Crafting Authenticity: The Validation of Identity in Self-Taught ArtAuthor(s): Gary Alan FineSource: Theory and Society, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 153-180Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3108577Accessed: 13/10/2010 06:45

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Crafting authenticity: The validation of identity in self-taught art

GARY ALAN FINE Northwestern University

Abstract. The desire for authenticity now occupies a central position in contemporary culture. Whether in our search for selfhood, leisure experience, or in our material purchases, we search for the real, the genuine. These terms are not, however, descriptive, but must be situated and defined by audiences. In this analysis, I examine the develop- ment of the market for self-taught art, an artistic domain in which the authentic is a central defining feature, conferring value on objects and creators. Self-taught art is a form of identity art in which the characteristics of the artists and their life stories are as important as the formal features of the created objects. The article examines the justifi- cations for this emphasis and the battles over the construction of biography. My examination of self-taught art is grounded in five years of ethnographic observation, interviews, and analyses of texts.

Professor Willem Volkersz: When did you put your name on the side of the house?

Folk Artist Hans Jorgensen: Huh?

Professor: I notice you put your name on the side of the house there.

Artist: Yeah.

Professor: When did you do that?

Artist: Oh, about three or four years ago.

Professor: It's like signing a work of art.

Artist: Hah! Would you call that art?

Professor: I do.

Artist: Do you? It's not fancy.

Professor: Plain. Plain art.

Artist: Yeah.

Professor: Well, there's some people that we call folk artists. People who didn't go to school to learn to be artists.

Artist: Yeah. Well, if went to school I wouldn't a done this, would I?

Professor: I think you're right.

Artist: I wouldn't a done it. No. This is oddball stuff. They ain't nobody else

Theory and Society 32: 153-180, 2003. ? 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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that'd build anything like this. You don't do what majority does, then you're wrong.

Professor: I think that's true. How far did you go in school?

Artist: Hah. Hah.

Professor: Don't want to talk about that, huh?

During the 1970s and 1980s University of Montana art professor Wil- lem Volkersz traveled the American backroads, talking with "folk" artists. In his transcripts, he earnestly tries to persuade elderly men and women that they have produced objects that they - and we - should take seriously. We hear him strive to find common ground with members of dramatically different social worlds from his own. In his

struggles, Volkersz raises important questions about the establishment of legitimacy and status for those who lack formal credentials. On what basis does the process that Tom Wolfe2 pungently refers to as

"nostalgie de la boue" become institutionalized by elites? How are the untrained valorized? In a society that valorizes authenticity of expres- sion, the production of this authenticity by elites and their institutions reveals the process by which moral evaluations are created. Following Volkersz, I ask how the identity of the self-taught artist affects the

appreciation of their creative expressions. How is authenticity given value?

* * *

Gerald Pocius3 argues that "perhaps of all the words that surround us in our daily life, art is one of the most contentious, most controversial." What is art? Aesthetic institutionalists, throwing up their hands, sug- gest art is simply what "artists" do or what museum curators hang on their walls.4 Others suggest that the existence of an aesthetic theory justifies particular types of artistic products.5 Still others, such as Howard Becker, suggest that communal conventions - shared ways of

doing things - produce the basis through which objects are defined as art. For Becker,6 art depends upon collective activity. Underlying these beliefs is the recognition of the social or institutional construction of the boundaries of art worlds.7

I examine the establishment of symbolic boundaries through the at-

tempts of members of a cultural elite to create a legitimate artistic sub- field through the validation of artists and their creations as reflective of

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authentic expression.8 Specifically, I explore the creation of the idea of

personal legitimacy as part of the market for self-taught art as a means of valorizing aesthetic authenticity, sponsored by the cultural authority of elites.9 This is done by situating the artists within a set of social positions that come to define their identity within this art world. Their social positions - their identities - naturalize the production of their art, separating them from groupings based on similarities of form, content, or intention. These artists are categorized by means of the definition of their identities as authentic in the production of objects, unburdened by assumptions of strategic careerism or lofty intellectual- izing. In this, in their outsider role, separate from images of a corrupt elite, they are ostensibly ennobled in a form of identity politics - but, in this, perhaps they become noble savages with the colonialism that such a troubling designation implies.

There is little doubt that authenticity is prized, so much so that it is often staged as part of cultural tourism,10 contributing to the economic health of impoverished locales. But what do we mean by authenticity? Authenticity refers to the recognition of difference. Barbara Kirshen- blatt-Gimblett suggests that authenticity is linked to an absence of cognitive understanding, creating an unmediated experience1 - sin- cere, innocent, original, genuine, and unaffected, distinct from strate- gic and pragmatic self-presentation. 12 Regina Bendix13 in In Searchfor Authenticity suggests that the core of authentic expression is that it is linked to the moral authority of the creator and simultaneously to the fact that the object was made by hand, not mechanically reproduced.

Although the domain of self-taught art is ostensibly defined by the fact the artists have not been formally trained, in practice self-taught art is known through the social position of the creators, and, thus, I label it as Identity Art. By this I refer to the fact that it is the social location of the artists that links the works together, not formal qualities of the work, social ties among artists, self-image of the artists, or the accept- ance of a theory of artistic production. As used here, identity refers to the artist's image in the eyes of the art world - the location in social space'4 - rather than to self-image. These artists are defined as being outside of the art community. Brubaker and Cooper suggest under the rubric of identitarian theorizing that identity refers to "position in a multidimensional space defined by particularistic categorical attrib- utes," such as race, ethnicity, or gender.15 The issue is not how these artists conceive of their own identities and self-concepts, but rather with the positions into which they are placed. As Bourdieu notes in

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Rules of Art, there is a need for a "creator of the creator" - a conse- crated discoverer who legitimates the work and the art. 16

The artists' shared lack of training - the quality of being self-taught (i.e., not being taught through art world institutions) - connects their varied social positions into a single identity category. While the con- cept of self-taughtness has blurry boundaries, in practice these artists are uneducated, elderly, black, impoverished, mentally ill, criminal, or rural. Within the art market, they lack social capital, ties to elite communities, and are not fully integrated professionals in this main- stream art world.17 It is their lack, rather than their attributes, that defines them. The art of integrated professionals18 is generically labeled contemporary art. Even though self-taught artists are our contempo- raries, they are not labeled as such. Most of these artists are not self- consciously involved in pricing or in shaping their careers (and, indeed often do not perceive themselves as having careers - a set of strategic choices designed to build capital or status). Although some artists are more involved than others, in general self-taught artists stand outside the market, in contrast to their professional colleagues, passively per- mitting their reputations to be established by others. 19

Not only are these artists outside the art market, but also the value of their works is directly linked to the biographies of the artists and the stories of authentic creation that the objects call forth. Life stories infuse the meaning of the work. It is the purity or unmediated quality of the production of the work, in the view of its audience, that provides the work with significance, and, not incidentally, with value as a com- modity, creating a biography of the object. 20

Uncovering the field

For this ethnographic study, I spent five years (1995-2000) examining the world of American self-taught art through participant observation, in-depth interviews, participation on an e-mail list, and document analysis. Unlike many ethnographic investigations, there was no one location in which members of the community routinely congregated - no workplace, clubhouse, or street corner. As a result, I did not examine a spatially defined group, but an ever-changing, migrating social net- work. Over the years, I attended annual meetings of the Folk Art Society of America four times, the Outsider Art Show in New York five years, Collect-O-Rama in Chicago three times, Folk Fest in Atlan-

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ta twice, and a large number of art openings, smaller shows (such as the respected Kentuck Festival in Northport, Alabama and others in Gainesville and Columbus, Georgia, and Harbert, Michigan), auc- tions, tours, and symposia, writing extensive field notes after each event.

