Outsider Art was born in London, at least officially, in 1972 when the critic Roger Cardinal characterized the movement labeled by French artist Jean Dubuffet as art brut: art generated "outside" traditional circles, often by self-trained artists and sculptors snubbed and snickered at by uptown galleries and museums. The problem is that it's hard to stay an outsider once you've been discovered by the market.
A current show including of the Pop-Bizarre, including 25 Americans, at the Halle St. Pierre, an old market house just at the foot of Montmartre, is a case in point. It's called "Hey! Modern Art & Pop Culture Part II" co-sponsored by the would-have-been underground publisher Hey!
Not that sex and unsaintliness are the sole subjects. Jacksonville native Mike Davis (now a San Franciscan) is a classic outsider, an artist with no training who "scammed" his way in by volunteering as a theatrical set designer, having, he says, never painted anything beyond grade school doodles. In the late 80s he jumped into San Francisco tattoo art where violence, death and the surreal continue to dance and make him money, as in this skeletal painting he calls Forward Not Straight.
