What's the category that means "no category?"
A dispatch from the 2024 Outsider Art Fair
I warned my companions as we walked up - it can be a bit overwhelming. It’s a good thing you can come and go as you please, because it’s a lot to take in at once. And with that, we all took a deep breath and stepped into the 2024 Outsider Art Fair.
My previous visit to the Fair, in 2019, was a galvanizing yet enervating experience. The show floor was more densely packed with intricate imagery than any room I’d ever been in. After a couple of hours of sensory bombardment, I staggered out into the street, drunk with visions that bounced around the inside of my skull for weeks to come.
This time around, as we wandered among the various white cubes erected by specialist galleries from around the world, I tried to keep my pulse in check. Rather than letting the work dominate me, I wanted to enjoy it, and at the same time try to understand a bit more about why I found it so powerful.
In a more mainstream group show like the Whitney Biennial, all of the works, whatever their provenance, hail from a single world: the Art World. This imaginary country is an environment of artificial scarcity where reputations are graded numerically (i.e., in dollars) and all parties fight for the largest possible piece of the pie - a microcosm of capitalism, cloaked in culture. Tastes change, careers rise and fall (even long after death), but it all exists in relation to the market. Yes, this world has brought to light a tremendous amount of powerful work, and many incredible creators have built successful careers in this context. But that last word is the key: context. If you want to play this game, on some level you need to buy into its norms and assumptions.
This context is what “outsider” artists are outside of. And so, instead of a group show delineating the boundaries of a single world, the Outsider Art Fair is a cacophony of worlds, each of which has its own deep backstory. It turns out there are an infinite number of ways not to buy into the mainstream, and here they’re all on display at once.
There’s been chatter for decades of what constitutes “outsider” art, and if that’s even an appropriate name. Some prefer “self-taught artist” or even the more traditional “folk art” labels. There’s the very French “art brut” or slightly redundant “visionary art,” not to mention out-of-fashion terms like “naive” or “primitive.” None of these do a great job of explaining what they constitute, but taken together they give you an idea. It’s a category of things that don’t fit into the other category.
Another approach is to look at the types of artists who tend to be represented in this category. This is a heterogenous bunch. Some are neuroatypical, some are mentally ill. Many exist and work on the margins of society. Others are everyday folks with a passion for creating art who are simply untrained, or who just choose to create art removed from what they see as an elitist racket. Some are people who do things simply for the delight of doing them, with no pretensions at all.
If all of this work has anything in common, it’s that it tends to be very personal and direct, with a disregard for what society deems “good.” These qualities can make some of the art appear uncanny, confusing, weird, unhinged. At its most extreme, it can be like seeing someone with all of society’s filters removed - another human mind in all of its staggering individuality.
One of my favorite items at the fair was a series of envelopes from the 1930s addressed to a man named Grant Hilbert who was living away from his family in Toledo, Ohio. Whenever his wife (or daughter, it seems unclear) sent him a letter from home in Columbus, she embellished it with a situational cartoon and embedded his address in the dialogue balloons. Amazingly, they all arrived, postmarked with the date. These were clearly intended as private enjoyments, and only their discovery in a flea market scrapbook brought them onto the market.
And thereby hangs the paradox. Works like these may have moldered in darkness or been destroyed if not for the galleries and curators who represent them at events like the Outsider Art Fair. But by transforming them into commodities, they’re at risk of undercutting the serendipitous charm that makes them special in the first place. The gallery that was selling these envelopes had framed them in triptychs on sale for $3500 each. The original creators could hardly have dreamed that such a thing was possible. Are they worth it? It’s hard to say. I have no idea what constitutes “value” in a work of art beyond simply “what people are willing to pay.” I think items like these are priceless, but at the same time I think that more than $1k a pop is way too much. So where does that leave me?
At the end of the day, the Outsider Art Fair is a commercial venture - the people who have done the work of discovering these works and sponsoring these artists hope to be compensated for their labors. That is fair! And much of what was on display was reasonably priced. But thinking too much about the money aspect spoils it for me. Instead of being a once-a-year sales event, I wish that this was a permanent museum, displaying this mind-boggling array of work as a public service, for all to enjoy. I wouldn’t want it to be congealed within institutional shellac, but presented with a respect that honors the urgency and lack of boundaries with which much of the work was created.
In any event, the three of us lasted about 90 minutes. We probably only walked about two-thirds of the floor before we decided we needed some air. Our heads were still swimming after lunch, so we decided to call it a day. And yet, as I’ve reviewed my photos and worked on this post, all I can think about is what treasures we might have missed by not going back. Another paradox I might never unpack.