Bolstering my observations, I conducted taped in-depth interviews with 74 people, including artists, dealers, collectors, academics, and cura- tors. Most interviews were over an hour in length with several running longer than three hours. In addition to carrying out observations and interviews, for two years I was a member of a lively, and occasionally contentious, e-mail discussion group, organized and moderated by a prominent New York dealer and critic. Topics on this list varied from philosophical discussions of aesthetics to evaluation of particular artists and exhibits to the pragmatics and ethics of the dealer-collector rela- tionship. Participants on the list included dealers, collectors, and even the more technologically sophisticated self-taught artists.

I spent a month during the summer of 1999 as a guest researcher at the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. While there, I examined the Archives of American Art, including interviews of artists, dealers, and collectors and the papers of impor- tant figures such as collectors Jan and Chuck Rosenak and Bert Hemphill, dealer Jeff Camp, and artist Rev. Howard Finster. I also read the run of relevant periodicals including Clarion/Folk Art, Folk Art Finder, Folk Art Messenger, Raw Vision, and Spaces, as well as

catalogs, art periodical articles, and newspaper accounts.

The fallacy of immaculate perception

What do art objects mean? Shelly Errington21 argues that: "Artifacts themselves are mute and meaningless.... Discourses create objects.... Objects may physically preexist those discourses and their institutions, and they may persist beyond them; but, appropriated by new institu- tions, their meanings are remade and they are transformed into new kinds of objects. The notion of 'discourse' also includes the notion of power." Marshall Sahlins22 emphasizes that there is no such thing as "immaculate perception." Art audiences think of themselves - or others - as having an eye, but according to Bourdieu, "The eye is always a product of history, reproduced by education."23 As Sally Price argues, focusing on the construction of the aesthetic, our appre- ciation and interpretation of primitive or ethnographic art stands in

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contrast to a view that emphasizes taste, and always is shaped by social and political categories. 24 Art worlds are status and power games with the object as a strategic piece.

Michael Thompson,25 speaking of rubbish theory, suggests that some objects are defined as durables and others as transients. Durable objects - art works, for instance - gain value over time, while transients - cars, for instance - lose value and are discarded. Thompson notes, however, that durables do not always survive and transients do not always disintegrate, rather their categorization is a control mechanism by those with power (and, not incidentally, those with the most dura- bles). Where an object fits in this categorical system is subject to defini- tional change. Howard Becker26 aruges that what is art and what is craft shifts over time and according to the definitions of influential actors, as in the case of photography or ceramics.

Assigning meaning in self-taught art

The constructionist approach to art is based on the claim that meaning is socially assigned and not inherent in objects and performances. As sculptor and collector Michael Hall noted tartly to a Chicago sympo- sium: "We invent it all" (Field notes). Hall suggested that cultural historian Kenneth Ames released an "ideological virus" - that of constructionism - in his controversial talk at the 1977 Winterthur conference on folk art: "Ames dared to suggest that maybe folk art as such didn't exist and that the thing we call art might, itself, be just a cultural fabrication. He concluded by taunting his audience by sug- gesting that folk art as an idea was perhaps more interestingly viewed as a fictive construct to be studied for what it tells us about ourselves and about the worlds we invent to support the social-cultural myths we live by."27

In a similar vein, Ardery's analysis of Edgar Tolson's reputation is predicated on the belief that aesthetic appreciation is a contest, and, thus, she titles her article "Loser Wins."28 Ardery's view is that the validation of self-taught art is linked to the needs of trained regional artists to create a non-New York model of credibility, pushing personal artistic ambitions.29 Those with personal or institutional interests - artists, critics, or grassroots community activists - may strategically appeal to the authenticity inherent in self-taught art to validate their position.

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Self-taught art has been defined as "one of the last frontiers of twentieth- century American art,"30 giving it cachet within a culture in which the image of frontier has enormous cultural resonance.31 This construc- tion of the field served to create commodities out of what had previ- ously lacked material value. Michael Hall, referring to the situation of Kentucky carvers, suggests that over time: "the market emerged and there were profits to be made and there were careers to build and there was power to wield.... The commodification of folk art as an idea and in terms of the objects is the thing that we saw take place in the mid 70s.... And we began to see careerism being a part of it. Self-taught artists who suddenly saw careers available to themselves. Dealers who saw careers in the promotion of the art of the self-taught. These things weren't thinkable because they weren't doable in 1967.... There is a legitimization that has taken place."32 Yet, the changes that some embrace, others, such as folklorist John Vlach, reject, calling it "'a fraud perpetrated by the New York art establishment. You know the book, The Painted Word?' he asks, referring to Tom Wolfe's famous expose of the emptiness of modern art. 'Well, this is The Finger Painted Word.' "33

Whether one accepts Ardery's view that the creation of the field was an attack on the New York establishment or Vlach's view that it was a knowing conspiracy by that same establishment, the consensus is that these artists don't sell themselves, but must be sold - if they are to be treated as authentic - by those who have the authority to speak about art, those with institutionally validated cultural capital.

Justifying the self-taught

How do elite participants in this art world justify their attraction for those who, by definition, work outside of the standards of professional practice of the artistic community. How, in short, do they justify the self-taught qualities of artists? In the case of self-taught art these ideological structures pose alternative models of esteem, relating to the power of the individual, the importance of the creative urge, and the romantic notion of the Other. 34

Enshrining the individual

From the nineteenth-century French traveler Alexis De Tocqueville on, many observers suggest that "American exceptionalism" enshrines the

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standing of the individual: the cowboy, the eccentric inventor, the self- made man, the confidence trickster.

Self-taught art, by its label and its reference, ennobles the individual. That we admire the autochthonous artist, the artist who allegedly stands outside the community, is revealing. One collector explained that he admired this art, because: "It's a personal statement.... The intuitive artists, they're making a very individualist expression. This is like a universe which the artist has created" (Interview). This echoes the comments of Bert Hemphill and Julia Weissman in their founda- tional Twentieth Century Folk Art and Artists: "The vision of the folk artist is a private one, a personal universe, a world of his or her own making."35 Curator Stacy Hollander notes, similarly, that "the singu- lar note consistently sounded in the twentieth century has been the persistence of the individual, even when drawing upon convention, tradition, or heritage. Perhaps the strongest bond shared by these artists is the fulfillment of their creative impulses through a process that developed outside of the artworld."36 Although these claims downplay the importance of the artist's community, institutional affili- ations, and nation, they resonate in a culture that wishes to believe that persons can impulsively create a meaningful world without relying upon others.37 What better justification for creativity than that it doesn't depend on and that it wasn't produced for the benefit of others.

