Defining Outsider Art

seen as a Western phenomenon, it is in fact, a primal global phenomenon.
From the bowels of the batholiths, shelters and crevices of the Matobo Hills along the Great Dyke, and other rock art crops of Zimbabwe are museums that house intuitive, creative memory aand intelligence of the Stone Age San/African. There were no art schools, galleries, art supply shops, curators or critics.
The Stone Age artists of 9 000 years ago were perhaps our first intuitive artists expressing their visions freely conceptually and emotionally. Communicating through the association of ideas, experience and imagination and not bound by the ridged rules that govern institutionalised artistic language today. The San people of Zimbabwe were, of course, our first intuitive artists.
This writer went on a sojourn to various Outsider Art capitals, museums and organisations in Europe and America, housing Intuitive/Outsider Art in order to acquire a comprehensive understanding of this art form.  By investigating and analysing Zimbabwean contemporary self-taught artists from as early as 1959 to 2009, this writer discovered the prominence and proliferation of “Art Brut” in the country.
Bearing this in mind, let us discuss further for the uninitiated, what is “Outsider Art”?
A number of terms are used to describe art that is loosely understood as “outside” of official culture.  Definitions of these terms vary.
The term Outsider Art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972, as an English synonym for “Art Brut” which literally translates as “Raw Art” or “Rough Art”, a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet (1901- 1985), to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane asylum inmates.
Whilst his term is explicit, the English term “Outsider Art” is often applied more largely to include certain self-taught or “naïve” art makers who were never institutionalised and are not clinically insane.
Typically, those labelled as Outsider Artists have little or no contact with the institutions of the mainstream art world, their work considerably being an example of intrinsic motivation, often employing unique materials or fabrication techniques.
l Dr Monda holds a PhD in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate of Business Administration) in Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, art critic, practising artist and corporate image consultant.