Mehrdad Rashidi, “Untitled” (circa 2009), ballpoint pen ink on found paper (courtesy of Henry Boxer Gallery, London)
Has the outsider art field become a victim of its own success? If so, it is a peculiar “victim,” and its success must be measured by standards that go beyond the money-obsessed art world’s primary criterion for determining aesthetic value — the price tag that any specific work happens to sport at any given time.
“This was the year that outsider art came in from the cold,” the New York Times reported last December in a year-end, art-news summary, with late-to-the-party breathlessness. That observation packed a loaded assumption. From exactly which “cold” precincts did outsider art supposedly emerge? As the Times pointed out, offering a rationale for its assertion, outsider art had been featured “most prominently in the centerpiece exhibition of the [2013] Venice Biennale.”
That big show at the Biennale, which was titled The Encyclopedic Palace, placed outsider art right alongside the products of academically trained artists (among them: Bruce Nauman, Charles Ray, Cindy Sherman and other big-brand-name contemporaries). In fact, for a long time now, the market for the creations of the best self-taught artists has been hot, hot, hot — increasingly visible in the mainstream media, more and more popular among general-interest audiences, and, yes, ever more costly in gallery, art fair and auction sales.
Edward M. Gómez
Hyperallergic
Slow Painting 
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May 7, 2014 at 4:14 pm
timneath
Its an interesting subject for me, I watched a documentary on the subject that focused on real outsiders such as those on the fringes of life, with mental health to general disability that see these artist. I think the accessibility is that as intricate and amazing as the works are, they are more on a level that the average person who sees the work of a trained artist such as myself as very distant. (if that makes sense) The less trained you are, the more accessible your work seems to be. It’s just an observation. I still believe in training to get the best of your talent. Thats not to say if you have talent you have to go to art-school. If someone is willing to exhibit your work without going to art-school thats great. I hope that makes sense.