Creative urges

The ideology of authenticity suggests that the self-taught artist is not merely isolated, but produces powerful, emotional images "from the very heart of human expression, from the basic creative urge."38 A collector comments: "They are close to the unconscious. They create archetypal themes" (Field notes). Such a claim emphasizes a belief in the centrality of intuition and the power of the voice within. A dealer remarked: "They are ferociously honest and they push the barriers.... What I like about the work of self-taught artists is that perhaps it's more easy to see the honesty in the work and the sincerity in the work" (Interview).

Viewers feel that their emotional reaction validates the art's power. As dealer Joe Adams notes: "Contemporary folk art emerged because it is filled with passion! It communicates. A friend of mine says, 'You have to look at it with an open heart, not just an open mind.' It's not

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cerebral. You don't need someone to analyze it for you to criticize and intellectualize. With folk art, you're either going to love it or hate it. But you're never going to forget it." 39 Or in the words of a collector, "Why are people drawn to this art? Because they connect with it.... I think it's something that anybody can look at this and get attached. There's an emotional level that is displayed" (Interview).

While not all accept these paeans to the ineffable, and some find them insufficiently theoretical and perhaps insufferably anti-intellectual, these are common arguments. The assumption of unmediated commu- nication legitimates the works.

The siren song ofpurity

All institutions desire a close relationship with values they deem im- portant, and art worlds are no different. As Zolberg and Cherbo note, purity, despite some uncomfortable racial echoes, is a central image in the discourse of self-taught art.40 Despite the multi-cultural emphasis of the field, the image of purity regularly reemerges as informants attempt, awkwardly or articulately, to explain what made this body of work special. In the words of a museum director: "My view of it is that there's nothing pure, but this is closer to pure than a lot of the academ- ic art that gets made for galleries." And, yet, what does purity mean in this artworld? Part of the reference is the emotional directness, described above, and part is a child-like virtue - the very ignorance of the artist who lacks theory that might interfere with the process of unmediated creation. A collector asserted: "The common thread that runs through all of it is a naivete.... Back to our intuitive core" (Interview).

These artists are treated as noble savages, directing our sophisticated eyes to what we claim is important and real. Curator Roger Manley notes, referring to well-known self-taught artists: "The odd thing is, I think people like ... you and me do need people like Clyde.... Artists like Clyde Jones, Annie Hooper,Vollis Simpson and Sam Doyle, Geor- gia Blizzard and Lonnie Holley, though the objects they make and the environments they build, help give our communities a sense of place, help combat the modern tendency of everything toward mass same- ness, toward shopping mall and fast-food, multiplex-cinema America."41 Manley emphasizes that these artists are not "you and me."

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Such romantic images are easy to skewer. As curator/critic Joanne Cubbs suggests with some skepticism: "The mythic antithesis of mod- ern society, the idea of nature is often called upon to protest the ethical and spiritual corruption of society.... Outsider Art serves as a contem- porary construct through which western culture can continue to exer- cise its belief in the mysterious, ineffable, and transcendent nature of art itself. It is the most recent imaginary device through which the Romantic idea of the artist as outsider survives."42 For art historian Kenneth Ames, this constitutes "a redemptive myth, a narrative that supports a heroic image of the folk artist as a fiercely independent handicrafter who, in spite of his or her poverty, was happy to be living in a democratic country."43 Critic Alice Thorson opined of the 1990 0! Appalachia show, whose pieces: "fulfill the time-honored American mythos of the artist as an inventive and individualistic character, while ne'er is heard a critical word toward the ideological and political super- structure which determines the world they inhabit" and "in the censo- rious '90s, folk art may prove the perfect antidote to offensive art.... Both prongs of the exhibit tap the romantic myth of the noble savage, who, uncorrupted by the taint of 'civilization,' is deemed more natural and more moral than modern, 'sophisticated' man."44 And, so, critic James Yood argues: "The enshrinement of outsider vision is a stalking- horse concealing contempt for the aspirations of high culture; it be- comes a blind behind which is concealed a disinclination and antipathy toward, and ignorance of, the dictates of contemporary art. Intuitive art is seen then as the sole art of Arcadia, all else is fraudulent, mired in intellectual corruption, needlessly obscure and pretentious. What was low now becomes high, what was high now becomes debased. New York is Gomorrah, education causes loss of originality, knowl- edge is insidious and rejectable, and anti-intellectualism is to be de- fended and made officially viable."45

Because a group presents an ideological formulation doesn't mean that it is universally accepted. Indeed, the image of purity that some em- brace is rejected by others. Yet, accepted or rejected, the image of purity is a central image in the arsenal of proponents of self-taught art - a quality that defines the work whether present or absent.

Biography games

Closely tied to the motivations and inspirations of artists are the presentations of their biographies. The biographies of self-taught artists

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justify their authenticity, serving as a primary criterion of evaluation. To be sure, the work itself matters, as many people have interesting biographies, but the biography invests the material with meaning. As dealers sell objects, they provide biographical details, details that are not equally emphasized by neighboring galleries that specialize in contemporary art. The identity of the artist is embedded in the defini- tions of the field and in the practices of selling.

One dealer suggested that the status system of this market is upside down. He reported that at a party he overheard a portion of conversa- tion about an artist: "'Is he educated?' 'No,' 'oh, good.' 'Is he black?'" (Field notes). This is an art world in which the standard criteria for status do not apply. Yet, not everyone can be untrained. Because of the apparent vitality of the field, many want to get in on "the folk art bandwagon" (Field notes). As a gallery owner reported: "A woman walked up to me at a show and said rather haughtily, my daughter and I are Outsider Artists, but because we're white and middle-class, no- body appreciates us, and I said you can't be an Outsider Artist and stand there and tell me you are" (Interview).

However, the rush to the real is not unique to this artistic domain. Americans yearn for authenticity, linked to a rejection of the plastic culture in which the speaker feels that he or she is embedded. Scholars have begun to unpack this idea, suggesting that our search for authen- ticity is illusory, although embraced in both academic and popular discourse.46 Miles Orvell finds a tension between imitation and au- thenticity in American culture, with the latter increasingly venerated in the twentieth-century. We search for "the real thing," as we mistrust the ability of machines to reproduce "originals." Raymonde Moulin speaks of an artistic ideology of the unique - part of the "return to nature" and the "return to artisanship" - a social and aesthetic evaluation (borrowing from Rousseau and Ruskin) producing rarity and value.47 Not incidentally these reproductions have a different price structure, making them more accessible, and less available as status symbols, a form of conspicuous consumption. Genres, such as photography, easily amenable to duplication, struggle to create the idea of the unique, as by emphasizing the importance of the original print.48 Some argue that in post-modern society it is difficult to distinguish the real from the simulacra, except through narratives of origin. 49 Authen- ticity implies to authenticate, and so is linked to a market society. 50

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Students of primitive art have asserted that authentic primitive art has died, as all creators are now influenced by a global visual culture - a process that operated over the course of the twentieth century. As one dealer in ethnic jewelry remarked of her former sources: "It's all going downhill. These people used to lead such beautiful lives, and now they have pink plastic shoes.... So everything real is going up in price, because they're not making it anymore."51 We search for "primeval authenticity," linked to isolation from established institutions.52

Richard Peterson53 argues that as early as 1953 country music record producers were searching for authenticity in new talent. He claims that institutions, in this case the Nashville music industry, must fabricate authenticity, just as they fabricated the vinyl on which records were produced. These country musicians frequently came from the same backgrounds as self-taught artists. Julia Ardery suggests in her analy- sis of the creation of Kentucky carver Edgar Tolson's reputation:

Folk art has accorded with the longings of middle-class Americans. It evokes times past through agrarian, religious, and patriotic imagery, through its wrought evidence of the human hand, and, crucially, in the period under review here, through the charisma of the folk artist - typically a rural elder like Tolson, who is assigned the part of a crusty, mythical grandparent. An object of nostalgic desire, folk art satisfied fantasies of anchorage, tender- ness, and control among those who by choice and social circumstance cannot find such satisfactions otherwise.

