They're coloring outside the lines
Prices reflect the popularity. When J Crist Gallery first exhibited works by James Castle at the Outsider Art Fair seven years ago, they sold for $400 to $10,000. Today, comparable Castle works are listed for $2,500 to $75,000. Still, at this year's fair, Smith says, "you can find quality art selling under $1,000, and the bulk of the work is under $5,000." "Compared to the contemporary art world, the work is affordable," says Selig Sacks, a board member of the American Folk Art Museum; his collection of outsider art covers the walls on every floor of his three-story Manhattan brownstone.
But outsider art isn't bound to appreciate. "You have to know what you're doing," says Joseph Jacobs, a former curator of American art at the Newark Museum and an author of the seventh edition of the iconic art history textbook, Janson's History of Art. "You have to know you've paid a good price and there is room for the work to move up." So buyers need to research the market--and the works they find appealing (box). "The great outsider artists do not conform to any type," Jacobs continues. "These artists are not making art for the eye of the art world or for any audience at all, for the most part." They created art out of their emotional needs. But as viewers, we judge it on its own merits.
Viewers connect with the artists as well, says American Visionary Art Museum founder and director Rebecca Hoffberger. Museumgoers "love the vibrancy and the stories" of the artists' often troubled and troubling lives. "People used to say a work of art should stand alone, but people care about the stories. It's going beyond the art as an object and understanding something about the maker as well. It adds another dimension."
You might even say learning about the artists brings us inside the outsiders.
The inside dope on outsider art
With 33 galleries exhibiting, the 13th annual Outsider Art Fair, January 27-30 in New York, offers a wide range of work. Information: sanfordsmith.com/out.html.
The fair is part of Outsider Art Week, during which the American Folk Art Museum (folkartmuseum.org) will host discussions and talks on the topic and give tours of its collection. The museum also houses the Henry Darger Study Center. In the Realms of the Unreal, the film about Darger (poster, at right), opened in select cities in December and is being released more widely this month.
Beyond New York, one of the best-known venues is Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum (avam.org). The current exhibit, "Holy H2O: Fluid Universe," features myriad watery visions.
Also look for "Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, and the Modernist Impulse, " an exhibit from the University of Illinois's Krannert Art Museum; it will travel to the Birmingham (Ala.) Museum of Art (Feb. 1-April 3), Studio Museum in Harlem (April 20-June 26), and Houston's Menil Collection (July 22-Oct. 2).
An excellent source is the website for the art magazine Raw Vision: rawvision.com -Diane J. Cole
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