GATECRASHERS: HOW THE ART WORLD NEARLY EMBRACED SELFTAUGHT ART Gatecrashers might best be described in terms more typical of a pageturner novel than an art book — it’s a story of tragedy and triumph, of drama and historic happenings.
to be gaining momentum until it was precipitously halted in the early 1940s. It only restarted in earnest decades later, and it’s still far from complete.
The overarching tragedy is the opportunity lost in the 1930s to open up the definition of art to myriad forms of creativity beyond the academy. That process seemed
Lest anyone think “tragedy” is too grand a term, consider what was lost by the artists who were marginalized. It’s not just a handful of artists who didn’t get their due. It’s hundreds, thousands of them, and, for the rest of us, it was massive cultural impoverishment.
There was also in the early 20th century a wish to assert an authentically American creative tradition.
In telling this tale, Katherine Jentleson, curator of folk and selftaught art at Atlanta’s High Museum, expands on a major theme of Lynne Cooke’s 2018 exhibit and catalog, Outliers and American Vanguard Art. But where this story was one BOOK REVIEWS | GATECRASHERS
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