A Study and Analysis of Self-taught Art and its Entrance into the World of Art According to Arthur Danto

Self-taught art is a way of art expression that defines and recognizes based on its independence from the world of formal art. These works reflect its creators' endeavor to express their inner world in strange and unfamiliar ways. The self-taught artist does not start working with the usual motivations of creating art, such as displaying and selling but creating spontaneously in an isolated condition without any connection and knowledge about official art space. This art can be considered as one of the sub-categories of the “Art Brut” or in another term “Outsider Art”. In this definition, those who are interested in self-taught art, are observed not as a psychiatry document, but as an aesthetic experience. Developments of nineteenth-century and modernism have provided grounds for attention to self-taught art as an inspiring and innovative resource, which is continuing up to now. These works have exactly what European art had lost in its long journey; that means strong representation, structural transparency, and simple technique.
This change in approach to these works that have not previously had any place in the official art world has raised many questions. The main purpose of this study is to determine the backgrounds of self-taught art and its position in the art world based on the theories of a great philosopher of contemporary art, Arthur Danto and tries to answer these questions: “Based on which definitions and criteria the self-taught objects can be accepted as artworks?”, and “How the works that neither its creators consider them as artwork and nor themselves as an artist, become a branch of contemporary art?”
Danto believes that “being art” means being in a field as “art world”; so work is not considered as art until it has been placed in the art world. But Danto disagrees with the openness of the art concept, which has been interpreted as “anti-essentialism”, and he says that it does not lead to a correct definition of Art to say “art is imitation” or “art is not imitation”, so he has set criteria for artwork.
He argues that artworks are a “representation” of something else, not necessarily in the sense that they are exactly like their subject, but in the broader concept that they are about something. Since all of the artworks are about something, they have meaning, and meanings are embodied in them, so Danto says that artworks are “Meaning Embodied”. The second characteristic he refers to is “Dream-like”, and says that artworks are like dreams which contain visible qualities, but may not be real, so he defines art as “Awakening Dreams”. Accordingly, Danto uses these characteristics, “Meaning Embodied” and “Dream-like”, as criteria for artwork. Regarding the position of self-taught artists, Danto states that while the members of the “art world” have common principles, the outsider artists are unable to participate in that conversation for various reasons. They do not know the language of the art world discourse to talk about their works, so behaved with them as a neurotic human, not as an artist.
According to Danto's definition of art and his criterion for artwork, we can say that self-taught work can be considered as an art because it has those characteristics. Answer to this question that “How these works become a branch of contemporary art?” reveals the role and importance of the art world. The self-taught artist is deprived of entering the official art world because of his social status as a person who does not know the defined art rules and his position as an artist.
So they are still in a fragile situation where their presence in the art spaces depends on other important and influential actors of the art world, and they are the ones who can determine the position of self-taught art and enter it as an artwork to the galleries, museums and even art history. Members of the art world control the dominant narrative, and over the past century, they have selected among outsider artists. As the art world has been able to turn Andy Warhol's “Brillo Box” into art, so they could change the work of self-taught art to something that was never meant to be. Placing the work in the space of a white cube gallery, with impressive lights and delicate frames, often obscures the main goals of the self-taught artist. Ultimately, power remains in the hands of the art world, the power of choice, the power of evaluation, and the power of financial valuation. This research is fundamental research that has been done in a descriptive-analytical method and data collecting through the library method among the available resources in the field of self-taught art. The tools used are in the form of taking notes and finally, by qualitatively analyzing the information, an attempt has been made to give appropriate answers to the questions raised.