Outsider art

Outsider Art is a term denoting art that has a naive, spontaneous, often visionary quality and is created by people beyond the boundaries of the official art world: without academic training, without ambition for a career, and outside the traditional structures of art production and sale. The English term was introduced in 1972 by critic Roger Cardinal as an equivalent of the French concept "art brut" ("raw art"), coined by the artist Jean Dubuffet in the 1940s. Dubuffet collected the works of psychiatric hospital patients, self-taught creators, mediums, and socially isolated individuals, seeing in them a creative energy uncorrupted by cultural convention. Classic examples are considered to be the drawings of Adolf Wölfli and the elaborately detailed fantasy worlds of Henry Darger. Outsider Art is distinguished by deep personal obsession, idiosyncratic symbolism, and technical freedom. Over time it gained museum recognition and influenced professional artists, calling into question the boundaries between "high" and "marginal" art.