Jackson Pollock gained fame and fortune for  pouring and dripping paint onto flat canvas.

He basically made spills–intentional though  they were– into something cool and valuable. But Pollock wasn’t actually  the first person to do this.

That credit goes to Janet Sobel,   a middle-aged Ukrainian-American woman  who had never taken an art class. She dripped and spilled paint, and also  blew and tilted it in different directions,   to create the dynamic, marbled  surface of this 1945 work,   “Milky Way,” at least a year before  Pollock created similar work. But it was Pollock who became famous,  while Sobel faded into obscurity.

Why did that happen? Why do we take one person’s dripped  paint seriously and not the other’s? What’s the difference between just  an everyday amateur… and an artist?

Hi! I’m Sarah Urist Green, and  this is Crash Course Art History. [THEME MUSIC] We know that Sobel directly influenced Pollock,   who first encountered her paintings with  art critic Clement Greenberg in 1944. Greenberg was impressed by Sobel’s  works and wrote about them.

He considered hers the first truly “all-over  pictures” he had ever seen, a term he coined   for paintings that don’t really have a focal  point and treat the entire surface evenly. Some say the parts of Sobel’s identity that drew   attention to her at first  also fueled her dismissal. After all, she was an outsider  with no formal training.

And it didn’t help that Greenberg described   her as a “primitive painter” and  “housewife living in Brooklyn.” Essentially, Greenberg positioned her  art as less serious than Pollock’s. He considered her an amateur. If you look up synonyms for “amateur,” you get   words like “incompetent,”  “useless,” or “unskilled.” Pretty harsh.

But society hasn’t always  treated amateurs this way. Back in early 18th-century Paris,  the term came with some respect. Amateur artists mingled, trained, and exhibited  their work with the pros at the Royal Academy   of Painting and Sculpture, which dominated  the arts in France for almost 150 years.

Being an amateur didn’t mean you weren’t  good enough to be a professional. It meant you just didn’t need the money. They were rich enough to study  art for fun and cultural clout,   rather than creating works for wealthy patrons.

And when amateurs weren’t making art themselves,   they lectured, published scholarly hot  takes, and shaped the tastes of the time. Take a look at this portrait of  amateur artist Claude-Henri Watelet. He’s posing casually, implying  that he and Jean-Baptiste Greuze,   the “professional” artist  painting him, are besties.

Watelet is deep in thought  about that sculpture of Venus,   while holding an art theory book he  wrote open to a page of his own artwork. It’s all designed to show us what  a serious thinker and artist he   is – even though he’s considered an amateur. But, the good vibes didn’t last.

By the mid-18th century, art criticism had grown  more popular and started to appear in newspapers. This meant the wider public  started to have opinions about art,   and the once-elite class of art lovers  and taste-makers didn’t care for this. So the meaning of “amateur” began to drift.

And eventually, the word picked  up negative connotations. Folks started using it to refer to anyone who  didn’t fit the Academy’s idea of an artist. Women in particular were quickly relegated  to the category of “amateur” artists.

When women and girls spent their free time  making art, critics didn’t think they were   building careers or influencing culture, so  they received little official recognition. But that didn't stop them from making art. Women created and displayed works in private,   domestic spaces and often expressed  creativity through fashion.

Some fashion plates from the time — which  functioned sort of like 18th-century   Vogue magazines — show women modeling the  hottest trends—with art supplies in hand. We’re also continuing to learn more about how some   women amateurs made it into  Paris’s official art spaces. In recent years, art historians have studied  letters written by women who described themselves   as students in artist Jacques-Louis David’s  prestigious, almost exclusively male studio.

And this young amateur, Alexandrine Brongniart,  took drawing lessons from François Gérard,   the same artist who painted  this famous portrait of her. Unlike the portrait of Watelet, this image doesn’t  reveal anything about Brongniart’s artistic life. But a recently discovered version  shows her holding a porte-crayon,   a drawing tool that says, “I’m a serious artist.” But critics at the time didn’t acknowledge  Brongniart as an artist in their reviews of   the portrait–to them it wasn’t worth mentioning.

As the years went on, official  art spaces in Europe continued   to draw distinct lines between  the professional and the amateur. But across the Atlantic, some  artists in the Americas were   working outside those lines altogether. Let’s head to the drawing board.

In 1875, the U. S. government forcefully  relocated 72 members of the Kiowa,   Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and  Caddo tribes from Oklahoma to Florida. All were accused of crimes against white settlers  and imprisoned for three years at Fort Marion.

