Insider Narratives about Outsider Art: Race, Class, and Biography in the New York Art Market

Abstract

To truly understand the power and operations of the insider art world, it is imperative to discuss the outsider art world superstars known as the Gee’s Bend quiltmakers. Since their initial rise to institutional fame and market value, the postslavery, impoverished, black women of a rural Alabama swamp town have been spun into many things: “cool quilters”, creators of “some of the most miraculous modern art to come for America”, whose quilts are said to “rival the best abstract art shown in any art museum”. Major museums have displayed these quilts, inadvertently institutionalizing them and feeding into their market value. Based on ethnographic research on how the Gee’s Bend quiltmakers and other so-called outsider artists have been framed and discussed in the contemporary art scene in New York City, this paper explores the concept of authenticity value: what it is, how it is constructed, and what it means when outsider art becomes something of an insider affair. Particular attention is paid the meanings of “outsider art” as an umbrella term in the United States—where it prominently includes African American vernacular or folk art—and the ways these meanings compare with Jean Dubuffet’s concept of art brut as it has been understood in Europe.