At the Outsider Art Fair, the Creative Impulse Is in Its Raw Glory

ARTNET NEWS
By Sarah Cascone

Jacques de Du-Glass, St. Stephen Parish School. Photo: Lindsay Gallery.

NEW YORK---Getting a jump on the 2016 art fair season is the Outsider Art Fair, on view this weekend in its new home at the Metropolitan Pavilion on West 18th Street. Lindsay Gallery of Columbus, Ohio, impressed with Jacques Du-Glass's drawings of "The Town That Never Was"—fictitious Lynxbourgh, Indiana. The insanely detailed drawings are just scratching the surface of the artist's fantasy world, however. Du-Glass, who was adopted as a child, also created detailed family histories for the town's denizens, some of whom he imagined were his birth family. [link]


THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Ken Johnson

Work by Annette Barcelo at Gallerie Anne de Villepoix, part of the Outsider Art Fair. Credit Linda Rosier for The New York Times

NEW YORK---It is a big weekend for outsider art. On Friday, Christie’s is offering the first major New York auction of self-taught art in many a year, calling it “Liberation Through Expression: Outsider and Vernacular Art.” It includes works by many of the most revered names in the field, including Bill Traylor, Martín Ramírez, William Hawkins and James Castle. And on Thursday, the Outsider Art Fair opened in the Metropolitan Pavilion on West 18th Street, a gathering of 64 dealers, including folk and vernacular art. Is outsider art going mainstream, as some observers think — and as many others believe it should? [Interactive]