Everyday Genius: Self-Taught Art and the Culture of Authenticity

by Gary Alan Fine

From Henry Darger's elaborate paintings of young girls caught in a vicious war to the sacred art of the Reverend Howard Finster, the work of outsider artists has achieved unique status in the art world. Celebrated for their lack of traditional training and their position on the fringes of society, outsider artists nonetheless participate in a traditional network of value, status, and money. After spending years immersed in the world of self-taught artists, Gary Alan Fine presents Everyday Genius , one of the most insightful and comprehensive examinations of this network and how it confers artistic value.

Fine considers the differences among folk art, outsider art, and self-taught art, explaining the economics of this distinctive art market and exploring the dimensions of its artistic production and distribution. Interviewing dealers, collectors, curators, and critics and venturing into the backwoods and inner-city homes of numerous self-taught artists, Fine describes how authenticity is central to the system in which artists—often poor, elderly, members of a minority group, or mentally ill—are seen as having an unfettered form of expression highly valued in the art world. Respected dealers, he shows, have a hand in burnishing biographies of the artists, and both dealers and collectors trade in identities as much as objects.

Revealing the inner workings of an elaborate and prestigious world in which money, personalities, and values affect one another, Fine speaks eloquently to both experts and general readers, and provides rare access to a world of creative invention-both by self-taught artists and by those who profit from their work.


“Indispensable for an understanding of this world and its workings. . . . Fine’s book is not an attack on the Outsider Art phenomenon. But it is masterful in its anatomization of some of its contradictions, conflicts, pressures, and absurdities.”—Eric Gibson, Washington Times

Genres: Art, Sociology, Nonfiction

344 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2004

About the author

Gary Alan Fine is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. He is the author of Morel Tales: The Culture of Mushrooming, Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work, and With the Boys: Little League Baseball and Preadolescent Culture.

Reviews

[Robert Hobkirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyday Genius by Gary Alan Fine is all about outsider art and outside artists. If you ever took an art appreciation or art history class, then you ran into the riddle "what is art." I define it as: stuff made by people to decorate space, which is just about as good of a definition as any. Art is one of those things like "love," which is hard to define. Maybe things that are the most valuable to us, after we've eaten, are the things that are hard to define. So what's outsider art? Again, my definition, art that is created without reference to the past academic tradition in a style unique to the artist's unique history. Fine had his own definitions, but I can't remember what they were.

This book was extremely interesting to me, so much so, that I had to buy a copy. There weren't any through the library system. The most interesting part of it was the biographies of the outsider artists he had high lighted.

If you're interested in outsider art, check it out. If you're interested in art but haven't come across much about outsider art, check it out. It's well worth the time and effort to read it.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The almost unbelievable output of Gary Fine (I once read a review of his book suggesting he might be a cyborg, but I've taken a grad seminar with him and believe otherwise) is augmented by the uniform high-quality of his work. In other words, he's one of those irritating scholars who is both prolific and smart; most days, I'd take either one. The particular contribution this book offers is no exception. Fine spent years interviewing and traveling in the world of self-taught artists and presents his findings regarding authenticity, multiple roles, and embedded relations in readable and highly-engaging prose. Both his writing style as well as his theoretical framework will be useful to my construction of my own project. What's more, his sections regarding art collectors tread theoretical ground I find helpful. In particular, his focusing on collecting as collective action -- defined by the social spaces and interactions of its practitioners -- is something I hope to echo in my own work on book collectors.

[Yisu Z. · Rating 3 out of 5]

谜题：「在大部分行业，在一个人的只是（文化或社会资本）和对他的能力评估之间存在很强的关联。训练越多，证书越多，能力越强。」而自学艺术则倒置了这个关系，「缺少正规训练」被作为本真性的核心部分。这不是基于类型或风格的艺术，而是基于身份的艺术。Fine的观点就是要理解这一身份的建构——由外部的因素塑造——以及它如何嵌入到艺术市场里去的。坦白说这很难。通过回溯，案例难免有幸存者偏差。而艺术品估值（特别是自学艺术）有非常大的时间波动，为什么自学艺术的市场兴起又［如作者所说］消亡了呢？艺术品／媒体市场对于本真性偏好的变化又是为什么？

[jennifer jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

pedantic - a very interesting read for those who are very interested in self-taught/outsider art as well as sociology.