Theodor Adorno suggests we speak "the jargon of authenticity."55 Many people, including self-taught art world participants, have bought into this rhetoric.

Valuing authenticity

Gerard Wertkin, the director of the American Folk Art Museum,56 once addressed a symposium, "This is an amazing field we're in.... It has more power and has more of an authentic voice than most of the art we look at today. It is that authenticity that invites us in" (Field notes). A member of an e-mail discussion group noted that there is "the near universal preference that collectors, dealers and critics have for the so-called 'early & uninfluenced' or where appropriate 'environ- mental' works by an artist.... To condemn a later phase in comparison to an early one just based on 'timing' and a linked notion of 'authentic- ity' seems curious to me." The poster indicates that later work some-

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times has more artistic power, as the artist learns from experience.57 Beyond drawing our attention to the art world preference - and its implication for the role of artist as incapable of learning - he empha- sizes the belief in a difference between early (authentic) and later (altered) art through the metaphor of "apples versus oranges." In this metaphor the works are perceived as not only distinct, but also as belonging to different domains. We find the same theme in the com- ment of a curator who says of ("deaf and dumb") artist James Castle and others, "You have to understand that they have a natural-born instinct" (Field notes). This naturalization of Idaho native Castle is intended honorably, but it is not something that one would likely say of Wyoming-born Jackson Pollack - an artist, but not one with "natural- born" instincts.

Some parody this desire for authenticity, as did writer Larissa MacFar- quhar in a 1996 New York article, "But It Is Art?" MacFarquhar58 argues that the field is characterized by: "a somewhat maudlin, neo- modernist longing for art that feels authentic - the product of social exile and misery, not northern-lit studios in the Hamptons. Outsider art fits the bill perfectly: A typical outsider either lives in a rural hamlet in the South or suffers some sort of debilitating mental disorder.... outsider art is supposed to arise, twisted and singular, directly from the unconscious."

The un-real

Within the field of self-taught art, a desire exists among collectors and dealers for gritty reality. Dealer Lois Zetter noted, with what I take to be ironic detachment: "If one had a [James] Castle and was for some reason going to part with it, potential buyers who may be a tad, shall we say, unsophisticated might balk at the 'spit' part of the ingredients - But we! who 'get' it! It adds a certain frisson, I think."59 A collector jokes about dealers who say of their artists, "'He is actually a retarded child who, at age eight, tore off his right leg, and had nothing to do and so he has begun with his one tooth that sticks out at a ninety degree angle - he's begun to paint these paintings, and he does it only to certain music.' Oh, come on. These stories are getting preposterous" (Interview). As dealer Randall Morris notes, those artists whose authen- ticity is "beyond argument" are the ones who can sell their work in the six-figure range.60

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If authenticity sells art, claims of inauthenticity can be damaging. Ironically collectors themselves sometimes set this process in motion; by suggesting themes and materials; the patron can alter the aesthetic of the object and damage the artist's financial future.61 Something similar apparently happened with J. B. Murry, as two patrons each felt that the other was overly influencing the artist by providing sugges- tions and material (Interview). These artists are no longer creating from the heart, but are driven to be more marketable.

Authenticity can be lost: a problem for well-established artists too attuned to the market. Some suggest that the late Reverend Howard Finster was seduced by the market. Finster's early works are revered by collectors and are expensive. His later works, cheaper, more routi- nized, are less regarded and worth less, even if they meet customer demand. Many assume that by the end his family was doing much of the work. I was told that some of the works Finster signed were dated when he was in the hospital. One collector commented: "This is not good. Right there that throws a wrench into the idea of Howard" (Field notes; emphasis added). His toll-free number (1-800-FINSTER) didn't help. Finster is given a pass by some because, as a minister, he wishes to proselytize and his early works were so profound, but few claim that his output of the past fifteen years is very significant aesthetically. One collector felt that Finster has become "infected by popular acclaim" (Interview). Bruce Johnson, a former museum director, commented: "I have trouble with many of these [twentieth-century works] because the artists, as soon as they reach a point of commercial success, quickly lose the innocence I like about folk art."62

One collector who had purchased the work of a recently discovered Southern artist and was enthusiastic about it-she had described the artist as "really untutored"-later told me that she finds his work "bogus." She explains that he is the wealthiest person in his (rural) town, living in a "nice new rustic house" and adds: "We lived with it for two weeks before we began laughing at it.... We fell for it. Everything is so overdone. So hyped. This guy is rich!" (Field notes). This collec- tor, living in an upscale suburb, admired the piece until learning of the artist's social status. Newly acquired details of biography changed the meaning of the painting. A dealer noted of one of her artists: "He's very well-organized and has a color Xerox of all his paintings, and does duplicate paintings of some of them.... I don't show people his color Xerox brochures, because I think that detracts from his authen- ticity. I think he is authentic, but I think it turned people off.... I don't

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think they should be really good at marketing themselves. I think it detracts from their authenticity" (Interview).

Drawing lines

Given this complaint, how can one establish the authenticity of an artist? What constitutes the basis for a symbolic boundary? Take the case of Albert Louden, a British artist, whose career was detailed in Raw Vision, a leading journal of self-taught art:

It isn't easy being an outsider. Once elected, there are appearances to be kept up: the solitary lifestyle, the nutty habits, the freedom from artistic influences. Above all, indifference to earning money. Scrounging for canvas and point, going without luxuries such as food and socks, are all part of the life of austerity that one's public demands. In the end, the outsider's surest way of proving his integrity is to be dead. [Louden's] crime is that he broke the outsider's vow of poverty - by selling his paintings to commercial galleries. Such is the outsider's Catch 22. Some of the very dealers who bought and sold his work now regard him as the ousted outsider. Untouchable. He might as well be mainstream. A self-taught painter and van driver by trade, Louden lives on his own in a tiny two-story [house]. He pads barefoot from room to room riffling through the stacks of paintings, whose sheer number, overflow- ing into garden sheds, hints at obsessiveness. Outsider bonus point.6

The author argues that Louden is being punished for his desire to be commercial. Whether Louden is "truly" an outsider artist is not at issue. What is important is that the author defends him by emphasizing his eccentricity, his poverty, and that he is self-taught, while others

reject him because he is too knowledgeable about the artworld.

