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Arts Intel Report

Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists

Bill Traylor, Untitled, 1939–42.

Until Sept 13
2 Lincoln Square, New York, NY 10023, United States

The term “self-taught artist” has always carried a whiff of condescension, the implication being that the work is interesting despite the absence of training, and that is was produced by an isolated outsider who stumbled into art. The American Folk Art Museum has spent years pushing back on that paradigm, and this exhibition is its most direct statement yet. Sixty artists—among them, Bill Traylor, Henry Darger, Clementine Hunter, Adolf Wölfli, Aloïse Corbaz, and Thornton Dial Sr.—are presented not as untutored naïfs but as makers with full aesthetic agency. The show is organized around three modes of self-representation: self-portraits, alter egos, and autobiographies. —Elena Clavarino

Photo courtesy of Ricco/Maresca