From Outsider to Insider

Racism, he adds, contributes to the problem. "There are issues of race here when you have an African-American artist and dealers who may be white," he says. "I do not believe in a cultural colonialism where either a museum, a dealer, or a collector takes on a kind of paternalistic role. When I meet an artist who is greatly undervaluing his work, I'm quick to suggest that this is so, and hope the artist would take my advice."

Anyone buying Young's work, Wertkin asserts, should compensate him at a level commensurate with the current value of his art; anything else is unacceptable. "In working with a living artist, I would never suggest that he take less than market price," he says. "If you're receiving something you should pay for it and pay fairly."

The museum director contends that the ethical concerns in the milieu of folk and self-taught artists are great, and there are no prescribed answers. "I don't have a solution other than to hope that people who are richly gifted like Purvis Young will ultimately find the right audience," he says, "and that there are people who will step forward to make sure he's treated fairly."

The Rubells' acquisitions may indeed make Young less susceptible to walk-in buyers with speculative intentions. "The people who are going to be most upset," says Don Rubell, "are the people who are used to walking in and stealing what they can steal and selling it at huge profits." But ultimately the Rubells' interest in Young's work should increase its market price, a fact acknowledged by Rubell. "This is America," he reasons. "Whenever we have a shortage, the value goes up." So perhaps not surprisingly, both Joy Moos and Larry Clemons report to be thrilled about the collectors' buyout of the warehouse.

But whatever the market implications, the real value of the Rubells' decision is that it could change Young's place in history. Observes Paula Harper: "The thing about Purvis is he's made good art and it ought to be looked at as art, with no qualifiers. I think Purvis is quite eccentric and obsessive, and to my mind that adds up to the fact that Purvis is a real artist. Who ever said artists have to be businessmen?

"To be an outsider artist in the past ten years was an advantage because it got you noticed," she continues. "[Young] owes his luck to that definition. But now if it needs to be discarded, discard it."

For Jeffrey Knapp that happened the day the Rubells walked into the Overtown studio. "He immediately went from being an outsider artist to being a contemporary artist."

However arbiters of the art world may classify Young, he says he will still choose to remain something of an outsider. "This is my lifestyle," he remarks while standing in his studio recently, which, astoundingly, looks much as it did before the Rubells cleaned it out. Piles of blank pieces of plywood, which Young pays unemployed men in the neighborhood to collect for him, stand in the same spots where his paintings once crowded the floor. The artist has already finished about 50 new paintings, which are leaning against the piles.

As usual his comfortable working chair sits near the front of the room, near a makeshift table covered with paints. A mattress and wool blankets lay on the floor in a separate room at the back of the warehouse. "I been here all my life," he says of Overtown. "At my age I'm not going to go nowhere. I'm a loner, a diabetic. I look at National Geographic, how people live in the wilderness. I couldn't live like that, man."

Young gestures around the room. "I've got enough wood to start again. I'm going to paint some wild horses and what I see in the world. I love just working. I keep my mouth shut and paint the world's problems.

"I'm not worried about what will happen to the work," the artist concludes. "It's not all over yet.