The drawing of symbolic boundaries is particularly problematic for educated artists who wish to be seen as outsiders,64 with one dealer

referring to the need for an "anti-resume"65 and one artist contending that a law school education did not disqualify her as an outsider artist, because of her psychiatric difficulties. Consider Malcolm McKesson, 87 years old at the time, as described by his advisor, an art history graduate student:

In terms of Malcolm being an "outsider", self-taught, folk artist, etc., I have somewhat mixed feelings. Clearly he is being marketed as an outsider. He shows ... at the Outsider Art Fair where many people have collected his work.... His work is in the [collection of] the Musee de l'Art Brut in Lau- sanne. He lives a relatively reclusive life in his rundown New York apartment. In many ways, he is completely in his own world - he has been obsessively

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working for decades with no real interest in sales. His work is clearly obses- sive and clearly driven by his sexual fantasies which are quite "exotic" to say the least. However, he is a Harvard graduate, relatively well-traveled, taught art education at schools and is a very literate, intelligent man.

As a matter of the politics of authenticity, does being weird trump being trained? Curator Lynne Adele speaks of a "gray area" between trained and self-taught.67 This blurriness led Jean Dubuffet to create the category New Invention for artists too influenced by mainstream art to be considered exemplars of Art Brut.68 In practice, self-taught art is market-driven; the test of legitimacy is whether dealers show the work and collectors buy it.

Identity art

I don't know Clyde Angel. Neither, it appears, does anyone else. How-

ever, if God ever decided to create a self-taught artist, He might well have named him Clyde Angel with its combination of backwoods ethos and divine inspiration. Consider an account of Angel's biography:

Angel, Clyde (b. 1957) Clyde Angel was born in Beaver Island, Iowa, and is a "highway wanderer" who makes his art from scrap metal he picks up along the road, often tin cans and rusty car parts. He is a recluse who lives some- where in Iowa and does not want to know people or interact with society. Angel says people can know him from his art and the writings he often includes with it. He learned rudimentary welding techniques from a welder/ fireman who became a friend and who allows Angel to use his tools. He makes two- and three-dimensional figures of imaginary women, men, and animals.

It is also reported that Angel was hospitalized as a paranoid schizo-

phrenic. Clyde Angel is currently represented by the Judy Saslow

Gallery, a prestigious Chicago dealer, and his work sells for up to $1500. Saslow hasn't met him;70 his work - along with his writings and videos - is delivered by a friend, his authorized agent, Iowa

sculptor Vernon Willits.

Recently, in the weekly Chicago Reader,71 Jeff Huebner recounted his unsuccessful attempt to track down Angel, even combing birth records from Beaver Island, which is today uninhabited (there were no recorded births on the island in 1957), examining county school records, and

talking to former island residents. Ultimately the author doesn't reach a final conclusion, suggesting that "Some people believe in angels;

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others don't"; 72 the general conclusion of the secular art world - which had whispered about Angel's authenticity - is that Clyde Angel is a moniker used by a trained artist.

My concern is not to track down the elusive Mr. Angel, but to ask about the power of authenticity. Does it matter if Angel is real? The sculptures are real, so the question is whether it matters if the biogra- phy is accurate. As one writer suggested, "it wouldn't surprise me if it was a made up story and who cares anyway. [If] the work speaks for itself that's all that really interests me." 73

Perhaps the question is how it matters, in that it surely matters if dealers have been providing clients with inaccurate information. Why would a prominent and respected dealer, such as Saslow, be willing to take the risk? Saslow was so confident in the work that she included it in the show of work from Chicago collections that she organized at the Halle Saint Pierre in Paris in 1998.74 Saslow explains that, along with the art itself, the mystery is part of the appeal. She explains: "Privacy comes with the territory - it's part of the deal. If you love the art, you accept the terms of that. I just try to enjoy the finished product and try not to ask any questions. If I ask too many questions, I spoil the relationship. I respect it, not just for business reasons but also because I don't want to betray any trust or confidence. It wouldn't be fair. Any good story has a hint of mystery. It's an unusual story, but not a singular one. Clyde's singular personality is what makes the work more unusual, but the rest is none of my business." 75

Surely most of the details of the account don't matter to collectors. If Clyde Angel were not his real name, if he were not born in 1957, if he never lived on Beaver Island, none of that would really matter in a world that is used to pseudonyms and creative biography; the shaping and fabrication of biography is not limited to this aesthetic domain,76 even if biography is a more central selling point here. Within the world of self-taught art, more important, essential even, is the fact that he was mentally ill, is homeless, and especially that he was not trained at art school. Facts have different weight in the creation of an outsider artist.

Although it would be nice to imagine that biographical accounts reflect the lives of artists, such is not always the case, as perhaps in the case of Clyde Angel. Some individuals, in a sense, forge a life. In the words of one dealer: "Condescension is perpetrated by building false biogra-

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phies, stories that clean up the truth, narratives designed to falsely conjure up images of the sweet old naif or the noble primitive savage, or that emphasize psychological flaws we imagine cause people to be creative."77 A curator noted that, "Pickers in particular make up stories to sell stuff.... This is the isolated, uneducated black woman. Domestic all these years. It might not ever be as made up as it could. There might be some grains of truth in it, but taking a Southern stereotype ... not really getting the biography from the artist, or taking it from the sur- face and going off" (Interview). People sometimes tidy up (or mess up) life stories to make them more appealing and more salable. Why not have the life that would be most helpful, as long as it is not too false?

Sometimes the changes seem fairly minor, as the spelling of a last name, transforming a normal name into a folk art name: "I asked [Dr. Rollins, J. B. Murry's doctor, friend and advisor] how do you spell his name.... He said, Murray [the interviewer's preference] how do you want your name spelled? And Rollins said that they decided on M-u-r- r-y, but in my thinking he didn't care. He didn't write, he was not literate, and I really felt that M-u-r-r-y was connected with the outsider way of seeing him.... It's not the typical way of spelling Murray. M-u- r-r-a-y is very common. It's like changing the spelling of Smith. It makes it a little distinctive. But I didn't want to do it that way because his family doesn't spell it that way." Mose Tolliver writes the "S" in his first name backwards. I was told this was because "a white educated woman taught him to do that, thinking it would make it more cute and fluffy" (Interview).

One white self-taught artist reportedly claimed at first that his work was by "this poor black guy in the woods of Alabama that only he knows about." My informant told me that "It does make a difference. It's like selling dishonesty. Everyone believes to be a good folk artist, you need to be poor, black, dead, disabled, uneducated." Yet, the belief is that biography sells. Two collectors joked that they would begin producing art, "We'll live out in the woods.... We could write a credi- ble tear-jerker story. Our fathers abused us, our mothers beat us. For each story our prices would go up $100." They decide that they should take turns living in the woods and selling the art (Field notes). The market for authenticity is such that these literary fancies have their pull.

The battle over biography reminds us that, in the words of Chicago dealer Carl Hammer, there is "a heavy reliance upon the extremism of

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the story and not consistently on the works of art."78 For many, it is not simply the work, isolated on the white wall of a museum or gallery, but in the words of New York dealer Randall Morris, "no work can speak for itself... because without knowing its original context we are

listening to ourselves, not the voice of the work of art."79 Further, the uncertainty of the art world's response to Angel's work suggests that, contrary to formalist claims, one cannot tell from the work whether the artist and the work are authentic.

