i was reading this article for my thesis research (i'm a sucker for anything that says authenticity, beauty, or outsider art) and i really like the last paragraph. thought you might like it too . . .

Is the demotion of beauty just another fashion generated by the popularity of “Outsider Art” and the increasing appreciation of artifacts by the eccentric and insane? Or is it the last gasp by a bunch of “angry white guys” sticking it to the art world man, the last of a waning breed of aesthetic “bad boys”? Have the perfect simulations of the computer-generated world made the “ugly real” more desirable than the “synthetically beautiful?” Perhaps a more provocative question would be: if authenticity can be faked, at what point does the sincerity of its simulation raise it to the level of the authentically authentic?

the full article