From Outsider to Insider

Excited about their new acquisitions, the Rubells have placed a half-dozen of Young's large paintings on display. Propped up against the wall behind the reception desk in the building's entranceway, the sketchy expressionist images with their rough wooden frames look modest next to the other slickly finished pieces on exhibit. But the Rubells believe Young's works conform to the collection and will hold their own once they are properly hung.

Mera Rubell points out obvious thematic connections to the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and several other black artists in the collection, and she sees no reason to classify Young as an outsider artist. "The whole notion of other in art is disturbing to us," she says. "Outsider is a word that classifies a whole bunch of artists as 'the other.' The way he works and what he works about is totally inside any number of the art forces right here in the collection.

"This is a 56-year-old man who has been working for all these years in a totally committed way no different from any other artist," she goes on. "We have to respect his lifestyle. I respect a person who's made a life for himself that he's proud of. He's saying that he's living the life he wants to live. How many people can say that?"

The Rubells' interest in Young was piqued by their visit to Tamara Hendershot's gallery, a ramshackle affair located on North Miami Avenue just across the railroad tracks from Overtown. She always has available a small number of Young's works, which she usually buys for a few hundred dollars in exchange for helping the painter deal with his bills and health care. She acknowledges that, like others who buy from Young, she makes a good profit on the paintings.

The collectors looked at Young's paintings in Hendershot's gallery, and she encouraged them to visit his studio. Previously Young had told Hendershot he wanted to unload his stock of paintings. "He was tired of people coming and digging around," Hendershot recounts. "It's an invasion. You're there for two or three hours clumping around the piles. He doesn't help you. He watches Channel 2 or he paints."

She arranged for the Rubells to visit Young in his studio. She also invited Knapp, who has known Young for many years and is currently working on a book with Hendershot on Florida's self-taught artists.

The Rubells had imagined they might buy a few paintings, but soon found themselves negotiating with Young to take it all. "This [artwork] was hanging over his head," recalls Don Rubell, a recently retired obstetrician. With their children Jason and Jennifer, the Rubells own Miami Beach's Greenview and Albion hotels, the Sony building, and other Miami properties. "It was almost like destiny that we arrived when he felt that it was a burden. It felt like he needed to make a move and it was a very natural evolution how the whole thing happened."

It is doubtful the Rubells paid market price for such a large number of paintings. The collectors themselves say the sum is irrelevant; they are not going to make any profit on the work.

"I'm not really impressed," says Horst Kohlem, a German artist and part-time Miami Beach resident who heard about the deal from his friend Knapp. "He should have gotten decent prices for his paintings all along. People were always walking in there and paying 200 bucks or something. Why couldn't [the Rubells] just select a few pieces and pay a decent price? Why buy the whole thing? What is that, a power game? I think it's a macho attitude."

Mera Rubell objects to such criticism. "The whole idea that somebody knows better [than the artist] is in itself obnoxious," she counters. "Who are you or I to say what's right for this man if this is what he chooses for his life?"

Gerard Wertkin, director of New York City's Museum of American Folk Art, is accustomed to hearing differing points of view about self-taught artists such as Purvis Young, whose work will be exhibited at the museum in the fall as part of a major traveling exhibition. "You don't want to assume that the artist is incapable of making a judgment call in terms of how his work should be seen or how it should enter the marketplace," cautions Wertkin, who does not use the term outsider to describe artists. "In the end these are adults who have the right to make those choices."

But Wertkin acknowledges a great potential for abuse. "It becomes a difficult issue," he says, "when artists who have created their work without regard to established or emerging art-world trends suddenly enter that world and find difficulties navigating it."