Biography and reputation matter, but how much? Throughout West- ern art, with its emphasis on personal genius, knowledge of the artist is important - what Bourdieu speaks of as a "theological logic" that places "faith in the creator."80 Scholars, such as Bernard Berenson, diligently search for names to which they can attach anonymous works: the name of the artist enriches the work. With the recognition of an artistic avant garde, the suffering in an artist's life served to legitimate the artist's creativity. What is so central in self-taught art is not absent elsewhere. Yet, beauty and power supposedly resides in the works. As a result, a tension exists between those who emphasize biography and those who emphasize the art works. The explicitness and bitterness of this debate in the world of self-taught art suggests that this artistic domain differs from others in which consensual belief exists that the art has priority, even if knowledge of the artist always is important. If biography matters throughout the art world, in most domains it is taken as informing the art, rather than justifying it. As one former dealer explained, "if you buy a Rauschenberg, ... you're not interested in whether Rauschenberg is married and has children and whether he lives in a pokey little home" (Interview). An art writer noted: "These circumstances [poverty, racism, religious conviction, illiteracy] should not be used as neat anecdotes to show how "different" the artists are, pushing them further "outside the white-walled rooms" of art history. Imagine if every scholarly discussion of Jean-Michel Basquiat's work focused on his heroin addiction and whether or not he was ripped off by drug-providing collectors.... Consider if every lecture on the Renaissance masters was interrupted to determine if the Medicis commissioned any of the work, exercising undue influence on its style and content."81 Collectors of contemporary art buy for the name, but not - typically - for the story. In contrast, in self-taught art few in either "camp" - the biographical or the aesthetic - would deny the value of the other.

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Biofirst

Biographical narrative is central to the field. Collector Chuck Rosenak refers to this as "the legend of the artist," a basis for labeling art and estimating value. In the case of Kentucky sculptor Edgar Tolson his many children, violence, primitive religion, alcoholism, lung problems, poverty, and rural isolation all added to the value of his work. 82

These biographical accounts matter explicitly: collectors buy stories that they share with visitors when they display their art. This is so evident that a journalist remarks, the "Outsider Art Fair is about stories."83 One collector explains: "I'm a student of literature and a former English teacher, and I just love the stories that go with it, and I always need to know the stories" (Interview). Another told me, "In many cases with this work, the story is far more important than the art is, and people are buying the story as opposed to the piece of art for art's sake, and, you know, who's to say that's a problem.... There are artists I've supported financially just because I like them, and I like their story, but not because I believe the pieces are outstanding" (Inter- view). One gallery worker notes, "I do buy pieces that I don't like. I mean I've bought art before that I haven't really liked when I first look at it, but as I learned more about the people and more about the process and where it comes from, I gotta have the piece" (Interview). It is remarkable that collectors admit - without embarrassment - to purchasing works that they don't admire, but such is the lure of the story. In the words of one curator, biography is the "calling card of the field.... It's not the work itself" (Field notes).

Stories affect sales. At one gallery, a couple was told of a homeless artist who made jewelry from leftover Mardi Gras trash. The husband doubted the story, but the wife told him that the story might be true, and as the pin was selling for $30, the story was worth the price (Field notes). On another occasion, a collector commented critically about a dealer who was selling work by an artist who lived under a bridge, noting "She was pulling on our heartstrings. She was piquing our curiosity. It was like selling tickets to a freak show." Her husband added, "We bought on emotion" (Field notes). The recognition of the manipulation was not sufficient to offset the dealer's strategy. Some collectors specialize in troubled domains, "asking for work from spe- cific pathologies, schizos or autistics." 84

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Both dealers and curators play on the emotions of their audience. On one occasion, a dealer reported the tragedies that had recently befallen one of his artists: her home was flooded; her adult son with a mental

age of five, who had been institutionalized, fell off a ladder, splintering his leg and had to move home; and she almost died from an eye operation. I felt that the dealer was attempting to increase her "bio-

graphical value" (Field notes). Her bad fortune was good fortune for her dealer. To understand the role of misfortune as a marketing strat-

egy, consider the case of Robyn "The Beaver" Beverland:

Beverland, Robyn (1958-1998). Robyn "The Beaver" Beverland lived in Old- smar, Florida, in a house next door to his parents. Robyn enjoyed helping his parents in their yard and even more he enjoyed the pleasure he gave to people with his paintings. He had a very rare disease called Wolfrand [sic: Wolfram] Syndrome, which left him blind in one eye and only partially sighted in the other. He also had diabetes and a mild case of cerebral palsy. Yet he was a cheerful person whose world was his family, his Bible, and his art. He painted "from his own mind's experiences" and used housepaint and plywood or cardboard. One of his most often repeated images was one of several faces of different colors called "We Are All One." After several bouts with pneumo- nia, "The Beaver" spent his last months on a respirator and died August 20, 1998.85

After his death, his parents placed a full-page ad in Folk Art, the glossy magazine of the Museum of American Folk Art, thanking his collec- tors. The text of the notice read in part, "Robyn's world was His

Family, His Bible, His Town, His Art Work, and YOU, the thousands of beautiful people who smiled when you viewed his little paintings.... EVERYDAY WAS BEAUTIFUL TO OUR 'BEAVER'.... He just wanted you to smile at this art work.... Maybe GOD will let him paint the HEAVENS now and then - Robyn always called his paintings 'HIS CHILDREN'. Robyn, your children will live forever." 86

The Beaver would sit at a booth at art shows and paint contentedly. His family sold his works for modest prices. Without his story, most collectors wouldn't find his works compelling. Yet, his work sold, making (low-end) collectors smile, even while his presence upset other collectors who felt, despite their sympathy, that he was a "trained

monkey." His biography was what journalist Wendy Steiner referred to as a "frog-prince parable" of the sufferer who through his art finds - and gives - satisfaction.87

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Artfirst

Phyllis Kind, a prominent New York dealer, explained to a critic intent on discussing biography, that she is "interested in art and not sociol- ogy."88 Her point is that it is the object that matters. Expressing this theme are the comments of a respected dealer:

I went to a show years ago in Cincinnati, and I looked at a piece and it looked like an imitation of Dali. And I said, you know, why is this here. It wasn't appealing, it wasn't interesting. It looked like a bad imitation. It looked more like a thrift store painting than something that should've been in this museum. And the person said, you should hear the story of this guy. Well, that's ridiculous. If the story is what's interesting and appealing, then write a book. Don't hang his work.... People are losing sight of the piece and embellishing it with stories.... I think it's wrong. I think that there is no more reason to put into these resumes personal things than there is in your resume. If you want to tell what surgeries you've had in your life, that's your business.... If I happen to know that he had fathered illegitimate children or his wife left him 'cause he was an abuser, I wouldn't share that with you. (Interview)

The exhibit of several dozen art works of Sybil, a woman with multiple personalities, raised this issue.89 A dealer noted that "the article ends by saying that the paintings aren't very good, but the story is fascinating. The implication running through it is that Outsider art really isn't very good either but the stories sure are. Again the battle cry; art before bio." 90

An artist noted that clients expected these details: "Why, you may ask, does a person have to buy a story as well as a piece of art? ... When I first started exhibiting, I was in the pithy observation business.... When I would meet people who had already seen my work, they would often be disappointed that I was not (pick one): divorced, obese, in therapy, from another country, and several other equally random cate- gories that they somehow inferred from my work. It was as if, in my still married, average weight, untherapized, American-born life, I was not ... authentic. My paintings were not supposed to stand on their own; instead, they were supposed to be props for my personal dog and pony show."91 This artist contends that her biography subverts her art, preventing people from seeing her vision. It is in the biography that the market finds the artist's intention, not in what is on canvas.

