Art Brut
Art Brut, a term coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet in the mid-20th century, refers to art created outside the mainstream contemporary and traditional art spheres. It encompasses works by individuals such as those with mental health issues, prisoners, children, and other untrained artists whose creations are characterized by a rawness and directness, free from conventional trends or techniques. Dubuffet emphasized the importance of art that comes from an instinctive depth rather than from established artistic norms. The interest in such art began to intensify in the 1920s, influenced by psychiatric studies that highlighted the expressive potential of works produced by individuals with mental health conditions.
In 1948, Dubuffet, alongside other artists, founded the Compagnie de l'Art Brut, culminating in the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland, which houses a significant collection of this type of art. Art brut artists often draw upon personal experiences and local narratives, resulting in innovative expressions that challenge traditional artistic ideals. Notable figures in this realm include Adolf Wölfli, Henry Darger, and Ferdinand Cheval, among others. As the concept of art brut has evolved, it has been increasingly recognized and integrated into the global art scene, serving as a platform for marginalized voices and continuing to inspire contemporary artists around the world.
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Art Brut
Unlike many avant-garde movements of the twentieth century, art brut was not a movement consciously created by a group of artists but a term coined by the French artist Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) to describe the collective work of people outside the professional art world. Art brut is unaffected by trends, traditions, or techniques and has a specific directness, purity, and rawness of vision. Although art brut embraces any painting or sculpture created outside the mainstream contemporary or traditional art, Dubuffet was mostly interested in the works by those with mental health issues, prisoners, children, and other untrained artists, who created "from their own depths and not from the stereotypes of Classical or fashionable art." In 1948, Dubuffet and other artists, including Andre Breton (1896–1966) founded Compagnie de l'Art Brut to house his growing collection. Known as Collection de l'Art Brut, this is now one of the largest collections of outsider art in the world and, since 1976, is based in its own museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Brief History
Interest in the art created by people with mental health conditions started to grow in the 1920s. Contributing factors included the ongoing quest of the avant-garde for new and unexplored ways of expression and the publication of two seminal medical works on the art of individuals who had mental health conditions.
In 1921, psychiatrist Walter Morgenthaler published the notable volume Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (A Psychiatric Patient as Artist), which contained a study of a single psychiatric patient, Adolf Wölfli, that included 1,600 illustrations and 1,500 collages. Adolf Wölfli, who spent thirty-five years in the Waldau asylum, left behind a large body of work, including fictional autobiographic writing, image making, and musical annotations. His complex paintings use meticulous gradations of color, intricate detail, and obsessive patterns. A year later, the Viennese psychiatrist and art historian Hans Prinzhorn, published his book Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Painting of the mentally ill). Prinzhorn observed the drawings of his patients, who often had an intense drive for self-expression, and noted their urge to communicate their emotions, imagination, and responses.
The first known use of the term "art brut" was in a letter that Dubuffet wrote to his friend, painter René Auberjonois, in 1945. Moved by the studies of Morgenthaler and Prinzhorn, Dubuffet started to collect work by patients undergoing mental health treatment and also works by children, which resulted in a large collection that formed the basis of the Collection de l'Art Brut. Dubuffet's own subsequent painting was in part inspired by the defining characteristics of art brut: instinctive neoprimitivism, spontaneous childlike form, no structure or sense of composition, no aesthetic characteristics. He favored offsetting the rawness of the materials, enabling pure and powerful expression. Dubuffet's sculpture used found objects, papier-mâché, driftwood, hardboard, grease, metal, sand, plaster, and paint.
Impact
Art brut is based on the original aesthetic solutions of pronounced innovation and sensibility, dominated by local or personal chronicles, scenes from life, fantasies, and symbols. The impact and appeal of art brut was its uninhibited expression, which undermined the conscious artistic efforts and premeditated concepts about what art is or ought to do. It also, to some extent, subverted the art market because it was not created to make money.
As knowledge and awareness of art brut spread, so did its parameters, so correlating terms are used to describe or determine the essence of self-taught, childlike vision. The term naïve art first appeared in eighteenth-century France. Naïve painters were considered those with clumsy technique, a simple thematic approach, and a childlike vision in comparison with the academic standards. "Grand reality," a term coined by artist Wassily Kandinsky, is one of the first to describe naïve art. According to Kandinsky, grand reality amounts to the aspiration to banish the outer artistic shell from painting so that the content of the work would be embodied in a simple reproduction of a solid object. The simpler the presentation, the stronger the outer capsule, the more powerful the sonority of its interior. Other terms used to describe it are "painters of the pure heart," "people's art," "painters of the instinct," "lay painting," and "popular artists of reality." Art brut sometimes also includes folk crafts and vernacular art.
In France, well-known art brut artists include the painters Joseph Crepin (1875–1948), Augustin Lesage (1876–1954), and Gaston Chaissac (1910–1964), the monumental sculptor Robert Tatin (1902–1983), and the junk artist Chomo (Roger Chomeaux; 1907-1999); and Ferdinand Cheval (1836–1924), a postman who spent thirty-three years building his Palais Idéal (Ideal Palace) in Hauterives. Swiss art brut artists include Adolf Wölfli (1864–1930) and painter Aloïse Corbaz (1886–1964). American art brut artists include Felipe Jesus Consalvos (1891–1960), who created a body of art based on the tradition of cigar band collage; Norbert Cox (b. 1945) works with rubbish and salvaged objects to create his specific iconography; and Henry Darger (1892–1973), a recluse known for nearly a hundred of large-scale drawings of epic battles between soldiers and brave "Vivien girls." Other notable art brut artists include Nek Chand Saini (1924–2015) best known for creating the Rock Garden, an eighteen-acre sculpture garden made of recycled and found objects in Chandigarh, India, and Croatian Matija Stančić (1926–1987), a self-taught painter of fantasy portraiture. Art brut is found in many private and public collections and galleries throughout the world. The best known are the Henry Boxer Gallery in London, Galerie Christian Berst in Paris, The Museum of Naive and Marginal Art in Jagodina, and the Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne. In the twenty-first century, art brut, sometimes called “raw art,” continued to evolve and produce new works from contemporary artists. Art brut infiltrated the global art scene and was increasingly incorporated by artists from Japan, South Korea, and Brazil. Art brut continued to challenge the traditional parameters and art and was an artistic vehicle for the inclusion of marginalized voices.
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