Outsider art is art by self-taught or naïve art makers. Typically, those labeled as
outsider artists have little or no contact with the mainstream art world or art
institutions. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often,
outsider art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate
fantasy worlds.
The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English
synonym for art brut (French: [aʁ bʁyt], "raw art" or "rough art"), a label created by
French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official
culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by those on the outside of the
established art scene, using as examples psychiatric hospital patients and
children.[1][2]
Contents
Art of the mentally ill
Jean Dubuffet and art brut
Cultural context
Terminology
Notable outsider artists
See also
References
Further reading
External links
A defining moment was the publication of Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the mentally ill) in 1922, by Dr. Hans Prinzhorn.
This was the first formal study of psychiatric works, based upon a compilation of thousands of examples from European institutions.
The book and the art collection gained much attention from avant-garde artists of the time, including Paul Klee, Max Ernst, and Jean
Dubuffet.[5]
People with some formal artistic training as well as well-established artists are not immune from mental illness, and may also be
institutionalized. For example, William Kurelek, later awarded the Order of Canada for his artistic life work, as a young man was
admitted to the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospitalwhere he was treated forschizophrenia.[6] In hospital he painted, producing The Maze,
a dark depiction of his tortured youth.[7] He was transferred from the Maudsley to Netherne Hospital from November 1953 to
January 1955, to work withEdward Adamson (1911–1996), a pioneer of art therapy, and creator of the Adamson Collection.
"Those works created from solitude and from pure View inside the Collection de l'art brut
and authentic creative impulses – where the worries museum, Lausanne.
of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not
interfere – are, because of these very facts, more
precious than the productions of professionals. After a certain familiarity with these
flourishings of an exalted feverishness, lived so fully and so intensely by their authors, we
cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to
be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade." — Jean Dubuffet. Place à l'incivisme
(Make way for Incivism). Art and Text no.27 (December 1987 – February 1988). p.36
Dubuffet's writing on art brut was the subject of a noted program at the Art Club of Chicago
in the early 1950s.
Dubuffet argued that 'culture', that is mainstream culture, managed to assimilate every new development in art, and by doing so took
away whatever power it might have had. The result was to asphyxiate genuine expression. Art brut was his solution to this problem –
only art brut was immune to the influences of culture, immune to being absorbed and assimilated, because the artists themselves were
not willing or able to be assimilated.
Cultural context
The interest in "outsider" practices among twentieth-century artists and critics can be seen as part of a larger emphasis on the
rejection of established values within the modernist art milieu. The early part of the 20th century gave rise to Cubism and the Dada,
Constructivist and Futurist movements in art, all of which involved a dramatic movement away from cultural forms of the past.
Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, for example, abandoned "painterly" technique to allow chance operations a role in determining the form of
his works, or simply to re-contextualize existing "readymade" objects as art. Mid-century artists, including Pablo Picasso, looked
outside the traditions of high culture for inspiration, drawing from the artifacts of "primitive" societies, the unschooled artwork of
children, and vulgar advertising graphics. Dubuffet's championing of the art brut – of the insane and others at the margins of society
– is yet another example of avant-garde art challenging established cultural values.
Terminology
A number of terms are used to describe art that is loosely understood as "outside" of
official culture. Definitions of these terms vary and overlap.[8] The editors of Raw
Vision, a leading journal in the field, suggest that "Whatever views we have about
the value of controversy itself, it is important to sustain creative discussion by way
of an agreed vocabulary". Consequently, they lament the use of "outsider artist" to
refer to almost any untrained artist. "It is not enough to be untrained, clumsy or
naïve. Outsider Art is virtually synonymous with Art Brut in both spirit and
meaning, to that rarity of art produced by those who do not know its name."
Art Brut: literally translated from French means "raw art";'Raw' in that it
has not been through the 'cooking' process: the world of art schools,
galleries, museums. Originally art by psychotic individuals who existed
almost completely outside culture and society . Strictly speaking it refers
only to the Collection de l'art brut.
