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![Outsider Art Fair: Here’s 8 Things to See](https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/stsp/to_webp,q_lossy,ret_img/https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/01/multimedia/29outsider-art-fair-1-ltzc/29outsider-art-fair-1-ltzc-facebookJumbo.jpg)
If you’re new to the genre, this year’s 32nd edition of the Outsider Art Fair offers a crash course for only $35. (Last year’s tickets were $44.) From an unmissable Elijah Pierce sculpture of the crucifixion (Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, A5) to a spectacular mixed-media Thornton Dial painting (Andrew Edlin Gallery, A12), and from the artist and investigator Abigail Goldman’s “die-o-ramas” (Hashimoto Contemporary, C17) to the sinuous drawings of Shuvinai Ashoona and Quvianaqtuk Pudlat’s formidable colored pencil caribou (Feheley Fine Arts, B10), the event is well-stocked with classics and new additions alike.
For those who’ve been to this party before, however, the chief joy of this often overwhelming fair, where many exhibitors cram their booths with work by a dozen artists and the quality ranges widely, is the small, singular discovery. What follows are eight pieces or groups of pieces that caught my eye.
‘Self Portrait (San Francisco)’
“Beat Art Work: Power of the Gaze,” A13
Standing out in an otherwise very serious collection of beat ephemera curated by the poet Anne Waldman — even Allen Ginsberg’s doodles, at 70 years’ remove, have something self-conscious about them — is an earnest but innocent oil-on-shirt-board self portrait by a young Peter Orlovsky, made before he became Ginsberg’s partner. With an orange and yellow face, teal-ringed eyes and oversize lips, it could be the glowing afterimage of someone who’s looked in the mirror a moment too long.
‘An Army of Clowns’
Ricco/Maresca Gallery, B9