Outsider art : from the margins to the marketplace

The term outsider art has been used to describe work produced exterior to the mainstream of modern art by certain self-taught visionaries, spiritualists, eccentrics, recluses, psychiatric patients, criminals, and others beyond the perceived margins of society. Yet the idea of such a raw, untaught creativity remains a contentious and much-debated issue in the art world. Is this creative instinct a natural, innate phenomenon, requiring only the right circumstances—such as isolation or alienation—in order for it to be cultivated? Or is it an idealistic notion projected onto the art and artists by critics and buyers? David Maclagan argues that behind the critical and commercial hype lies a cluster of assumptions about creative drives, the expression of inner worlds, originality, and artistic eccentricity. Although outsider art is often presented as a recent discovery, these ideas, Maclagan reveals, belong to a tradition that goes back to the Renaissance, when the modern image of the artist began to take shape. In __Outsider Art__, Maclagan challenges many of the current opinions about this increasingly popular field of art and explores what happens to outsider artists and their work when they are brought within the very world from which they have excluded themselves.

The term outsider art has been used to describe work produced exterior to the mainstream of modern art by certain self-taught visionaries, spiritualists, eccentrics, recluses, psychiatric patients, criminals, and others beyond the perceived margins of society. Yet the idea of such a raw, untaught creativity remains a contentious and much-debated issue in the art world. Is this creative instinct a natural, innate phenomenon, requiring only the right circumstances—such as isolation or alienation—in order for it to be cultivated? Or is it an idealistic notion projected onto the art and artists by critics and buyers?

David Maclagan argues that behind the critical and commercial hype lies a cluster of assumptions about creative drives, the expression of inner worlds, originality, and artistic eccentricity. Although outsider art is often presented as a recent discovery, these ideas, Maclagan reveals, belong to a tradition that goes back to the Renaissance, when the modern image of the artist began to take shape. In Outsider Art, Maclagan challenges many of the current opinions about this increasingly popular field of art and explores what happens to outsider artists and their work when they are brought within the very world from which they have excluded themselves.

Outsider Art Cover 1 Imprint page 6 Contents 7 Introduction 9 1: Art Brut and the Search for the Source of Creative Originality 27 2: Outsider Art and the Creative Role of Collecting 61 3: Art Brut and the Classic Period of Psychotic Art 76 4: Psychotic Art Today and Outsider Art 98 5: Doodling and Other Forms of Automatism 111 6: The Problematic Introduction of Outsider Art into the Wider Art World 132 Conclusion 156 References 174 Artists’ Biographies 181 Bibliography 188 Acknowledgements 190 Photo Acknowledgements 191 Index 192 A new account of Outsider Art, work produced outside the mainstream by self-taught visionaries, recluses, psychiatric patients and others beyond the perceived margins of society. The author reassesses conventional assumptions about creativity, situating Outsider Art in relation to Modernism and Primitivism