HB 7 – Outsiders

Since the 1980s, the parameters of outsider art have ostensibly broadened, to include a diversity of backgrounds including socially or mentally isolated artists (prisoners, people with mental illness, and others); artists who have pursued traditional and vernacular practice; as well as artists who are simply self-taught. Several other terms are also used to define outsider art: folk art, therapeutic art, undisciplined art, naive art, singular art, among others. What characterizes these practices – and aesthetics – are that they are expressive, impulsive, spontaneous, sincere and free from all artistic and social conventions. It is an art focused on the expression of emotions, on the truth of the moment, and often used as an outlet, or as a release.

Despite the difficulty of defining outsider art, it remains an important phenomenon that deserves our full attention. This art, created by people who are impervious to the influences of the art world, continues to question and challenge the intellectual consensus related to artistic institutions. Although some artists considered as ‘’outsider’’ now seem to have emerged from purgatory, to be integrated into publications and museum collections, and even to be the subject of an art fair, few of them are valued by the global art market.