Original subtitles

“A learned man carne to see us one day, and share his knowledge with us.

We didn’t know anything, and he taught us tb speak.

Before that, we could only sing.”

Mad, ignorant, lonely human beings, wandering in a pitch-black night.

Those who used to be ignored, despised, locked up...

are progressively leaving their obscurity;

their works are now displayed at Biennales and major art museums.

“Art brut” is used to characterize works by mentally iII patients,

but also works by adepts of Spiritism

and visionary self-taught artists.

It doesn't fit in established art historical categorías and artistic movements.

It was theorized by Dubuffet

in the aftermath of the Second World War,

and led us to question a number of prejudices:

dominant aestheticand cultural norms,

and the place of madness within society.

Today, these strange, fascinating and often disturbing works

that had previously been left out of the art historical canon

are leaving their social ghetto, allowing us to shed new light

on the mysterious mechanisms of artistic creation.

The history of this notion

can be traced back to the immediate aftermath of the First World War,

at the Heidelberg University Psychiatric Hospital.

Hans Prinzhorn 1919 - Heidelberg - Germany

The German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn

championed a new definition of visual works

created by mentally iII patients.

A student of aesthetic philosophy and psychiatry,

the young Prinzhorn also underwent training as an opera singer,

and was a fervent admirer of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Fascinated by works produced in insane asylums,

he spent three years

gathering such works, contacting mental hospitals all over Europe.

Prinzhorn thought that these works would allow him

to question and potentially redefine the boundaries of art

and mental illness.

This way of thinking is strikingly similar to what

happened in the 1950s and 1960s, when people like Blanchot and Foucault

theorized what they called a "limit experience" and a "limit work".

Radically breaking with preexisting medical taxonómical uses,

Prinzhorn organized his collection of more than 5,000 works

according to formal and aesthetic categories,

as opposed to the respective mental pathology of each patient.

The letters of Emma Hauck

are some of the most moving works of the Prinzhorn Collection.

Suffering from mental illness,

she was institutionalized in 1909 in the Heidelberg mental hospital

because she was convinced that she had been “contamined”

and even poisoned by a kiss her husband had given her.

During her stay at the hospital, she wrote him desperate letters,

telling him how deeply she loved him,

and begging him to come take her out of the hospital.

Hans Prinzhorn published his book "The Artistry of the Mentally III" in 1922,

in which he attempts to better understand

the very process of artistic form-creation,

of "Gestaltung".

Inspired by the latest developments of psychoanalysis

and the artistic avant-garde,

Prinzhorn advocated for a more open form of psychiatry,

and a new way to describe and envision visual works.

"We eannot anchor our investigaron in any of the established sciences.

They are all based on overly dogmatic or reductive approaches.

We are at a loss when faced with the two binary conceptual oppositions

on which these disciplines are based:

neither the opposition 'siekness vs. health'. nor the opposition 'art vs. non-art'

make much sense at alI, if not taken to be part of a dialectics."

He’s referring to the binary opposition between“art” and “anti-art”,

which was a fairly common way of thinking at the time.

and was also used to analyse works of dadaists for example.

“Anti-art” does not correspond to the “other” of art

in the sense that it would be absolutely unrelated to it:

it refers to works that are thought to be

outside of the field of art, were previously not defined as art,

and whose very existence is swppqsed to bring about a new definition of art itself.

A textbook example of “anti-art” would be Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”,

also known as the “urinal”.

In his book, Prinzhorn dedicated ten individual monographic studies to artists

whom he labels as “schizophrenic masters”.

“Such works are untouehed by cultural traditions,

resulting in a form of artistic creation of a much highgr intensity

those other works that comply with the conscious, highly complex criteria

of bourgeois connoisseurs."

Hans Prinzhorn paid particular attention

to the work of August Natterer.

Natterer was a brilliant engineer,

who suddenly lost his job and was left penniless.

Suffering from hallucinations and plagued by suicidal thoughts,

he was institutionalized in 1907.

“I saw a white spot in the clouds, really close to me...

The clouds stopped moving...

then the white spot receded in the distance

and stayed there like a plank in the middle of the sky...

I saw images in rapid succession, like flashes,

around 10,000 of them in half an hour...

these images were epiphanies of Judgment Day...

Christ could not bring about Salvation because he was crucified...

God revealed these images to me so that I could bring about Salvation.”

Hallucinatory phenomena sometimes also have

a rhythmical, repetitive,

iterative, almost imperious quality to them...

that is to say that some people can feel like

they aré'experiencing hallucinatory overload,

of which they attempt to rid themselves

by unloading ¡t ¡mmediately onto a sheet of paper.

