SOME (vague) NOTES!

HOW TO LOOK AT OUTSIDER ART by Lyle Rexer

• p.16 art exhibited with outsider art on the assumption that it is naive/ independent but actually has an extensive cultural history (i.e. Haitian art)
• p.18-19 secularism of art, SALON DES REFUSES 1863, 'SELF-CONSCIOUS BREAKS FROM TRADITION' 'new art become synonymous with opposition to the status quo'
• p.39 comparison to viewing outsider art as VOYEURISM, romantic nostalgia
• p.41 THE BEST WORKS OF OUTSIDER ART AND SELF-TAUGHT ART MAKE THE SAME CLAIMS AS ANY GREAT ART, THAT IS, THEY JOIN FAMILIAR AND UNFAMILIAR REALMS OF EXPERIENCE IN SYMBOLIC FORMS
• p.42 Outsider Art physically becoming a rebellion in the gallery space, how they don't lose their meanings regardless of environment
• p.45 civilisation of daily life and how this fed the allure for 'mysterious' outsider art
• p.47 modern artists self-consciously flout norms but O.A. it is a "principle force" (he describes as DEMONIC??)
• p.48 "the idea of art as kin to madness has been with us for millenia"
• p.49 people collecting O.A. as "their interest was primarily medical and diagnostic, not aesthetic"
• P.51 CAN IT BE LABELLED ART IF IT IS NOT CREATED WITH ANY ARTISTIC INTENTION? not to say that all O.A. are unaware... but sometimes it is a mode of making sense, organising a world (for artists with severe mental disorders etc) art as "private communion" p.52
• p.69 "only modern art has explicitly assumed the tragic burden of self-consciousness... earlier art and most sacred art sees the world as more static"

• REPETITION AND OBSSESSION:
• p.99 discussing the idea that these artists are obsessed, but are they any more so than other insider artists? "Obsession is the occupational hazard of all artists... (p.100) nevertheless, the obsessions of an outsider artist are of a different order"
• p.100 "the entire career were completed within an unbreakable circle. Art making seems as much a trap as a liberation"
• p.101 "obsession also shows itself in elaborate details"
• OUTSIDE IN: THE END OF OUTSIDER ART
• p154 at the end of the day, are we not all contemporaries? "certain social, economic, and art-world trends have contributed to erasing at least the practical distinctions between insiders and outsiders, and even made the notion of self-tutored art nearly irrelevant"
• since the 1950s artists have been keen to break out, and have done this each time by being inspired by the other p.155
• p.159 "both contemporary and outsider art have significant nonvisual components that force us to think and imagine beyond what we see. The crucial difference may be that the explanations offered by outsiders can be understood only within the context of their systems and dovetail at tantalising moments with a wider, commonly shared frame of reference".
• p.159 "These artists presage a new time of orphaned, unplaceable art, a time when the intimidating, hermetic privacy of outsider art and the deviations of auto didacts take their place among the fragmentary, self-sanctioning productions of artists everywhere. Call it pluralism or the end of art history as we know it, the paths from the outside in are many"

THE MYTH OF PRIMITIVISM (PERSPECTIVES ON ART) by Susan Hiller

• "cultural colonialism" -> but I think this is more about actual colonialism, though this ties in with O.A. as discussed by Reynolds-White Hawk
• OUTSIDERS OR INSIDERS BY DAVID MCLAGAN
• its intentionality is either perverse or non-conformist, or else is effectively absent P.32
• P.33 "they are treated as endogenous primitives'
• p.33 "once these images have been discovered and promoted, they re-enter the cultural domain; and once this publicity barrier is breached, the feedback between outsider art and the culture at large becomes too complex for the original notion of the 'outsider' to be workable"
• p.33 "the standard definition of outsider art depends upon a notion of utter originality... the pursuit of 'original' has for a long time been a distinctive feature of european culture... but not every work that appears  'original' in the context of european fine art conventions is ipso facto 'individual'...
• p.33 "it is one of the paradoxes of outsider art that it is defined from the outside: it is people from within the art world, however avant-garde, who collect and classify it as such"
• p.33 "a great deal of outsider art appears to be created in a kind of indifference to or detachment from such factors as commercial reward"
• p.46 "modernism tried to wrench outsider art loose from any context... in terms of which it would have been possible to situate it, and declared it 'free', so that it could be used, like 'primitive art', for its own currency"

ART BRUT (THE ORIGINS OF OUTSIDER ART) by Lucienne Peiry

• p.11 account of DuBuffet's journey to Art Brut
• p.12 "the artist is unaware that he operates in the domain of artistic creation: his work is developed outside any institutionalised art framework"
• p.14 DER BLEUE REITER ALMANAC: displaying insider, outsider, naive, folk and children's art together "all of these works of art were placed on the same level, not within any qualitative hierarchy. By elevating marginal creations... they were introducing a radically new value in the culture"
• P.15-16 "sketched out in the nineteenth century, this theory contained the underlying idea that these groups possessed similar perceptions and minds"... the idea that the collection of these people suggested an evolution. Klee DISAGREED "Klee was opposed to this evolutionary concept, as well as pedagogical studies concerning children's art work, and he inverted critical assessments that the specialists assigned to the differing phases of children's expression from the initial "negative" to the "positive" "    (Klee did not see the 'bad' as 'bad' but devoid of influence, corruption and at its most "richest and inventive")
• p.75 described DuBuffet's "uneasiness" of the selling of art brut as similar to his own unease of selling his own paintings- that it is too personal
• p.81: IDENTITY an exhibition at Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris  did not reveal names as it was confidential, but still stated the patient's diagnoses "openly revealed and presented as part of the work"
• p.82 at the foyer d l'arte brut "[DuBuffet] respected the ethic of medical confidentiality... the artists were designated by simple abbreviation... treated [the artist] as an autonomous individual, and presented as the author of the artistic creation" 
• p.85 Der Blaue Reiter Almanac progressed to Almanach de L'Art Brut -> which showcased marginal art only 

OTHER NOTES:

• can I make a case for Outsider Art being more withstanding than Insider? i.e. Rexer 'O.A. embarrasses the gallery' etc.... O.A. display as rebellion to the status quo, as innovation to the galleries. as POWER )????)
• OUTSIDER ART IS EQUAL TO INSIDER AND EVERYONE: DER BLEUE REITER AND PAUL KLEE
• INTRODUCTION POINT: why do [we] like Outsider Art???
• IS O.A. ART IF IT IS NOT CREATED WITH INTENTION?
• ARE WE CHAMPIONING OR EXPLOITING OUTSIDER ARTISTS? -> jean dubuffet's obsession with the working class
• Different ways of exhibiting can affect perception, different ways of portraying identity

Reflect on how The Gallery of Everything describes itself as showcasing "non-academic" and "private" art makers