Outsider Art Comes to Manhattan - Brief Article

novel YORK--New York was the place to be in February for fans and collectors of outsider art. The main fact 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 displays at galleries in the city.

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

According to display Director Caroline Kerrigan, this year's fair drew 9200 visitors and was marked by the agency of the participation of more European galleries, including Jean Pierre Ritsch-Fisch Galerie from Strasbourg, France, who not absented works by Les Barbus Muller Aloise, Schroder-Sonnenstern Madge Gill and Scottie Wilson.

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

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

single such exhibition, "ABCD: A Collection of Art Brut" render free of accessed at the Museum of American Folk Art a not many days before the fair and will be upon view until mid-July. The exhibit features more than 100 paintings, drawings and statuarys by 38 international artists that demonstrate the aesthetic transcendence of art brut, a bourn Dubuffet coined in 1945 to designate art made by means of asylum inmates, mediums/visionaries, isolates and autodidacts.

Several other novel York galleries held openings during the fair. Woodward Gallery collaborated with Marcia Weber/Art thing perceiveds of Montgomery, Ala., to set on "Outsider/Contemporary Folk Art" with works from Southern artists of that kind as Bill Traylor, Jimmie to leeward Sudduth and Bernice Sims. "It was great fun" said Marcia Weber, who has been exhibiting concurrently with the fair for eight years. "We gain terrific repeat business--some buy each year."

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

The Phyllis Kind Gallery and Cavin-Morris Gallery also not awayed 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 occurrences surrounding the fair, Kerrigan said, "I think it's great. It's a testimony to the fact that this art fair is lucky because we have imitators."

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