TREND: Street Art, Outsider Art, and URGENCY

With all the Banksy, Fairey hubub this year, all the Darger-loving last year, and the current, frequent calls by curators for art that’s made from a sense of “urgency,” I’m taking away the message that art’s new direction lies in a reaction against (<– always a good jumping off point for a convo about art) academic, heavily conceptual art on the one hand, and factory style, assistant/money-driven art on the other hand.

So, out with the Gregg Crewdson budget, the Jeff Koons assembly line, the Damien Hirst branding, and in with the heartfelt scrawls and scribbles, or hard-won wheatpaste murals.

Artists Cut Out The Middleman

Squcky Roller Racoon
Squcky Roller Racoon $35

No, I don’t mean big name art celebs who go straight to auction.

I mean URGENT artists, the starch-fed masses, rabble who… well, are putting their art up for sale on Etsy, a popular handmade crafts site.

Are they doomed to obscurity for making such an inadvisable career move? Perhaps. But, if you are an enterprising curator, they are a garden of outsider artists just waiting to be picked.

That’s what Squcky (William Robert Holland) is. Self-taught, he boasts that he “has taken tried and tested mediums and developed a style all his own.”

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