These solitary creators, these social pariahs

open up new aesthetic v^enues

and bring about a major upheaval of art histórica! criteria.

Prinzhorn lays the theoretical foundations

of what will become, almost three decades later,

Jean Dubuffet's "art brut".

Prinzhorn's book, “The Artistry of the Mentally III”,

became a bestseller that was widely read in European avant-garde circles.

Max Ernst gave French poet Paul Éluard a copy of the book,

to thank him for helping him settle down ¡n France.

Works by schizophrenic masters

exerted a powerful attraction on avant-garde masters

such as Picasso, Paul Klee, or Max Ernst,

for whom they became major sources of inspiration.

As Joseph Stalin succeeded tó Lenin afthe helm of the USSR,

in Western Europe, an aesthetic revolution whose motto could have been

“all power to imagination” was in fuII swing.

The Surrealists 1924 - PARIS

Surrealista publish their first manifestó.

André Bretón and his friends

want to free themselves from the yoke of reason

and of conventional aesthetics and morality.

Fascinated by the writings of “literary madmen”

and the works produced by patients in insane asylums,

they celébrate madness and see it as an inexhaustible source of ¡nspiration,

opening up new vistas for artistic creation.

“It ¡s a little known fact that insane asylums,

farfrom actually providing any form of asylum, are terrifying prisons.

We deem ¡t ¡nacceptable that one would attempt to hinder the free course of a delirium,

which ¡s in ¡tself as legitímate, as logical as

any other succession of ideas, or any other human activity...

Madmen are the quintessential individual victims of social dictatorship.”

Surrealists start experimenting with altered consciousness,

sleep, automatic writing,

and even simúlate the deliriums oí mentally ¡II patients.

Giving free rein to the unconscious,

they discover new poetic worlds full of strange, unspeakable wonders.

“Automatism” desígnales the fact that all of these connections

start operating freely,

beyond the control of one’s conscious mind.

That is to say that instead of mobilizing mechanisms that create meaning,

one starts operating directly with signs.

This ¡s the reason why one can cali them "automatic signs".

They appear thanks to the continuous, immediate nature of these connections.

Surrealists were ¡nfluenced by “psychography”, an earlier form of automatic writing

tha't- practitionérs of Spiritisim úsed as a meaos to communioate with spirits.

Surrealists discovered new universas

and developed a poetics of the unconscious.

Works by Spiritist psychics,

which were later ¡ntegrated within Jean Dubuffet’s definiti'on of art brut,

starte.d béing ¡n vogue in the mid-nineteenth century,

thanks to personalices like Víctor hlugo and his son Charles.

Spiritism vv.as also practicad by the working class,

especially in the North of France.

It allowed people who had just left their rural comñrunities

to join the ranks of the new industrial proletariat

to find a form of comfort and reassuranee

by maintaining a link with their ancestors and their roots.

Spiiíitism developed during the first industrial revolution,

from theimid-nineteenth century onwards,

as Christian religious practice was declining ¡n rural communities.

This phenomenon has often been described ’ as a substituto

for community-based religious practice,

as large swaths of the rural population were being uprooted.

In 1858, the Spiritist Review

reproduced mediumistic drawings and etchings for the first time.

Considered as mere curiosities, then as proper objects of study,

mediumistic works were only described as artworks

from the early twentieth century onwards.

Practitioners of Spiritism "communicated with wandering souls,

using their hands as tools to deliver their otherworldly messages.

“I” becomes another,

the bearer of an overwhelming, unfathomable...

and liberating message.

This predisposed people to adopt what I would call a “prophétic posture”:

a s'tate oí mind in which you let an outside forcé pour through you,

while thinking: “that doesn’t come from me,

a spirit is guiding my hand ".

This belief greatly faci litated thezcreation of mediumistic drawings,

which are similar to what art history would later define as surrealist automatism:

If you are deeply convinced that Jesús himself ¡s guiding your hand

and tlíiat he’s the one who’s actually drawing, not you,

¡t’s very liberating, and helps to abolish all forms of conscious censorship.

French coal miner Augustin Lesage is the most famous of these mediumistic artists.

“In the silence, there was only me and the noise of my pickaxe.

And all of a sudden, I heard a voice,

and that voice told me loud and clear:

“One day, you shall be a painter”..

When I carne back up from the mineshaft, I didn’t tell anyone else...

1 was afraid that they would believe í was hallucinating, cali me a madman”.

Augustin was about to cut up a large canvas of about 32 square feet

when the voice talked to him once again:

“Do not cut up this canvas. The painting will be done.

