The Outsider Artists of eBay
The term outsider art was coined to designate art created outside the official art culture and its institutions, its commercial network, its critical validations. Generally the work is technically naïve, created by artists who are self-taught. I personally have had an enduring fascination with outsiders who created art not only on the outside of the art worlds but on the outside of society itself. There is something about the collage and painting epics of Henry Darger, who toiled over 15,000 pages of art in his solitary one room apartment, his lack of basic knowledge about female genitalia undiscovered until after his death, or the cosmic vistas of Swiss psychiatric patient Adolf Wolfli, or should I say St. Adolf the Second, that cracks my head open and reunites me with the wonder of existence more than any piece of academically trendy work excreted from the latest crop of elite art school grads, their lavish prizes and art journal write ups today easily forgotten tomorrow.
Of late however outsider art has been integrated into the art institutions, a marketing term for those on the peripheries who previously had to sell their art from their homes, flea markets, small galleries, or word of mouth, that is if they even tried to make a few bucks from their visions. More recently, to my pleasant surprise, I’ve noticed that a new generation of naive and self-taught artists have been using online marketplaces like eBay to sell their work directly to the public, even bypassing the dealers and gallery owners that now cater to outsider art. And more power to them. Maybe if eBay would have existed in Henry Darger’s day he might have had the opportunity to liberate himself from his mundane work-a-day-world and become a bit more … worldly. Bit it could have also dampened his obsessive need to create. It’s so hard to tell …
So here are a few of the most interesting pieces of outsider art I found snooping around eBay. While not on the same grand scale of a Darger of Wolfli, there is something about each of these that piques my interest and makes me wonder “WTF?” or simply laugh.
A pet Utopia where the lions lay down with the lambs. I mean where tuxedo cats play doggie in the middle while a mouse peacefully flies a kite in the distance.
Supposedly by a teenager with autism, the eBay page describes the painting as a “super skating bird.” Whatever. I like.
As you can may have noticed, pets are a common subject in the world of eBay outsider art. These tiny Jack Russell Terriers with a tiny balloon rocking it out at the ferris wheel prove that dogs are really an outsider artist’s best friend.
Elvis Above. Doug Sturtevant.
And how could this showing be complete without an appearance by the King himself? I know it’s another work by Doug Sturtevant, but I couldn’t resist this painting of Elvis in Heaven, looking like he’s digging it totally, exactly as a pop God should.