Folk art: Folk art originally suggested crafts and decorative skills
associated with peasant communities in Europe – though presumably it
could equally apply to any indigenous culture. It has broadened to
include any product of practical craftsmanship and decorative skill –
everything from chain-saw animals to hub-cap buildings. A key
distinction between folk and outsider art is that folk art typically
embodies traditional forms and social values, where outsider art stands
in some marginal relationship to society's mainstream.
Intuitive art / Visionary art: Raw Vision Magazine's preferred general
terms for outsider art. It describes them as deliberate umbrella terms.
However, Visionary Art unlike other definitions here can often refer to
the subject matter of the works, which includes images of a spiritual or
religious nature. Intuitive art is probably the most general term available.
Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Artbased in Chicago
operates a museum dedicated to the study and exhibition of intuitive and
outsider art. The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland
is dedicated to the collection and display of visionary art.
Marginal art/Art singulier: Essentially the same asNeuve Invention;
refers to artists on the margins of the art world.
Naïve art: Another term commonly applied to untrained artists who
aspire to "normal" artistic status, i.e. they have a much more conscious
interaction with the mainstream art world than do outsider artists.
Neuve invention: Used to describe artists who, although marginal, have Two images of Joe Minter'sAfrican
some interaction with mainstream culture. They may be doing art part- Village in America, a half-acre
time for instance. The expression was coined by Dubuf fet too; strictly visionary art environmentin
speaking it refers only to a special part of theCollection de l'art brut.
Birmingham, Alabama. Scenes
Visionary environments: Buildings and sculpture parks built by visionary
include African warriors watching
artists – range from decorated houses, to large areas incorporating a
large number of individual sculptures with a tightly associated theme. their descendants’ struggles in
Examples include Watts Towers by Simon Rodia, Buddha Park and Sala Alabama, tributes to black scientists
Keoku by Bunleua Sulilat, and The Palais Ideal by Ferdinand Cheval. and military leaders, recreations of
the epic civil rights confrontations in
Alabama, and biblical scenes.
Notable outsider artists
Nick Blinko (born 1961) is an English musician and artist diagnosed withschizoaffective disorder. He is represented
in the Collection de l'art brut in Lausanne. He is best known through his works with his bandRudimentary Peni.
Sid Boyum[9] (1914-1991) was an industrial photographer who turned his home and yard into a vast, dense array of
[10] throughout his
concrete and wood sculptures, many of which have since been moved to public locations
neighborhood in Madison, WI.
Al Carbee (1914–2005) was a prolific, multi-format artist who is known
for his Barbie collages. Carbee created a massive imaginaryutopia with
his collages, which he called "Epicuma". Carbee's art was discovered
accidentally while he was in his 80s, leading to a flurry of interest in his
later years.[11] Carbee was the subject of the documentary filmMagical
Universe.
Nek Chand (1924–2015) was an Indian artist, famous for building the
Rock Garden of Chandigarh, a forty-acre (160,000 m2) sculpture garden
in the city of Chandigarh, India.
Ferdinand Cheval (1836–1924) was a country postman in Hauterives,
south of Lyon, France. Motivated by a dream, he spent 33 years
constructing the Palais Ideal. Half organic building, half massive Cathedral of Justo Gallego in 2005
sculpture, it was constructed from stones collected on his postal round,
held together with chicken wire, cement, and lime.
Felipe Jesus Consalvos(1891–c. 1960) was a Cuban-American cigar
roller and artist, known for his posthumously discovered body of art work
based on the vernacular tradition ofcigar band collage.
Henry Darger (1892–1973) was a solitary man who was orphaned and
institutionalized as a child. In the privacy of his small north side Chicago
apartment, he produced over 35,000 pages of text and hundreds of
large scale illustrations, including maps, collaged photos, and
watercolors that depict the heroic struggles of his child characters, "the
Vivian Girls," engaged in activities such as battle scenes combining
imagery of the US Civil War with the presence of fanciful monsters.
