C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

Visionary Art Values

As an artist I find that my interest in “outsider art” is complicated. On the one hand, I am like any other appreciator of the diverse artists who fall in the categories (outsider, visionary, et al) and on the other hand, I am able to use my appreciation to inspire me in certain values. Those values “arise” (if you will) from Outsider Art.
They are: (1) pursue your vision despite what is fashionable and/or going on in the art world; (2) be prepared to sustain yourself in your art without acclaim from the world; (3) listen to the various “voices” that arise, follow them, even when “the world” might be calling you nuts, non-commercial or merely underemployed.

I wish there was an identifiable market for “outsider-inspired” artists that was not an attempt to use our various short stays in mental institutions (if we are so “lucky”) to justify our inclusion in the “real” Outsider world. As such, I want to be respectful of collectors and gallery owners who are strict interpreters what it means to promote Outsiders.

I think it’s a shame that “narrative art” or “neo-folk” or “pop surrealism” can’t coalesce into a real “school.” I see efforts to do this, for example the Low Brow artists promoted by magazines like Juxtapoz and their associated galleries. I am inspired by a certain strain of their artists, but I often balk at the “in your face” embrace of street punk attitudes that insist tattooing, and painting cars, and tagging buildings is the same (if not better, i.e. more morally pure) than old fashioned painting. Their skateboarder politics profane and juvenile, is also a turn-off to me, and I would assume to many serious collectors.

Will these street-inspired artists collect one another? I doubt it. I have no problem that many of them are illustrators. I feel the pain of the illustrator, many of them technically skilled, many of them as inspired as any fine artist to create art. Despite Warhol, their willingness and ability to make money selling their images to businesses, makes them outlaws from the serious art world. Many of them can afford to take on Juxtapozian attitudes because they already have a business.

I think there are other elements to this story, other questions to investigate. How has the fine art world discouraged collecting my more “average” people, by making superstars and obfuscating aesthetics in intelligible post-post-modern theorizing that leaves so many people wishing for the next comprehensible show (whether Impressionist or Frida Kahlo). Maybe “average people” never were collectors and it’s all a fantasy. The difference is that today many people can afford art but due to the difficulty of entering the fray, opt for posters, or “decorator art” or reproductions of masters done in China for amazingly cheap prices. I fantasize that a rebirth of narrative painting could help change things. But then, I’d like to see us colonize Mars too.