“He’s overpriced because he’s dead,” repeated a taut-faced woman to her husband. The couple was examining an enamel collage of a rhinoceros by William Hawkins, a Kentucky-born artist who could barely read or write, held an assortment of unskilled jobs, and claimed to have fathered some 20 children. The piece, which resembled the naïve artwork of a precocious kindergartener, was listed at $55,000. Similar neighboring works were going for six figures. “Everything that’s outsider becomes insider,” said the woman.

Indeed, last weekend’s annual Outsider Art Fair might almost be called Establishment. Now in its 16th round, this year’s fair drew 34 international galleries representing “outsider artists,” autodidacts removed from mainstream society including the deranged and the mentally impaired. A maze of booths filled the ground floor of SoHo’s Puck Building, displaying colorful and imaginative paintings, drawings, and sculptures, many of which were primitive in both construction and appearance.

“Torn clothes didn’t used to be fashionable—they used to be worn because people couldn’t afford better clothes,” was one fairly stylish man’s analogy for the fair’s rising popularity and prices. He quickly added, “I’ve been coming to the fair since before it was hip, honey.” While the concept of moving beyond the bourgeois to embrace a less cultivated, even downtrodden aesthetic might seem relevant, this analogy actually fell short. Rather, the obsessive, raw appeal of most of the artwork seemed to spring from the artists’ total lack of any normal sense of pretense.

One such outsider artist who has become particularly famous is Henry Darger, whose outstanding watercolor illustrations drew crowds at the fair like postcard-published Picassos at the Museum of Modern Art. Darger is known not only for his vast body of work, but also for his intriguing life story. A reclusive janitor in Illinois who spent his childhood in an asylum, Darger drafted a 15,145-page fantasy manuscript along with several hundred illustrations of the Vivian Girls, prepubescent characters who often appear naked with male genitalia. Extraordinarily, Darger’s work was only discovered accidentally after his death, lending an authenticity to his cosseted, alternative consciousness.

“I like it that they’re self-contained,” said Phyllis Kind, whose New York gallery claims to be the first to promote outsider artists within the context of contemporary “high” art. “They’re not involved with dialogue,” she continued. “There’s no parrot on their shoulder.” Kind’s popular booth was dominated by the works of Domenico Zindato, whose meticulously detailed pastel-and-pen drawings combine figures with repetitive abstractions. “He doesn’t impose anything on it,” she said of the Italian artist, who currently resides in Mexico City. “The work is energetic and internally motivated. There’s no ulterior motive. Sometimes I think it’s the hand of God.” Keenly aware of the potential buyers perusing her corner as she spoke, Kind frequently noted that Zindato’s recent show in Paris had sold out.

Perhaps the most poignant artwork at the fair was that of Judith Scott, which could be found at the booth for Oakland, Calif.’s Creative Growth Art Center. Scott made sculptures out of everyday objects that she wrapped elaborately with yarn, ribbon, and other small found objects. While the unusually beautiful handmade creations stood on their own, the powerful symbolic significance of the large, cocoon-like pieces was difficult to ignore considering Scott’s history as a deaf-mute woman who suffered from Down syndrome.

“The artist’s background is instrumental, but it’s also detrimental to pigeonhole the art in that way,” said an attendant manning the booth for Creative Growth, which is a nonprofit that serves as both a studio and gallery for adults with disabilities. “What’s central is that the work is of the same quality.” Gallerist Russell Bowman agreed that it was important to consider the art itself over its somewhat derogatory categorization: “Certainly there’s a different impulse for making art. Outsider artists are less reactive and really trying to communicate. It’s a very personal expression, so in that way biography is important. But the label itself isn’t really too meaningful and does, unfortunately, imply a certain pejorative of insiders.”

Back outside the fair, a makeshift show had formed on Lafayette Street, where several unrepresented artists had decided to brave the cold and mount their canvases on the sidewalk. “I’ve always been an outside outsider artist,” boasted one painter, who stood shivering in front of his series of brightly-colored alien spacecraft. Asked what he thought of the grand convocation inside, he scoffed. “The art in there’s no better than what we’ve got out here.”