Exploding accepted definitions or the "outsider" within modern Western art, The Artist Outsider presents both American and European views on outsider art, Art Brut, folk art, primitive art, women's art, ethnic art, avant-garde art, and other ardently debated art forms.

Essays by nineteen art historians, critics, folklorists, psychiatrists, cultural historians, artists, feminist scholars, anthropologists, and museum curators address the significance of ideas about the art of the "other" and the relation of these ideas to modern understandings of culture, artistic personality, and the ways that creativity helps to map our world. More than seventy illustrations, twelve in full color, illuminate these discussions.

The contributors discuss variously the work of artist outsiders as fundamental human expression, political turf, clinical data, a marker of community, a functional artifact, and a sign of personal identity. The more theoretical essays consider the problem of artistic classification; political and philosophical issues involved in the idea of the artist outsider; and critical responses to new forms of art.

Other essays examine the works of French environmental artist Pierre Avezard, Mexican American schizophrenic artist Martin Ramirez, Lithuanian Canadian painter Jahan Maka, Swiss German Surrealist sculptor Meret Oppenheim, and African American woodcarver Elijah Pierce.

With its interdisciplinary vision, The Artist Outsider offers new ideas about how studies of art resonate with the examination of culture. Often in stark disagreement with one another, these essays provoke a reassessment of widely accepted ideas about the relationships among art, artistry, marginality, and culture.