Everything shall be accomplished.

Follow our instructions,

and we shall fill it out in the most perfect fashion.

Just start painting.”

These artists created their paintings in a State of "self-hypnosis":

To be able to create such detailed, intricate strokes and contours without making mistakes,

they had to reach a level of intense concentraron, a form of deep communication with their own selves,

which gave them access to their own unconscious, thanks to the ¡ntervention of the spirits.

This could be defined

as a staté of “limit consciousness”,

akin to dreaming,

or more precisely to the hypnagogic period

that precedes the dream itself,

in which you are in a specific kind of conscious State

that provides access to the unconscious, not as a sepárate entity,

but tb an unconscious that ¡s still directly ¡mpacted by everything that ¡s around it.

Augustin Lesage was generally reluctant to sell his own works

and often gave them away for free.

When he did sell them, their price was based

on the time he had spent creating them, indexed on his hourly salary as a coal miner.

This nineteenth-century pitman

beeame an unlikely figurehead of the Spiritist movement.

As he traveled all over Europe,

his works gained an ¡nternational reputation.

The "Degenerate Art" Exhibition 1937 - Germany

Hitler’s 1933 election

announced the beginning of the end for Prinzhorn’s discoveries

and the avant-garde’s fascination for the works of the mentally ¡II.

As the Nazi regime’s goal was to create a “new man”,

the mentally ¡II became ideal scapegoat figures,

denounced as a major obstacle on the path towards “racial purity”.

The Third Reich tightened its grasp on culture, ¡n the ñame of a “racially puré” art,

as opposed to modern art, accused of propagating “degeneraron”.

An large crowd visited the exhibition,

out of curiosity or thirst for new sensations.

Nazi propaganda invited the viewers to draw “parallels” between works

by some of the most famous representativos of the avant-garde and works by the mentally ¡II.

Nazis implemented so-called “euthanasia” programs,

leading to the exterminatipn of large numbers of mentally ¡II patients,

including numerous artists whose work formed part of the Prinzhorn Collection.

The Saint Alban Psychiatric Hospital 1941 - Saint Alban sur Limagnole - France

Lost ¡n the wild, sparsely populated South-Western French department of the Lozére,

the Saint Alban psychiatric hospital

played a key role in the history of art brut.

Under the guidance of Frangois Tosquelles,

a Marxist, Spanish Republi&an psychiatfíst,

the walls of the hospital are starting to fall dow'n.

Mentally ¡II patients work with villagers,

give free rein to their artistic creativity,

often selling their own works.

This allowed them to escape the fate

of the more than 40,000 other mentally ¡II patients

who starved to death ¡n Vichy France.

In Saint Alban, the insane are not considered as objects of repulsión,

needing to be locked up and hidden away:

they are perceived as full human beings.

The upheavals of history led Paul Éluard to seek refuge ¡n Saint Alban.

The’re, the author of "Liberty",

a poém thájt beeame the unofficial anthem of t.he French Resistance,

discovered a number of artists whose work, a couple of years later,

would enter Jean Dubuffet’s collection of art brut.

He was amazed by the wooden sculptures of Auguste Forestier,

and later shared his enthusiasm with André Bretón, Dora Maar, and Pablo Picasso.

As a teemager, the young Auguste,

who had been fascinated by trains since his earlier childhood,

eventjually boarded one to run away from home and escape towards new horizons.

He was institutionalized at the age of 19,

after accidentally causing the derailment of a train.

Forestier then felt compelled to start building his own personal universe.

He painted, drew, and created wooden s.e'ulptures

of an ¡maginary world full of mythological creatures,

winged gods, kings, soldiers,

and wandering ships.

[At Saint Alban] there were two doors, one in the front and one in the back.

And wlnil.e Fenestier was doing his thing,

making his art brut stuff,

he would set up shop on the side of the road,

and the local Lozére peasants would buy his art brut works

for a pack of cigarettes or a couple of coins.

It only makes sense to create art brut

if it’s marketable, don’t you think?

And the whole question of what used to be mistakenly called “socialization”

¡s to go beyond exhibitionism to encountgr the other.

At the crossroads of psychiatry, politics, poetry, and art,

the Saint Alban hospital shed new light on works whose ¡rrational beauty allows us

to reflect upon the fundamentáis of our human condition.

"The mentally ill bear witness to our common human condition,

they contribute to the revelation of what we all are.

That’s why, ¡n órder to avoid confronting the angstof such knowledge,

of such brutal, fundamental revelation,

we often attempt to keep them away from us,

away from our lives and our sensibility.

