On Insider/ Outsider Art, Notes from the Inside

pemspanEditors Note: Jose H. Villarreal is one of several power-FUL PNNPlantation prison correspondents. As currently and formerly incarcerated poor and indigenous peoples in struggle and resistance with all plantation systems in Amerikkka, POOR Magazine stands in solidarity with all folks on the other side of the razor wire plantation./span/em/p p*Migra Terror/p p*Original Artwork by Jose H. Villarreal/p pI sent a pen pal of mine, who is also an artist, a drawing of a young girl. I drew the girl holding a rose in her hand. My pen pal wrote back thanking me for the ldquo;folk artrdquo;. This was the first time that I heard this term. The classification between ldquo;insider/outsiderrdquo; art has roots in the contradictions which exist in our society. It is a way to segregate artists along class lines for the most part./p pThe ldquo;elf-taughtrdquo; artist is often the poor artist, the working class artist and the artist from the underclass (Lumpen). In the U.$. the ldquo;insider artistrdquo; often translates to the bourgeois artist./p pChican@ Art is thought of to many as outsider Art. To the Chican@ it is simply Art. For Chican@s and our Art, there is no ldquo;insider/outsiderrdquo; Art. We simply have Art, although we have different genres of Art such as AZTLAN REALISM and other less revolutionary art styles./p pIn my opinion, those who divide art between insider/outsider Art do so because so-called ldquo;professional artistsrdquo; have been formally trained. They create art according to the institutional ldquo;art rulesrdquo;. The shading is done according to the ldquo;properrdquo; way, the traditional form which takes its cues from capitalist culture and the ruling class. Whereas the so-called ldquo;outsiderrdquo; creates and shades in their own way, they break rules, they put what some say is too much paint on the brush and they create genres which have not yet been classified./p pI believe that at its core, art is or has historically been created for the people. Long before classes were created, art was created, despite the moneyed class having expropriated art. We should not accept this. So-called ldquo;outsiderrdquo; art is peoplersquo;s art and should be accepted more in museums and galleries or, better yet, those who create this Art should band together and create our own galleries and museums./p pJose H. Villarreal/p p1-4-16/p