I started to collect sources and ideas together but I think it might make more sense to just start writing in a more long form way... but here is what I had so far, though there's LOTS more quotes etc to join to these points!

CONTEXTS AND THEMES: DRAFT/ LAYOUT/ QUOTES:

(These quotes do not have to be quoted but can/ should be paraphrased/ citations used to back/ challenge my opinions!!!)

Another point that should come up in the writing: how these artists are professionalized, and whether it is a help or a hinderance. That is essentially the main point of my whole essay…

HISTORIAL CONTEXT: when was Outsider Art defined? At what point did the concept of insider/ outsider of Art become a thing? Can briefly mention the Degenerate Exhibitions etc. How Outsider Art is a derogatory category, in a short way

NOTE: Roger Cardinal published Outsider Art in 1972- which gives historical indication to when the term was coined.

·      The term Outsider Art came about from DuBuffet’s/ Cardinals studies of these people, but why did they choose to define these people by who they are rather than what they do? Unlike other *art-groups* etc

·      Begin with some definitions of Outsider Art : DuBuffett wanted to liberate the art from the stigma of psychiatric labels such as “art of the insane”, therefore he created a non-psychiatric term to describe it… Many psychiatrists, artists, art historians and art critics have further refined the definition of outsider art. Ideally, outsider art is art created without the influences of artistic culture (Simone Alter Muri)

·      But if DuBuffet  wanted to liberate these people, does it make sense to continue to divide them from the art world on account of their identities?

·      Comparison to the Degenerate Exhbitions/ the exclusion of the Impressionists from the Salons (?), what does it mean to create a gulf between one art and another? These were done to belittle those sorts of art, but this is, in theory, showcasing and highlighting them. But is it as empowering as some may believe?

·      To apply the label of outsider to an artist on their behalf is to ghettoise them within a narrow and unbending market not equipped to sustain professional practices. (Hugh Nichols)

·      The quality of being self-taught…connects their varied social positions into a single identity category…is their lack, rather than their attributes, that defines them. (Gary Alan Fine)

I’M NOT SURE HOW MUCH OF THE ABOVE SHOULD BE HERE OR IN THE INTRODUCTION

FETISHISING IDENTITY: identity/ personal lives become the focal point of how people talk about Outsider Art

·      Self-taught art is form of identity art in which the characteristics of the artists and their life stories are a important as the formal features of the created objects …….

o   These artists are categorised by means of the definition of their identities as authentic in the production of objects, unburdened by assumptions of strategic careerism or lofty intellectualising. In this, in their outsider role, separate from images of a corrupt elite, they are ostensibly ennobled in a form of identity politics- but in this, perhaps they become noble savages with the colonialism that such a troubling designation implies……..

o   Self-taught art, by its label and its reference, ennobles the individual. That we admire the autochthonous artist, the artist who allegedly stands outside the community, is revealing. (Gary Alan Fine) At once we have this perceived sympathy for these *poor* artists, and also admiration… ‘inspiration porn’?

PRESUMPTIONS OF ARTISTIC INTENTION: following the identity, critics may assume things about the art due to the context of the artist

·      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. Alternatively they are included in the dubious category of ‘outsider art’, whereby they become fetishised as practitioners allegedly operating beyond the despoiling influence of commercial or professional concerns.( Hugh Nichols)

FETISHISING METHODS: the fetishisation of AUTHENTICITY, and how the art world looks jealousy on to those who work with only *selfish* motivations, and how they try to recreate this

·      They are not only fetishized by the art world but by the middle classes… Both outsider and Native arts are viewed as exotic, mysterious, not easily accessible, and something to be discovered. Moreover, they provide middle- and upper-class American society access to a near but able notion of the past or a return to values more closely associated with the natural world, away from pretentious contemporary societal and historical art concerns (Dyani Reynolds White Hawk)

INTUITIVE EXPRESSION: how Outsider Artists work on only their own accounts, without an education