George Widener

Last weekend, 34 galleries from around the world set up booths in the Puck Building for Sanford Smith's 16th Annual Outsider Art Fair.

Most of the art shown was not very good, but it is instructive to see so much of it together. The viewer learns that naivete and obsession are not magic bullets: for every Bill Traylor, whose simple drawings of animals are as elegant and beautiful as the greatest cave paintings, there are dozens of artists whose work is not apparently but actually naive.  read more »