Hiller - The Myth of Primitivism. Perspectives on Art - Esoteric Online

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Outsiders or insiders?
DAVID MACLAGAN
Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial
vessels dry; this is repeated again and again; finally one
can predict it in advance, and it becomes a part <strong>of</strong> the
ceremony. (F.Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes, New
York: Schocken, 1961)
If ‘primitivism’ is a myth that seems to haunt European culture from the outside,
‘outsider’ art is something like an image <strong>of</strong> the primitive within.
‘Outsider art’ (or ‘Art Brut’) is a term that has been current only since the Second
World War. <strong>The</strong> work included under this rubric falls into three broad categories: work
produced by the inmates <strong>of</strong> psychiatric asylums, usually with the diagnostic label
‘psychotic’; work resulting from the practice <strong>of</strong> some form <strong>of</strong> automatism, usually under
the aegis <strong>of</strong> spiritualism; and work that, through some combination <strong>of</strong> formal originality
and social marginality, seems to owe nothing to conventional culture. All three categories
share certain features which could be said to be definitory <strong>of</strong> outsider art: the work is
created without any normal ‘pr<strong>of</strong>essional’ preparation, and its intentionality is either
perverse or nonconformist, or else is effectively absent—as in the case <strong>of</strong> works resulting
from automatic processes. It is essential to bear in mind that the main body <strong>of</strong> this work
was produced within a specific time-span—the period roughly 1880 to 1930; it was
‘produced’ in the sense <strong>of</strong> being made, because much <strong>of</strong> the work dates from this period
and we have very little reliable evidence as to whether any comparable work was
produced earlier; and it was ‘produced’ in the sense <strong>of</strong> being collected, analysed, and
published for the first time during the same period. <strong>The</strong> latter can be seen as a gradual
process <strong>of</strong> cultural digestion, whereby work that was judged discordant or peculiar,
coming as it did from persons excommunicated from society by being assigned (or
perversely adopting) the deviant roles <strong>of</strong> ‘madman’ or ‘eccentric’, was at first given a
negative qualification as ‘psychotic’ or ‘crazy’, but was later given a more positive value,
as ‘original’ or ‘inspired’.
Like the concept <strong>of</strong> the ‘primitive’, this notion <strong>of</strong> the originality—and consequent lack
<strong>of</strong> origins—<strong>of</strong> outsider art is prob-lematic: these so-called ‘outsiders’ are in fact
discovered within the boundaries <strong>of</strong> the culture from which they are supposed to be
independent; in effect, they are treated as endogenous primitives. But influences from
their cultural matrix are, in fact, present from the start and form, as I shall argue, a crucial
focus in certain kinds <strong>of</strong> outsider art: in any case, once these images have been
discovered and promoted, they re-enter the cultural domain; and once this publicity
barrier is breached, the feedback between outsider art and the culture at large becomes
too complex for the original notion <strong>of</strong> ‘outsider’ to be workable.