Charles Dellschau (1830–1923) born in Prussia, Dellschau emigrated to
the US and in his 70s secluded himself in an attic and over the course of
20 years created 12 large scale books filled with mixed media August Natterer's Weltachse mit
watercolors depicting the inventions of the Sonora Aero Club, Haase (Axle of the World, with
chronicling the birth of the age of aviation. It is unknown if his subject Rabbit), 1919
was factual, a fictionalization or a delusion.
Holly Farrell 21st century Canadian self taught artist whose paintings
include the Barbie & Ken series, is considered an Outsider artist.[12]
Madge Gill (1882–1961) was an English mediumistic artist who made thousands of drawings "guided" by a spirit she
called "Myrninerest" (my inner rest).
Paul Gösch (1885–1940), a schizophrenic German artist and architect murdered by the Nazis in theireuthanasia
campaign.
Anna Zemánková (1908–1986) was a self-taught Czech painter , draftsman and pastel artist. Her work was featured
in a group show at London’s Hayward Gallery in 1979, and eighteen of her pieces were shown at theVenice
Biennale in 2013.[17]
See also
Avant-garde Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and
Asemic writing Outsider Art
Automatic writing Lowbrow (art movement)
Category: Outsider artists Outsider music
Collection de l'art brut Psychedelic art
David Bowie's art collectionand Outside (1995) Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments
Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art Schizoid personality disorder
List of Outsider artists Surrealism
Vernacular architecture
References
1. Roger Cardinal, Outsider Art, London, 1972
2. Bibliography The 20th Century Art Book. New Y
ork, NY: Phaidon Press, 1996.
3. "Outsider Art Fair" (http://www.outsiderartfair.com/). Outsider Art Fair. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
4. "What the Dickens is Outsider Art?" The Pantograph Punch, December 2016, retrieved 2017-01-16
(http://pantograp
h-punch.com/post/outsider-art)
5. "Outsider Art Sourcebook" (Raw Vision, Watford, 2009, p.4) (http://www.rawvision.com/what-outsider-art)
6. Cornell case study: Early Onset Schizophrenia – William Kurelek(http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/psych431_nbb421/st
udent2003/epl8/)
7. (http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/reprint/179/5/0.pdf)British Journal of Psychiatry(2001)
8. Brut Force. "The Many Terms in Our Continuum"(http://brutforce.com/many-terms-continuum-outsider-art/)
. Brut
Force. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
9. Rajer, Anton (1999). "Sid Boyum's Sculpture:The Challenge of Preserving Folk Art Environments"(http://folkart.org/f
am/folk-art-messenger). Folk Art Society of America. Folk Art Society of America. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
10. "Art in public places: Sid Boyum's concrete sculptures find new homes on Madison's East Side"
(http://madisonstorie
s.com/2007/08/15/art-in-public-places-sid-boyums-concrete-sculptures-find-new-homes-on-madisons-east-side/).
Quintessential Madison. Retrieved 2015-10-19.
11. Edward Gómez. "Al Carbee's Art of Dolls and Yearning: "Oh, for a real, live Barbie!" " (http://hyperallergic.com/12524
8/al-carbees-art-of-dolls-and-yearning-oh-for-a-real-live-barbie/)
. Hyperallergic.
12. "Inside the Outsider Art Fair"(https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sebastian-howard/inside-the-outsider-art-f_b_461593.
html). Huffington Post. Huffington Post. Retrieved 2 November 2018.
13. "James Hampton" (https://americanart.si.edu/artist/james-hampton-2052)
. www.americanart.si.edu. Retrieved
30 September 2018.
14. Carol Crown; Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts (2004).Coming Home!: Self-taught Artists, the Bible, and
the American South (https://books.google.com/books?id=tJT-ctyYB1YC). Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. 95.
ISBN 978-1-57806-659-9.
15. Treffert, Darold (1989). Extraordinary People: understanding "idiot savants"
. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-
015945-6.
