How important is intent in art?

[xchrom]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2011/10/outsider-art



JAMES BRETT, the founder and curator of the "Museum of Everything", believes his two new shows are "the most important in Britain". This might seem like a bold claim, particularly as one exhibition is tucked in the basement of Selfridge's department store in central London, while another takes place in the artfully dilapidated Old Selfridge’s Hotel next door. Yet both the big show and the smaller retrospective of work by Judith Scott, a self-taught American artist who died in 2005 at 61, are indeed interesting, not least for Mr Brett's enthusiasm for them.

Mr Brett began the “Museum of Everything” in 2010, “by accident more than anything else,” he says. After travelling round South America and becoming taken by the Folk Art there (“unpretentious, immediate, and kind of cool”), he felt inspired to create his own curatorial enterprise showcasing "outsider art” without using the term. The result is “a museum that’s not a museum,” he says, which he markets with a distinctive brand of British eccentricity (sea-side red-and-white striped entrances, English-rose girls on the door). This mix of novelty and savvy has been an effective way to introduce the work of mostly unknown artists to a wider public.

By placing his latest show in a department store, Mr Brett says he is staging a “friendly attack on mainstream art criticism and curators”. It was a deliberate move to place Scott's work in “such a visible place as Selfridge's", given her own relative invisibility. Self-taught artists such as Scott, who was also born deaf, mute and with Down syndrome, don't get the recognition they deserve from the art establishment, says Mr Brett. The recent closure of the Folk Art Museum in New York seems to confirm his point.

[snot]

1. Very interesting; but why not call it "outsider art"?

[CTyankee]

2. Back in the mid 90s I fundraised for a nonprofit helping people with mental retardation.

With the help of an art therapist, the clients were able to produce amazing art that was reproduced in yearly calendars and sold for the benefit of the organization. These calendars are testimony to the artistic impulse that exists within these "outsiders" to the art world.

[bananas]

3. "outsider art" sounds similar to "outsider music"

or maybe "outside music" looks a lot like "outside art"?

"Outsider music, a term coined by Irwin Chusid in the mid-1990s, are songs and compositions by musicians who are not part of the commercial music industry who write songs that ignore standard musical or lyrical conventions, either because they have no formal training or because they disagree with formal rules. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_music

[Gregorian]

5. The 90's were GREAT!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUnEAQ1rivo

[marmar]

4. Fascinating. Goodness knows the world is full of art snobs.

K&R

[saras]

6. How important to whom?

http://www.cracked.com/article_19420_6-classic-songs-that-were-supposed-to-be-jokes.html

http://www.cracked.com/article_19419_6-parodies-that-succeeded-because-nobody-got-joke.html

If you, the consumer, don't think the artist's intent is important, then tough shit for the artist. They can't do anything about it even if they want to.

To enter into a relationship with the artist's intent seems to me to be an act of respect, a conscious entering into relationship with the artist. The other is rather like buying an artist's ceramic sculptures in order to crush them for a broken-pottery path in your garden. Should you tell them or not?