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Creating authenticity

The identity of artists is essential in Western art markets in which the conceptions of genius and creativity are so essential. Influential and powerful actors create the creator through the shaping of biography. While this is true in art worlds generally, nowhere is it truer than in the artistic domain of self-taught art in which the authenticity of the artist justifies the authenticity of the art work. The work doesn't stand on its own as an aesthetic object, but it made so by virtue of the fact that even these creators can have genius. By examining the ideological stances and organizing principles of this art world, it is possible to examine how authenticity is created in practice as a symbolic boundary, sepa- rating those whose authority is taken-for-granted and those whose authority is given by the very fact of their ability to create at the mar- gins. Through the workings of the art market these products by the dis- advantaged and the outsider become prestige goods - not despite these backgrounds, but precisely because of them. The conditions of their production legitimate their otherness, and, hence, justify their value.

As the opening example of Hans Jorgensen attests, not every artist knows what to make of these claims; they live and work and find that others wish to define and value them in particular ways. It is not their self-image that is at issue, but the attributions of selfhood made to them. While some artists become savvy about this elite interest, this involvement may come at a cost in that it is the separation, the dis- tance, that defines authenticity. The greater the involvement, the less the claim to an authentic status.

To be authentic is, typically, to have an authentic biography. Biography becomes a market asset for an artist, even if he or she does not recognize it. If Clyde Angel's works are made by a trained artist, that artist is trading on the value-added quality of a suitable life history. If not, Angel is doing the trading, although the enigma of his biography may now be working against him, transforming an asset into a liability.

Perhaps the work should be more important than the story, but at the moment the who, the identity, matters greatly. The biography of the artist rubs off on the collector: you are the artist you display. Perhaps for this reason in a group that values a multi-cultural perspective, awash in tolerance, the work of vernacular, marginalized artists is so valued. It is not that this work should not be appreciated on its own merits absent a colonialist mentality; it should, if it could.

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Ultimately self-taught art is a form of identity art in which the charac- teristics of the creators matter as much as the characteristics of the work. Although this study focuses on an art market, the construction of images of authenticity applies to other domains - aesthetic worlds, leisure worlds, personal growth movements, and the politics of Orien- talism and multi-culturalism. The politics of authenticity can trump the traditional status structure, assigning value to those with the least social and cultural capital. In the words of Julia Ardery, Loser Wins, but if losers win, their victories occur in a social system in which they remain powerless. Still losers, after all.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Julia Ardery, Howard S. Becker, Lynne Browne, and Tony Rajer for comments on an earlier version.

Notes

1. Interview of Hans Jorgensen by Willem Volkersz, March 7, 1975, Archives of American Art transcript, 25-26.

2. Tom Wolfe, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (New York, 1971). 3. Gerald L. Pocius, "Art," Journal of American Folklore 108 (1995): 413. 4. George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (Ithaca: Cornell

University Press, 1973). 5. Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word (New York: Bantam, 1976); Arthur Danto, "The

Artworld," Journal of Philosophy 61 (October 15, 1964): 571-584. 6. Howard Becker, "Art as Collective Action," American Sociological Review 39

(1974): 767-776. 7. Janet Wolff, The Social Production of Art (New York: St. Martins, 1981). 8. Anne E. Bowler, "Asylum Art: The Social Construction of an Aesthetic Category,"

in Vera L. Zolberg and Joni Maya Cherbo, editors, Outsider Art: Contesting Boun- daries in Contemporary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 29.

9. Elsewhere I discuss the battles ("term warfare") over the appropriate label for the field - the competition among proponents of outsider art, folk art, and self-taught art. In this article, I use the term "self-taught art," the least controversial label to refer to the field as a whole.

10. Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York:

Schocken, 1976); Jane C. Desmond, Staging Tourism. Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); xix; John Urry, The Tourist Gaze. Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1990).

11. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture. Tourism, Museums, and Heri-

tage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 239.

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12. For extensions of this argument, emphasizing definitions of genuineness and core beliefs, particularly as related to the construction of the self, see Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972); Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Vintage, 1978); Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). These argu- ments, limning the authentic self, are, of course, derivative from those of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [New York: Harper, 1962]), whether supportive or critical.

13. Regina Bendix, In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies (Madi- son: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997): 13-14.

14. Viktor Gecas and Peter J. Burke, "Self and Identity," in Sociological Perspectives on Social Psychology, Karen S. Cook, Gary Alan Fine, and James S. House, editors (Boston: Allyn and Bacon 1995), 42.

15. Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, "Beyond "Identity," Theory and Society 29/1 (2000): 7.

16. Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field

(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 168. 17. Howard Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 258-269. 18. Admittedly, there are numerous stylistic groups in the contemporary art world, and

many (if not all) might consider themselves "out of the mainstream." 19. Jane Becker, Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American

Folk, 1930-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 194. 20. Arjun Appadurai, "Commodities and the Politics of Value," in Arjun Appadurai,

editor. The Social Life of Things (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 6. 21. Shelly Errington, The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of Progress

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 22. Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). 23. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), iii. 24. Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1989), 7-22. 25. Michael Thompson, Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value (Ox-

ford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 9. 26. Howard Becker, "Arts and Crafts," American Journal of Sociology, 83 (1978): 862-

889; Howard S. Becker, "La Confusion de Valeurs," in Pierre-Michel Menger and Jean-Claude Passeron, editors, LArt de la Recherche: Melanges (Paris: La Docu- mentation Francaise, 1994), 11-28. Available in English ("Confusions of Value") at http: / /www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/hbecker/Confusion.html.

27. Michael D. Hall, "The Mythic Outsider," New Art Examiner (September 1991): 16. See also Donald Kuspit, "The Appropriation of Marginal Art in the 1980s," American Art 5/1-2 (Winter/Spring 1991): 134.

28. Julia Ardery, "'Loser Wins': Outsider Art and the Salvaging of Disinterestedness," Poetics 24 (1997): 329-346.

29. We see this process in the enshrinement of self-taught artists by comparing them, favorably, with canonized artists. Thus, MAFA director Robert Bishop could say of Mose Tolliver's work at the Corcoran show: "I would say in comparing Tolliver's work to Picasso, it is of equal value - you can hang him beside a Picasso and you have the same kind of creativity and deep personal vision" (Anton Haardt, "Mose Tolliver Goes to Washington," Raw Vision 12 (Summer 1995): 28).

30. Lynne Adele, Spirited Journeys: Self-Taught Texas Artists of the Twentieth Century (Austin: Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, 1997), 13.

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31. The development of the field of self-taught art has been a process that has occurred over the course of the twentieth-century, even prior to the writings of Jean Dubuffet and Michael Hall. Early in the century, avant-garde artists appropriated images of the self-taught, notably, but not exclusively Henri Rousseau in the early years of the century, and mentally ill artists somewhat later. These embrasures allowed the avant garde to attack the canons of the institutions of art. Again, the issue of the authenticity of creativity was central (see Bowler "Asylum Art"; Lucienne Peiry, Art Brut: The Origins of Outsider Art (Paris: Flammarion, 2001)).

