Outsider art : from the margins to the marketplace / David Maclagan.

By:

Maclagan, David, 1940-

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: London : Reaktion Books, c2009.Description: 192 p. : ill. (cheifly col.) ; 21 cmISBN:

1861895216 (hbk.)
9781861895219 (hbk.)

Subject(s):

DDC classification:

709.0422 MAC

Contents:

1. Art Brut and the Search for the Source of Creative Originality -- 2. Outsider Art and the Creative Role of Collecting -- 3. Art Brut and the Classic Period of Psychotic Art -- 4. Psychotic Art Today and Outsider Art -- 5. Doodling and Other Forms of Automatism -- 6. Problematic Introduction of Outsider Art into the Wider Art World.

Summary: A new account of Outsider Art, work produced outside the mainstream by self-taught visionaries, recluses, psychiatric patients and others beyond the perceived margins of society. The author reassesses conventional assumptions about creativity, situating Outsider Art in relation to Modernism and Primitivism.

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Copy number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Standard Loan	LSAD Library Main Collection	709.0422 MAC (Browse shelf(Opens below))	1	Missing		39002100463810

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The term outsider art has been used to describe work produced exterior to the mainstream of modern art by certain self-taught visionaries, spiritualists, eccentrics, recluses, psychiatric patients, criminals, and others beyond the perceived margins of society. Yet the idea of such a raw, untaught creativity remains a contentious and much-debated issue in the art world. Is this creative instinct a natural, innate phenomenon, requiring only the right circumstances--such as isolation or alienation--in order for it to be cultivated? Or is it an idealistic notion projected onto the art and artists by critics and buyers?

David Maclagan argues that behind the critical and commercial hype lies a cluster of assumptions about creative drives, the expression of inner worlds, originality, and artistic eccentricity. Although outsider art is often presented as a recent discovery, these ideas, Maclagan reveals, belong to a tradition that goes back to the Renaissance, when the modern image of the artist began to take shape. In Outsider Art , Maclagan challenges many of the current opinions about this increasingly popular field of art and explores what happens to outsider artists and their work when they are brought within the very world from which they have excluded themselves.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

A new account of Outsider Art, work produced outside the mainstream by self-taught visionaries, recluses, psychiatric patients and others beyond the perceived margins of society. The author reassesses conventional assumptions about creativity, situating Outsider Art in relation to Modernism and Primitivism.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

Introduction (p. 7)
1 Art Brut and the Search for the Source of Creative Originality (p. 25)
2 Outsider Art and the Creative Role of Collecting (p. 59)
3 Art Brut and the Classic Period of Psychotic Art (p. 74)
4 Psychotic Art Today and Outsider Art (p. 96)
5 Doodling and Other Forms of Automatism (p. 109)
6 The Problematic Introduction of Outsider Art into the Wider Art World (p. 130)
Conclusion (p. 154)
References (p. 172)
Artists' Biographies (p. 179)
Bibliography (p. 186)
Acknowledgements (p. 188)
Photo Acknowledgements (p. 189)
Index (p. 190)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

David Maclagan is an artist, art therapist, and university lecturer. He has published numerous articles on outsider art, art therapy, and image-based psychology, and is the author of Creation Myths: Man's Introduction to the World and Psychological Aesthetics: Painting, Feeling and Making Sense .