Outsider art is art that sits outside any known idiom. It is art created from an entirely new language. It is not for sale. And it is marked by obsession.
To some who are weary of the increasing commercialisation of art, outsider works are unpolished jewels, and the people who make them are the purest artists of all. ^
If you go into the arts, as a hobby or a living, the question of commercialization will haunt you between dreams of stardom. Of course you want to productify your art to some degree, so that it can reach its audience and you can hopefully stop shelving books during that mundane, soul-draining day job you took so at night you could be free among the paints, or words. But when have you gone too far, and gone from being a successful author to a bitter-souled Lars Ulrich?
Outsider art is an organic response to this situation. It is people who are entirely disconnected from the art community and have no way to productive their art, or those who behave as if that were the situation while after production, productizing their art. As I read more of what is lauded as “the best new fiction,” only to watch it disappear after a few weeks of hippity hype, I can only think that they’re onto something.
[...] in it. Like his heroes Burroughs and Pynchon (and probably DeLilo), Gibson speaks from an entirely outsider’s voice, with the gravely tones of someone looking in at a disaster that will go unrecognized until [...]