'Loser wins': Outsider art and the salvaging of disinterestedness

This paper describes the emergence of a new field within the U.S. visual art world - twentieth century folk and outsider art - and endeavors to explain the more ideological features of its legitimation. The study argues that twentieth century folk art provided a generation of academically trained artists with two promising means of 'position-taking'. First, through their advocacy of eccentric amateurs, artists newly trained or employed at universities in the provincial U.S. could propose a non-New York model of credibility. Secondly, in championing outsider artists, striving newcomers might pursue their artistic ambitions while simultaneously proffering themselves as retainers of an embattled art world principle - the ethos of disinterestedness. The study considers several indicators - museum membership and acquisitions, new specialty galleries, and increasing numbers of exhibitions - to suggest the field's expansion through the 1970s. Using Bourdieu's conceptualization of disinterestedness as 'the inversion of ordinary economies', this paper examines how folk and outsider artists came to represent disinterestedness in a period of normalization and careerism. It also contends that, in accord with this principle's demands, the development of this cultural field has required of artists ever more stringent demonstrations of social ostracism and personal frailty. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.