In an effort to force them to  adopt dominant American customs,   they were made to cut their hair, wear  military uniforms, and study the Bible. A young Kiowa warrior and artist  named Wohaw was among the prisoners. He created sketches during  the time he was imprisoned.

Some show his life before incarceration — like  this one, of a couple wrapped in a buffalo robe. Others reflect life in captivity,  like this drawing of morning lessons,   observed by a transparent  figure in traditional clothing. After three years in prison, Wohaw had a choice:   return to a reservation or  continue boarding school up north.

A drawing from around that  time echoes his dilemma. On one side, he’s flanked by a buffalo and a  Kiowa tipi; on the other, a domestic cow and farm. By then, the U.

S. government had already pushed  the Kiowa and other groups off their land,   while nearly exterminating  the buffalo they depended on. Wohaw’s drawing evokes a feeling of suspension   between two cultures — personal to him,  but shared by many Indigenous people. In the drawing, Wohaw extends a  peace pipe toward both animals.

In life, he returned to a reservation,  where he spent the rest of his years. Wohaw didn’t study at an art academy  or display work at the Paris salon. But that doesn’t make his art any less  impactful, poignant, or worthy of preservation.

In fact, his work has since been shown at the  Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian. But it wasn’t until the 20th century  that the mainstream art world started   actually paying attention to  work by artists like Wohaw. Artists who hadn’t received what  “officially” counted as formal training.

This led to new categories for  organizing otherwise disparate   types of art, which some called outsider art. It was also called self-taught art, visionary  art, and intuitive art, among many other terms. In the 1940s, French painter  Jean Dubuffet, for example,   became fascinated by artwork made by children,  incarcerated people, and psychiatric patients.

He described their work as  “art brut,” or “raw art.” To him, it was open, honest,  and free from rules or greed. That made it better than work made by formally  trained artists, at least in the eyes of Dubuffet. In the 1950s and ‘60s, other artists and  collectors also became interested in art brut.

But Dubuffet wasn’t having it and started  refereeing its boundaries — weeding out   the artists he once considered good, but  now viewed as too trained or deliberate. Sort of like those people who stop listening  to a band once they go “mainstream.” But in defining this group,   Dubuffet drew yet another box around  who could be considered artists. So, he just created a different,  equally limiting definition.

Amateur hour. And also, my friends, one of  the many reasons we won’t be   officially defining the word “art” in this series. Despite the popularity of art brut,   recognition was hard to come by for  outsider artists in the 20th century.

Take, for example, artist Martín Ramírez. Born in Mexico, Ramírez moved to the United States   in 1925 in search of work to  support his family back home. But by 1931, he found himself unemployed,   unhoused, and eventually  diagnosed with schizophrenia.

He spent the rest of his life  in psychiatric institutions,   including fifteen years at the  DeWitt State Hospital in California. There, he made hundreds of dynamic and complex  drawings, using any materials he could find. In this one, geometric patterns  close in around a horse and rider,   evoking tension between freedom and containment.

A local artist and psychology professor  tried to draw attention to Ramírez’s art,   arranging exhibitions and mailing  drawings to the Guggenheim Museum. Official recognition did ultimately come for  Ramírez, but it wasn’t until long after his death. These stories of who counts as an artist  are powerful, and still impact us today.

The lines that divide inside and  outside art worlds can seem like   they’re constantly shifting — because they are. Art is too slippery of a concept  to capture with stark lines. And the value of art is wrapped up in so many  biases, like those around class, gender, and race.

In reality, art gets made under  a lot of different circumstances. In official schools and light-filled studios, yes. But also in hospitals, prisons, and homes.

There’s no one road that leads to being an artist,   and recognition by the powers that  be is unpredictable and fleeting. The more we explore art and  artists outside of official spaces,   the more we complicate what it means to be  inside or outside, amateur or professional. And today, art historians recognize that  it’s not important to know who’s “in” or   “out” but to instead explore the dynamic web  of influences that inform all artists’ work.

Yesterday’s amateur is today’s  subject of a massive museum show. Today’s hot artist at auction might be  relegated to museum storage tomorrow. And who knows what’s in  store for today’s amateurs!

Let’s all be on the lookout. In our next episode, we’ll explore  the overlap between art and design. I’ll see you there.

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course  Art History which was filmed at the Indianapolis   Museum of Art at Newfields and was made with  the help of all these professional people. If you want to help keep Crash  Course free for everyone,   forever, you can join our community on Patreon.