notes

At this point I am finding it useful and interesting (and not nearly as bad as I thought) to look through articles and take notes from them about what sort of ideas they're provoking and how I agree/ disagree with them. I still haven't properly narrowed down what I am doing but I think researching can help me. Otherwise I'm looking from nothing.

I have lots of quotes saved on a document for potential use in my essay but it doesn't make so much sense to post it all here.

FOLK ART AND OUTSIDER ART: ACKNOWLEDGING SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES IN ART EDUCATION by Simone Alter Muri

• The differing definitions / outlooks towards O.A. and also touches on why/ how it is made (from feeling) (from intuition)
• How can we describe the aesethetics of O.A. when it’s such a broad thing and not limited by style but substance
• The inclusion of outsider art (in education) (but maybe in society) as part of the post modernist life style / ethos / pedagogy
• Outsider art as inspiration to the disenfranchised / minorities
• This article goes on to talk in depth about how O.A. is useful as something to educate children about, I don’t think that’s so much linked to what I want to write about but may come in useful, so here is a note that this is covered in this article! Cool notion about how O.A. can inspire children who feel like “failed realists” that art doesn’t have to be realistic.

SUPPORTED STUDIOS AND THE FALSE ECONOMY OF OUTSIDER ART: THE SCAFFOLDED ARTIST: PROFESSIONALISATION IN THE SUPPORTED STUDIO by Hugh Nichols 

• Believes that Outsider Art is an outdated and restrictive term that marginalises artists 
• Discusses supported artists and how being called outsider artists is damaging to their practices –“such artists are often seen as practicing within a psychological or health framework — art therapy — in which art making is a method rather than a cultural form” 
• Discusses how we think of artists as professionals and what they must do to be deemed such a way, such as being able to engage with the art world in a critical way. Discusses how this often marginalizes supported artists and so they are thought of as lesser/ not professional even when working in a *pro* context

CRAFTING AUTHETICITY: THE VALIDATION OF IDENTITY IN SELF-TAUGHT ART by Gary Alan Fine

• A really long essay dealing with the idea and fetishisation of authenticity. Very useful I think to go back to, many interviews and case` studies 
• There is a sweet interview at the beginning of this text between Professor Willem Volkersz and Hans Jorgensen (artist) about how education affected his work. “Yeah well if went to school I wouldn’t a done this, would I? … I wouldn’t a done it. No. This is oddball stuff. They ain’t nobody else that’d build anything like this. You don’t do what majority does, then you’re wrong”. 
• Professor Willem Volkersz believed wanted to persuade the elderly folk artists that he visited that their work should be taken seriously. I love this sincerity in this art work!! 
• Fine in this essay is on a search to find out “how authenticity is given value” and “how the identity of the self-taught artist affects the appreciation of their creative expressions” 
• Fine questions whether the self taught/ outsider artist is actually given more praise for being an outsider “identities as authentic in the production of objects, unburdened by assumptions of strategic careerism or lofty intellectualising” He describes peoples’ obsessions with the so-called unmediated authenticity in outsider art as part of “cultural tourism” 
• All of this talk of identity could be linked back to good old Roland Barthe’s Death Of The Author 
• Describes self-taught/ outsider artists as “Identity Artists” because they do not share location or aesthetic but a facet of their artistic and personal identity 
• Talks about how they are defined by the attributes they are lacking rather than qualities they do have 
• Look up Michael Thompson and “rubbish theory”, the suggestion that objects are durable or transient (categorised by those in power, not just whether they are physically durable or transient) 
• Potentially good references and quotes from other people in this essay 
• Describes people having an emotional connection to folk art, that these artists make from their unconscious and that’s what makes it appealing. Notions of purity. 
• P.165 talks about art dealers and collectors making up stories to make the artist seem more interesting. There’s a lot of interviews with dealers in this which would be good to go back to. 
• Talks about Howard Finster P.166 which may be interesting as I think he is an artist who would be good to talk about 
• Discussion of Robyn Beverland and how his identity as a disabled man may have been used to sell his work