| The Term Outsider
art was introduced in 1972 by the English art historian Roger
Cardinal as an Anglo-Saxon equivalent for the term Art brut,
which established by french painter Jean Dubuffet. Outsider
art is neither an artstyle nor a school. It is therefore anything
but a homogenous, self-contained unit.Its esential,character
ist that it takes place outside the established art world,
beyond art history and tradition and regardless of trends
and fashions of the art.
The creators of this art are mainly people, who made unusual
experience in their lives or those who are subject to extreme
mental states: Psychiatry-experienced, mentally handicapped
people, prison immates, border crossers, eccentrics, people
on the margins of society, in the social offside, in voluntary
or unintended isolation and self-taught people with artistic
potential. They differ regarding their personal background
and social origin far apart, use different materials and expressive
means, have no stylistic common ground and usually don`t know
from each other. Which connects them und distinguishes them
is the authenticity, originalness and immediacy of their pictorial
language. Unlike the professional artists, they work with
some exceptions, without ever a real artistic training to
have enjoyed away from the commercial art busines and free
from any pressure to adapt and independently of changing modes
of art. Most of them see their own work not as an artwork
and think of themselves not an artist.They have no intention
to be artist, they live art. Their art is an expression of
hidden desires, inner contradictions and visions. It is not
outward but inward oriented, a trip into inside.The major
aspect of their work is that, it emerges in their innerworld
and imagination. The purpose of the work is in it own creation.
The works of outsiders have a unique visual language, a unique
independent aesthetic category and evidence of a high potential
for expression asset an a rough, raw charisma: Directness
of expression, forcefullness, immediacy and authenticity,
which make their strength, their charme and fascination ever
identified. Their genuine, raw pictorial language stresses
the conventional viewpoint in particular, in such a way, that
in the eyes of some viewers, it is not only astonishing and
admirable, but also strangely and grotesque.
Despite acknowledgment, which is brought to the outsider art
increasingly in the last three decades and apart from few
exceptions, which held the introduction into the art enterprise,
into the museums and attained even world fame, the art of
outsiders is however not accordingly appreciated by the established
artworld. It is to be wished that the creators of these amazing
artworks are recognized as artists.
Turhan Demirel
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