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WORKS FROM R.E.M. BANDLEADER MICHAEL STIPE'S COLLECTION WILL SHOWCASE THE REGION'S VISIONARIES AND ICONOCLASTS
by Edward M. Gómez
In the English-speaking world in the 1970s, the category of art that had become known among researchers and collectors in Europe — often they were one and the same — about three decades earlier as “art brut” (French for “raw art”) gained a new name, “outsider art.” That term stuck and was picked up by American art dealers; as researchers and collectors in the United States began applying the critical criteria associated with the appreciation of the creations of self-taught art-makers situated on the margins of mainstream society and culture, over time, an American outsider art canon emerged.
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Many of the artists who have become iconic symbols of American imagination and creativity in the outsider art field now hold durable places in a distinctive, venerable art-historical confraternity. Among them: Thornton Dial, Sr.; Lonnie Holley; Hawkins Bolden; Sister Gertrude Morgan; the quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend, Alabama; Mose Tolliver; and Howard Finster. There are many more.
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