32. Interview of Michael Hall with Julia Ardery, August 14, 1993, transcript, 14-16. Available in Oral History Archives, University of Kentucky Library.

33. Jack Hitt, "The Selling of Howard Finster," Southern Magazine (November 1987): 54-55.

34. This last point is effectively discussed in light of the history of the art of the mentally ill, as described by Anne E. Bowler, "Asylum Art," 12-15, 31.

35. Herbert W. Hemphill, Jr. and Julia Weissman, Twentieth Century Folk Art and Artists (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974), 9.

36. Stacy C. Hollander, "Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century," Folk Art 23/1 (Spring 1998): 46.

37. Ralph Turner, "The Real Self: From Institution to Impulse," American Journal of Sociology 81 (1976): 989-1016.

38. John Maizels, "no title," Raw Vision 11 (1995): 13. 39. Joe Adams, "Joe Adams Answers Questions From New Collectors About Building

a Folk Art Collection." 20th Century Folk Art News (July 1996): 10-11. 40. Vera L. Zolberg and Joni Maya Cherbo, "Introduction," in Vera L. Zolberg and

Joni Maya Cherbo, editors, Outsider Art: Contesting Boundaries in Contemporary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2. See also Steven Dubin, "The Centrality of Marginality: Naive Artists and Savvy Supporters," in ibid., 48.

41. Roger Manley, "Robbing the Garden," Folk Art Messenger 7/2 (Winter 1994): 5. 42. Joanne Cubbs, "Rebels, Mystics, and Outcasts," in Michael D. Hall and Eugene W.

Metcalf, Jr., editors, The Artist Outsider: Creativity and the Boundaries of Culture

(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 90. 43. Cited by John Michael Vlach, "The Wrong Stuff," New Art Examiner 19 (September

1991): 23. 44. Alice Thorson, "The Temptation of 'O'Appalachia," New Art Examiner 18 (October

1990): 28, 30. 45. James Yood, "Et in Arcadia Ego?" New Art Examiner 19 (April 1992): 26. 46. Regina Bendix, In Search of Authenticity, 3-4. 47. Raymonde Moulin, "La Genese de la Raret6 Artisque," in Raymonde Moulin, De

la Valueur de lArt: Recueil dArticles (Paris: Flammarion, 1995), 161, 167. 48. Ibid., 180-182. 49. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

Press, 1994), 9. 50. Alan Sondheim, "Unnerving Questions Concerning the Critique and Presentation

of Folk/Outsider Arts,"Art Papers (July/August 1989): 34. 51. Shelly Errington, The Death of Authentic Primitive Art, 118, see also 3. 52. Judith McWillie, "From Ideology to Identity: Syncretism and the Art of the XXI

Century," in Syncretism: The Art of the XXI Century (New York: Alternative

Museum, 1991), 5. 53. Richard A. Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1997), 3.

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54. Julia S. Ardery, The Temptation: Edgar Tolson and the Genesis of Twentieth-Century Folk Art (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 277.

55. Theodor W. Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity (translated by Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).

56. In 2001, the museum subtly but significantly changed its name from the Museum of American Folk Art to the American Museum of Folk Art: transforming itself into a showcase for international folk art.

57. E-mail to outsiderart@onelist.com. "Early Versus Late - Apples versus Oranges?" October 30, 1999.

58. Larissa MacFarquhar, "But Is It Art?" New York (January 29, 1996): 40. 59. E-mail from Lois Zetter to outsiderart@onelist.com, "re: Castle," January 19, 1999. 60. E-mail from Randall Morris to outsiderart@onelist.com, "so anyway...," March

23, 1999. 61. Rosemary O. Joyce, "'Fame Don't Make the Sun Any Cooler': Folk Artists and the

Marketplace," in John Michael Vlach and Simon J. Bronner, editors, Folk Art and Art Worlds (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1986), 226.

62. Richard Blodgett, "Collectors Flock to Folk Art," New York Times (September 12, 1976).

63. John Windsor, "Catch 22: The Case of Albert Louden," Raw Vision 18 (Spring 1997): 50.

64. A prominent collector was telling me about her lunch with an established self- taught artist (although a boundary-stretcher): "He's talking to me about his deals, and he wants to travel in Europe and he thinks it will affect his oeuvre. I said, don't ever use that word again.... I just said, don't use that word. Take it out of your vocabulary because it doesn't work" (Interview).

65. E-mail from Mike Smith to outsiderart@onelist.com, "Re: Collectors - Necessary evil?" March 24, 1999.

66. Letter from Robert Manley to Chuck and Jan Rosenak, May 11, 1996, Archives of American Art.

67. Lynne Adele, Spirited Journeys, 14. 68. Allen S. Weiss, Shattered Forms: Art Brut, Phantasms, Modernism (Albany: State

University of New York Press, 1992), 67; e-mail from Randall Morris to outsider- art@onelist.com, "A Solution perhaps," September 28, 1999.

69. Betty-Carol Sellen, Self Taught, Outsider, and Folk Art (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2000), 121-122.

70. It has been reported that his former dealer, Sherry Pardee, has met Angel. 71. Jeff Huebner, "Has Anyone Seen Clyde Angel?" Chicago Reader 29/28 (April 14,

2000): 1, 31-37. 72. Ibid., 37. 73. E-mail from geo to outsiderart@onelist.com, "Re: Clyde Angel," April 16, 2000,

emphasis added. 74. Laurent Dancin and Martine Lusardy, Outsider and Folk Art: The Chicago Collec-

tions (Paris: Halle Saint Pierre, 1998), 64-65. 75. Huebner, "Has Anyone Seen Clyde Angel?" 32. 76. Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang, "Recognition and Renown: The Survival of

Artistic Reputations," American Journal of Sociology 94 (1988): 92-95. 77. Randall Morris, "Self-Taught Ethics Regarding Culture," New Art Examiner 22/1

(September 1994): 19. 78. Ibid. 79. E-mail from Randall Morris to outsiderart@onelist.com, "Clyde Angel," April 16,

2000.

180

80. Bourdieu, The Rules of Art, 169. 81. Butler Hancock, "The Designation of Indifference," New Art Examiner 20 (October

1992): 22, 25. 82. Julia Ardery, The Temptation, 254. 83. Ami Wallach, "The Thorny and Profitable Outsiders," New York Newsday (January

28, 1994). 84. E-mail from Randall Morris to outsiderart@onelist.com, "Troubled Waters," April

23, 1999. 85. Sellen, Self Taught, Outsider, and Folk Art, 131. Robyn's brother, Shawn, "The

Birdman," though legally blind, makes self-taught birdhouses. 86. "In Memory of Our Most Precious Son Robyn Banks Beverland," Folk Art 23/4

(Winter 1998/1999): 70. 87. Wendy Steiner, "In Love With the Myth of the 'Outsider,"' New York Times (March

10, 1996): 45, 48. 88. Thomas McGonigle, "Violated Privacy," Arts Magazine 55 (October 1980): 156. 89. Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil (New York: Warner, 1974). 90. E-mail from Randall Morris to outsiderart@onelist.com, "Sybil," December 22,

1998. 91. Barbara Schreiber, "Notes From the Navel-Staring Department." Art Papers 22/1

(January/February 1998): 16-17.