Response to "The White Bird" by John Berger and "Jerry Saltz on the Outsider Art Fair- and Why There's No Such Thing As 'Outsider' Art" by Jerry Saltz

     At first I found myself reading a very dense piece of writing that I personally found very hard to break down. After reading “The White Bird” a few times certain things continue to caught my attention. As I continue reading in depth the question of, how do we know what's beautiful? arose my curiosity. He often mention how beauty can be perceived from a cultural point of view, and it usually had to do with what an individual has been thought in their lifetime and how these experiences affect the concept of beauty.

    This is something in which I agree on and made me understand a little more what art is and I personally believe that art it's part of our individualis. What each of us find as beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. What we may find in museums could be a composition of the artist experiences, thoughts and points of view, hard work, and emotions intentionally and unintentionally, that often connect with a group of people that share these traits. To understand the art it's to understand the artist, what I mean by this it's that artwork has a part of the artists, and by having a background of what that individual has been through or where he stands we could understand what where his or her intentions to create their masterpiece. As Berger said, it would be like “to compare one of these birds to a van Gogh self-portrait or a Rembrandt crucifixion”.

  In “Jerry Saltz on the Outsider Art Fair - and Why There’s No Such Thing As ‘Outsider’ Art” by Jerry Saltz, has the point of what it's considered art because you go to school and are thought a certain way. Outsiders are the same as insiders, just because they didn't choose to  or have the opportunity to attend an institution or some type of school to be taught to master a certain skill in the field doesn't mean that they should be excluded from a “professional artist ” label.‘"Why have there been no great women artists?" The answer to this brilliant rhetorical question, of course, was that to be a "great artist," one had first to be trained in the academy via drawing the nude. Since women weren't allowed into academe and were considered too pure to look upon the nude, they couldn't be seen as "great."’ It really stood out the unfairness on the point made by Saltz about woman, the irony that they were considered so pure that couldn't look upon the nude but it was acceptable to pose nude as a men's muse.

    Just because they have been learning through trial and error without a professor's guidance doesn't mean they don't have an audience that admires and appreciate their art. In a way it connects to Berger’s point of view, just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad. It would be like “to compare one of these birds to a van Gogh self-portrait or a Rembrandt crucifixion”.