Howard Finster was a unique presence in American cultural history, and his death represents the end of an era.

After Howard came the deluge. It was, in fact, his visionary experience in the mid-1970s that in many ways marked the emergence of a new movement within the history of American art -- the variously named phenomenon called "contemporary folk," "visionary," "self-taught," "grassroots," "vernacular," or -- most popular but misleading -- "outsider art." It was Finster's manic and entrepreneurial energy, prolific production, and religiously charged message that defined the popular awareness of this new rough-and-ready art on the margins of the official art world.

As with the biblical myth of paradise lost (Finster's environmental construction known as PARADISE GARDEN is perhaps his most famous work), however, Finster's life and the commercial success of the whole "outsider" art movement also define the inevitable descent into a less sacred and more demonic condition, where innocence and creativity are only nostalgic memories.