(To be continued.)

1. Thevoz, Michel Art Brut, Editions d’Art Albert Skira S.A., Geneva, 1995, p. 5.

Submitted by,
Kim Kolker, ISA AM
Shango Galleries, Dallas, Texas

for Guernsey and Associates, Fine Art Appraisals