Extracts of Use from Chapter 8

As I explained in my last post, I was advised to read chapter 8 of  'Art Worlds' by Howard S. Becker and found that it would be beneficial towards my upcoming powerpoint due for Contextual Studies to take notes from the chapter, which explains the differences between differing types of artists and since my topic rests on the theme of Outsider Artists, the chapter on 'Naive Artists' was especially enlightening.

The introduction explains;

'Wherever an art world exists, it defines the boundaries of acceptable art, recognizing those who produce the work it can assimilate as artists entitled to full membership, and denying membership and its benefits to those whose work it cannot assimilate. '

'Some make work that looks like art, or is sometimes seen to do so, but do it in the context or worlds completely separate from an art world.'

'Analytically, that is, we take making art in the contrct of an art world as the standard way to make art. It need not be, of course but it is convenient to treat it as standard because common usage does and thereby hides the ordinary workings of art works from us, as what anyone knows and therefore is not worth knowing.'

Integrated Professionals

'They stay within the bounds of what potential audeinces and the state consider respectable.'

'Large numbers of people can coordinate their activities with a minimum investment of time and energy, simply by idenfiying the conventions everyone should follow.'

'What they do is the bulk of what goes on in the name of art in any society.'

Mavericks

'They propose innovations the art world refuses to accept as within the limits of what it ordinarily produces.'

'Mavericks continue to pursue the innovation without the support of other art world personnel whereas intergrated professionals accept almost completely the conventions of their world, mavericks retain some loose connection with it but no longer participate in its activities directly.'

'The work suggests to others that they will have trouble cooperating with its maker; its blatant disregard of established practice suggests that the person who made it either doesn’t know what is right or doesn’t care to do what is right. '

'They may, for instance, create their own organisations to replace those which will not work with them.'

'Mavericks thereby lose or forego all the advantages that integrated professionals more or less automatically enjoy. But they also lose the constraints associated with those advantages.'

'If people do things for reasons which are not standard in a particular world, they look(to active members of that world) unsocialised and more than a little crazy- one of the ways we recognise a reliable, well socialised person is that we immediately understand the reasons for his behaviour. '

'Because maverick work shares so much with conventional work, we can see that maverickness is not inherent in the work, but rather in the relation between it and a conventional art world.'

'They remain curiosities whose work may be revived from time to time by interested antiquarians or, alternatively, may stimulate the imagination of innovative professionals. '

'Most mavericks work is not absorbed into the canon of an art world; they remain unknown, and their work is not preserved and disappears along with their name.'

Folk Artists

'Folk art, in this sense, is art done by people who do what they do because it is one of the things members of their community, or at least most members of a particular age and sex, ordinarily do.'

Not many quotes were taken from this section as it mainly spoke of quilting as an example of folk art which wasn't relevant to me.

Naive Artists

'These artists have usually had no connection with any art world at all. They do not know the members of the ordinary art world in which work like theirs is produced. They have not had the training people who ordinarily produce such works have had, and they know very little about the medium they are working in- about history, conventions, or the kind of work ordinarily produced in it. '

'The work of naïve painters varies only a little from the work of amateur painters. Both work without any connection to the world of professional painting, though amateurs may have had classes in painting.'

'Its makers work in isolation, free from the constraints of cooperation which inhabit art world participants, free to ignore what conventional categories of art works, to make things which do not fit any standard genre and cannot be described as examples of any class.'

'Naïve artists typically begin their work accidentally or haphazardly or, I might better say, they do not purposely start a meaningful activity in a professional world whose organisation would make it a real ‘beginning’.

'With no professional training and no contact with the conventional art world, naïve artists do not learn the conventional vocabulary of motives and explanations for their work. Since they cannot explain what they are doing in conventional art terminology and since it can seldom be explained as anything other than art, naïve artists frequently have trouble with people that demand an explanation.'

'Not  surprisingly, people who create such works and give explanations like this are frequently thought by neighbours and others to be crazy. The problem of what the work is is central to the reactions of others.'

'The primitive quality of naïve art, like the maverick quality of maverick art, lies in the relation of its maker to the conventional art world. It is not the character of the work itself that distinguishes naïve art, but rather that it has been made without reference to constraints of contemporary convention.'

Extracts from Conclusion

'The difference between the work of integrated professionals, mavericks, folk artists, and naïve artists does not lie in its surface appearance or sound, but in the relation between that work and work done by others more or less involved in some art world.'

'Distinctions between these kinds of art are not distinctions of quality; work of every degree of interest can be has been made in every category. But we always look at noncanonical work- work not done under legitimate auspices of an art world- from the standpoint of some aesthetic which has its base in some world, probably an art world, in which we participate.'