Outsider Art Comes to Manhattan

Art Business News, April, 2001 by Amy Leibrock

NEW YORK--New York was the place to be in February for fans and collectors of outsider art. The main event, the 2001 Outsider Art Fair, was held in Soho from January 26 to 28 and ran concurrently with an exhibition of "Art Brut" at the Museum of American Folk Art and several other outsider art shows at galleries in the city.

Thirty-two exhibitors from the United States, Canada and Europe filled three rooms in Soho's Puck Building with a wide offering of paintings, drawings, photography, sculpture, mixed media, fabric and collage from outsider artists--a label first coined in the 1970s by British historian Roger Cardinal in reference to Jean Dubuffet's collection of artwork by social and cultural outcasts, eccentrics and mental patients. Today the term often includes self-taught, visionary, art brut and intuitive artists.

According to Show Director Caroline Kerrigan, this year's fair drew 9,200 visitors and was marked by the participation of more European galleries, including Jean Pierre Ritsch-Fisch Galerie from Strasbourg, France, who presented works by Les Barbus Muller, Aloise, Schroder-Sonnenstern, Madge Gill and Scottie Wilson.

"We're very pleased with the direction the fair is taking, because we wanted to get a more worldwide representation of artists ... we achieved that this year," said Kerrigan.

Many galleries reported good sales throughout the fair, but some were disappointed about the proliferation of other outsider art events that took place elsewhere in the city. "The good news is that there's a lot of stuff to see and say about this art form--the bad news is we try to scrunch it all into four or five days and you can't do it all," said Judy Saslow of Judy Saslow Gallery in Chicago.

One such exhibition, "ABCD: A Collection of Art Brut" opened at the Museum of American Folk Art a few days before the fair and will be on view until mid-July. The exhibit features more than 100 paintings, drawings and sculptures by 38 international artists that demonstrate the aesthetic excellence of art brut, a term Dubuffet coined in 1945 to designate art made by asylum inmates, mediums/visionaries, isolates and autodidacts.

Several other New York galleries held openings during the fair. Woodward Gallery collaborated with Marcia Weber/Art Objects of Montgomery, Ala., to put on "Outsider/Contemporary Folk Art" with works from Southern artists such as Bill Traylor, Jimmie Lee Sudduth and Bernice Sims. "It was great fun," said Marcia Weber, who has been exhibiting concurrently with the fair for eight years. "We get terrific repeat business--some buy every year."

Luise Ross Gallery held the first showing of Pierre Carbonel, a self-taught French artist who made swirling abstract images in the 1960s and `70s with ink and oil emulsions. Galerie St. Etienne presented "Our Beautiful and Tormented Austria! Art Brut in the Land of Freud," which, among others, included work by artists who live and work at the Lower Austrian Psychiatric Hospital at Gugging.

The Phyllis Kind Gallery and Cavin-Morris Gallery also presented outsider art-related shows. Most of these continued past the Outsider Art Fair's closing, giving collectors and appreciators more time to take it all in. When asked about the events surrounding the fair, Kerrigan said, "I think it's great. It's a testimony to the fact that this art fair is successful because we have imitators."