How to Look at Outsider Art

Outsider Art has become a catchall phrase for everything that is raw, untutored, and extreme in art. Recently, it has grown from being the hobby of a few collectors to a movement of significant importance in the art world, and is on the verge of being integrated into the contemporary art mainstream. However, even many aficionados can't say precisely what Outsider Art is or identify the best artists, baffled by a world without rules. How to Look at Outsider Art gives an overview of the field's most exciting works, some of them never before published in book form. It offers guidelines for aesthetic and collecting judgments, and gives compelling accounts of some of the field's spectacular successes and equally visible failures. This book features case studies, which provide indepth examinations of individual works by particular artists and discusses their critical and popular reception.