Outsider Art: From the Margins to the Center?

Abstract

The world of fine arts enacted by the absolutist monarch, Louis XIV, served as a model for many other nations by setting the hierarchy of genres, rules of art that guided the demands of patrons, the criteria of quality for at least two centuries. This cultural structure was the basis for educating aspiring artists to feed the tastes of successive generations of clients. But with political, economic, social transformations, its centrality was increasingly challenged by modernizing forces. A single hierarchy became inadequate for the multiplication of status seeking groups. New institutions welcomed diverse forms, sought them out in unusual places. The single minded academic system has given way to the revaluation of the most marginal of all creators, the naïf, the non-western, the mad. The narrow vision of the salon has been succeeded by the global biennal.