. . that last frontier of visual culture outsider art...These works are admired for being free of the stale conventions of the art world as well as for the poignancy of their being forged from real experiences far more disturbing than anything known to the narrow world of SoHo and 57th Street.

To see this work is to understand in a hurry what so much mainstream art has been faking for the past eighty years. The works of Beuys and Burden and Nitsch suddenly start looking very pale next to the real thing...The art thus produced is rarely good and never great yet it is indisputably fascinating as a record of the extraordinary circumstances in which it was created.

From Culture or Trash ? A Provocative view of Contemporary Painting Sculpture and other Costly Commodities by James Gardner.

Outsider art has been the subject of much speculation, both aesthetic and economic, in recent years. Shows centered on this material have sprung up: The Outsider Art Fair in New York City, for one, and similar offerings in Miami and Atlanta. Of course, under the name Art Brut it was of interest to earlier artists such as Jean Dubuffet. The question still lingers today, is it art?

In the often politically-charged atmosphere of the contemporary art world, the sincerity and duplication Of Outsiclers and their works can spell relief. They try to do a good painting even if their vision is a bit wobbly. Although their works are expressions re-experience and repressed thought than a van fantasy, they are non-analyticals non-psychological, not self-conscious, and truly individualistic. Outsiders arc deeply resistant lo being foot soldiers in anyone's theory.

In his new book, Passing in tile Outsider Lane Dan Prince profiles 21 Outsider artists. Prince has cut to the heart of the art of the Outsider. It is beyond folk, beyond high art. It is the expression of the "extraordinary circumstances" by uncommon individuals whom we presume to call "outsiders." Sometimes, but not always, the circumstances define them as outsiders: mental or physical illness, handicap, trauma, illiteracy, even a criminal record. (A popular misconception is that outsiders are almost all poor, rural, aging African-American southerners. Prince's book dispels that notion he has found the art and artists from coast to coast, in varying ethnicities and ranging widely in age and education.) An Outsider has a sincere and intense personal vision of the world--and a burning need to express that vision. It is a vision not filtered through conscious preparation, technique, or market analysis.   It's a "dive right in and do it" impulse.

For every person that got kicked by a mule (or hit his head on a windshield) and "wasn't quite right" after it and created a picture of what went on in his busy head, there are thousands that don't for one reason or another try to communicate, tell the story, paint, build, or sculpt. Real art is rare, and, art-as-therapy theories aside, not everyone with a handicap can do it. A handicap is not an automatic key to artistry.

Dan Prince, the Jack Kerouac of art history, arrived in Springfield, Missouri, fresh from "a day in Prescott, Arkansas, with Spot Daniel" (Chapter 6). He brought his traveling book-and-artist show to town in mid-November. We found him in Hastings, a large book-video-music store, with Robert Eugene Smith, a Springfield self-taught artist (Chapter 19). Local collectors were gathered in support, but they put off their purchases until two days later at the Robert E. Smith exhibit and book.  In a remarkable promotional tour for the book, Dan Prince is taking his Outsiders and their work
back home. Besides obligatory appearances at the Museum of American Folk Art and his centers of activity, Stamford, Connecticut, and Santa Monica/Los Angeles, Dan has brought his book and often the local artist to such out-of-the- way places as Cuz's Uptown Bar-B-Que in Pounding Mill, Virginia, Green's Grocery in Leiper's Fork, Tennessee, and Omaha, Nebraska, in the winter.

When he was a teenager, Dan used to take the commuter train from Stamford into New York and hang out at the Museum of Modern Art. "One of the first shows I saw that I really paid Mention to was a Dada show. I decided that was great. I didn't have anything to learn from the formal art world anyhow because I was a Dadaist at the age of fourteen." His own assemblage and found-object art has been exhibited in traveling shows called "Dada Knows Best."

Dan Prince went to Vanderbilt University, specifically deciding not to study either art or writing. He has degrees in medieval English and history. "I never took a writing class in school. I immediately just started writing. And I was doing my own art, and I never took an art class, so I'm like one of these guys. And r had a really bad attitude." he laughed.