How to Collect Outsider Art, With Art Dealer Frank Maresca | Artspace.com

In the late 1940s the French artist Jean Dubuffet identified a historically overlooked category of art—visual works created by nonprofessional, untrained artists who live outside the realm of normative culture—and termed it “art brut,” or “raw” art. Consisting of work made by the clinically insane, children, and others on society’s fringes, the work was considered to be “created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses,” according to Dubuffet, who believed it to be art in its most uncompromised state. In later years art brut was embraced in the United States as “outsider art,” but it has proven a controversial umbrella for artists and their work due to the slippery questions about who qualifies as an “outsider,” and who is responsible for labeling them as such.

To find out how to navigate the issues around collecting outsider art, Artspace curator Nessia Pope spoke to Ricco/Maresca Gallery co-owner Frank Maresca, one of the foremost dealers working with the category, representing the estate of the legendary artist Martín Ramírez and other major figures.

http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/how_to_collect_outsider_art

Join us at Pier 92 for The Armory Show, March 8-11, 2012

We’ll be showing works by Marcos Bontempo, Alexander Calder, Hiroyuki Doi, Jean Dubuffet, Tim Freccia, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, Walt Kuhn, Martin Ramirez, Judith Scott, Bill Traylor, George Widener, Adolf Wölfli

IMAGE: George Widener, Titanic 100 Years Anniversary, 2012