Monday, November 28, 2005

Outsider Art, Art Brut, whaaaa??


I draw and paint--my favorite pasttime--but when does a person get to be called an "artist"? Technically, I suppose I am an "outsider artist" or "self-taught artist," but even those well-defined labels are incorrect, as I am not psychotic or from an impoverished, sheltered background. The art world insists on labels, however, to categorize the vast amounts of art they deal with. I like reading about the debate: what is art brut vs. outsider art vs. folk art vs. naive art, etc. There must be ten similar labels which some people think all mean the same thing and others insist are all different. Today I don't care what I am called. I might care tomorrow.

Here's another piece. Since this writing is about outsider art, I've posted a drawing I did that was heavily inspired by Adolf Wolfli, probably the earlier/best known art brut artist (art brutist? Nah!).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Did you see the documentary about Henry Darger, called I think "In the Realms of the Unreal"? He was a rather Wolfli-like outsider artist--the documentary is really interesting.