16. David Martin. Savants: Charting "islands of genius", CNN broadcast September 14, 2006(http://www.cnn.com/2006/
HEALTH/09/06/savant.genius/index.html)
17. Anna Zemánková, The Good Luck Gallery , Los Angeles (https://web.archive.org/web/20170609105042/http://www
.th
egoodluckgallery.com/exhibitions/current/anna-zemankova/)
Further reading
Bandyopadhyay, S. and I. Jackson, The Collection, the Ruin and the Theatre: architecture, sculpture and landscape
in Nek Chand's Rock Garden, ChandigarhLiverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2007.
Greg Bottoms, I Colori dell'Apocalisse – Viaggi nell'outsider art, Odoya, Bologna 2009ISBN 978-88-6288-026-8
Greg Bottoms, The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007
ISBN 978-0-226-06685-1
Roger Cardinal, Outsider Art, London, 1972.
Roger Cardinal, Art Brut. In: Dictionary of Art, Vol. 2, London, 1996, p. 515–516.
Marc Decimo, Les Jardins de l'art brut, Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2007.
Turhan Demirel, "Outsider Bilderwelten", Bettina Peters Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-939691-44-5
Jean Dubuffet: L’Art brut préféré aux arts culturels[1949](=engl in: Art brut. Madness and Marginalia, special issue
of Art & Text, No. 27, 1987, p. 31–33).
Hal Foster, Blinded Insight: On the Modernist Reception of the Art of The Mentally Ill. In: October, No. 97, Summer
2001, pp. 3–30.
Michael D. Hall and Eugene W. Metcalf, eds., The Artist Outsider: Creativity and the Boundaries of Culture
Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 1993. ISBN 978-1560983354
Deborah Klochko and John Turner, eds., Create and Be Recognized: Photography on the Edge , San Francisco:
Chronicle Books, 2004.
John M. MacGregor, The Discovery of the Art of the Insane.Princeton, Oxford, 1989.
David Maclagan, Outsider Art: From the margins to the marketplace , London: Reaktion books, 2009.
John Maizels, Raw Creation art and beyond,Phaidon Press Limited, London, 1996.
John Maizels (ed.), Outsider Art Sourcebook. Raw Vision, Watford, 2009. ISBN 978-0-9543393-2-6
Lucienne Peiry, Art brut: The Origins of Outsider Art, Paris: Flammarion, 2001.
Lucienne Peiry (ed.), "Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne", Skira Flammarion, 2012.
Lyle Rexer, How to Look at Outsider Art,New York:Abrams, 2005.
Colin Rhodes, Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives, London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
Rubin, Susan Goldman.(March 9, 2004). Art Against the Odds: From Slave Quilts to Prison Paintings.Publisher:
Crown Books for Young Readers. ISBN 0-375-82406-5
Michel Thévoz, Art brut, New York, 1975.
Maurice Tuchman and Carol Eliel, eds.Parallel Visions. Modern Artists and OutsiderArt. Exhb. cat. Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1992.
Bianca Tosatti, Arte e psichiatria. Uno sguardo sottile, (in collaboration with Giorgio Bedoni), Mazzotta, Milano, 2000.
Bianca Tosatti, Les Fascicules de l'Art brut', un saggio sull'artista Antonio dalla aVlle,2007.
Allen S. Weiss, Shattered Forms, Art Brut, Phantasms, Modernism,State University of New York, Albany, 1992.
Self Taught Artists of the 20th Century: An American Anthology San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1998
Daniel Wojcik, Outsider Art: Visionary Worlds and Trauma. University Press of Mississippi, 2016.
External links
Raw Vision Magazine - International art magazine devoted to outsider art
Gricha-rosov.com - Rich database and presentation of international outsider artists (in French language, but has
extensive illustrations)
Outsider Artists in the Collection of Museum of Naive and Marginal Art (MNMA) Jagodina Serbia
Russian outsider art from the Bogemskaja-T urchin collection
Outsider Art news, wire, and announcements
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