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Robbins

Robbins talks about Folk Art and its history. He speaks about how folk art first started being introduced to museums in the 1920's. He quotes an art review about a Congo exhibit in the Brooklyn Museum in 1923 which I found quite offensive. It stated "their reason for thinking it progressive is, to speak quite seriously, their knowledge of the limitations of the negro mind, of the fact that the negro mind beyond a certain point rejects instruction, is inaccessible to scholarship, remains primitive, and therefore keeps basic ideas which are not frittered away by the invasion of the supplementary, superficial, and extraneous". Robbins then went into how folk art began being accepted as art in the 1930's. He says that there were two reasons that people wouldnt accept. One of which was that the people who were creating it were not highly educated in art. Folk art was believed to be outsider art which helped make it rise in popularity.


Ames

Ames starts off the essay real well. He is explaining how "In the constructed of outsider art and outsider artists, all mundane, banal, crass, or commercial demands, constraints, and considerations characteristic of modern civilization have been swept away. Artists have total freedom and no responsibilities". Ames takes on the side of saying that defining art is bad. I agree with him. It makes me wonder if the artist himself categorizes himself as an outsider or if it is the critics that do.

Blumenthal

I find it sort of random that the yesterday I was working on an artist report on an autistic artists(not completed yet) and today I look at the readings to find an article about another autistic artist. The artist I was researching was Stephen Wiltshire who has became a very successful artist despite being autistic. If you youtube his name, you will see amazing videos of his work. While reading a review of his work, I ran into some stuff saying that autistic art should be considered outsider art. When reading about Lerman, it makes me happy to know that he is already successful. While also researching autistic artists, I ran into an article about a four year old autistic girl who is already making money off of her paintings.

Danger

I found this article sort of interesting. I feel like randomly discovering artwork happens a lot. This article made me feel bad for him. It seems that he lived such a depressing life and that if only he had not kept his work secret, he could have been more successful. Truthfully though, he probably was happy through creating his own art. If not, he would not of created so much art work and kept it secret.