After the unthinkable, the unimaginable happened,

life goes on ¡n a world that will never be the same again.

Jean Dubuffet left his family’s Wholesale wine business

in the hands of an administrator,

and decided to dedícate himself fully to artistic creation.

Ver y well read, with an intímate knowledge of Nietzsche and of anarchist thought,

he sought his own form of artistic expression,

off the beaten path of the previous generation of Modern art masters.

Self-taught and increasingly frustrated with established cultural institutions,

he sets on a quest for new artistic territories:

works by the mentally ill

or by prisoners, children’s drawings.

At that time,

I realized that our culture was stuck in a rut,

but that ¡f you manage to drag yourself out of it,

you are bound to find

new, unexplored, unbounded fields

for thought and for creation.

His interest in these marginal productions

dates back to the early 1920s.

Dubuffet did his military Service at the meteorological station at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

During that time, he discovered the works of mentally ill artist Clémentine Rinche,

who was obsessively drawing and ¡nterpreting the shapes of clouds;

he then became acquainted with Prinzhorn’s book.

Jean Dubuffet toured psychiatric hospitals to gather works by the mentally ¡II.

During one of his trips to Switzerland, with Jean Paulhan and Le Corbusier,

he discovered works that »■ later became art brut “classics”.

Upon his return to París, he wrote about his discoveries

to his friend, the painter René Auberjonois:

“I preferred the term “art brut” to “obscure art”,

because the works of professional artists

do not strike me as more lucid or farsighted,

ratherthe opposite in fact...

Why did you write that raw gold ¡s “faker than fake”?

As far as l’m concerned, I prefer gold as a nugget than as a watch case.”

“Art brut” ¡s baséd on Dubuffet’s fasbination

for the works he was gatheijing for his collection, which he found fascinating:

he also drew inspiration frorm them as an artíst.

The links, even the ¡nfluence of the works on his own creations

are cléarly perceptible on ah intellectual level:

the sense of freedom, of 'unbridíed creativity that permeates his own works,

his ünconventional choice of materials, etc.

“Art brut” also> betrays

Dubuffet’s ¡ntention to topple the ruling system of cultural valúes,

and beyond that, of all establisherd valúes. I

Dubuffet thought of himself as an anarchist.

He even attempted to establish relationships with anarchist groups,

but was immediately rejected by them,

because they did not understand his atypical agenda.

In the years 1942-1943

Dubuffet was trying to define “art”

outside of the realm of aesthetics:

this was precisely the goal of the “art brut”

that he discovered around 1945.

Jean Dubuffet’s prospection work

led him to the Rodez psychiatric hospital,

where he first met Dr. Ferdiére

and his most fambus patient, Antonin Artaud.

Alienation is a source of artistic creation.

But I should rather say that alienation

can be a source of artistic creation;

and only in a small number of exceptional cases.

In such cases,

we are lucky enough

to come across works of art that could be exhibited in the world’s leading art museums.

Which reminds me of Edgar Poe’s famous paradox:

“People called me mad,

but Science hasn’t yet determined

whether madness might or might not be

the highest form of intelligence.”

Handicap is never perceived as a different State,

but rather as a deficient State.

Which means that ¡f you’re missing a finger.

people will say: “hey, you’re handicapped”,

but no one will think about the fact that because of this missing finger,

you’ll develop other abilities

to use your hand in spite of that.

HandicappeTd people develop different thought patterns,

diifferent images, different “layouts”,

you would never be able to do some of the things that they do.

They can’t establish a relationship with the others

that would be based on reality,

it’s easier for them to communicate through artistic creation,

because as a schizophrenic painter told me one day:

communication ¡s an encounter within the mysterious,

and painting is its privileged site.

Wherrhe-visited the Waldau psychiatric hospital near Bern,

Jean Dubuffet met E>r. Morgenthaler,

who ¡ntroduced him to the one ©f the figureheads of art brut:

Adolf Wólfli.

Dr. Morgenthaler,

who was influenced by Jung’s notion of “collective unconscious”,

saw in the works of his patient

an expression of the deepest,

most ancient and universal human thoughts.

In 1921, one year before the publication of Prinzhorn’s book,

Dr. Morgenthaler published an essay titled:

“A Mentally III Patient as Artist”.

This was the first monographic study

devoted to the works of a mentally ¡II patient;

but it was met with scorn and puzzlement

on the part of professional psychiatrists.

On the other hand, some of the greatest artists of the time,

like Lou Andreas-Salomé and Rainer María Rilke.

professed their admiration for Morgenthaler’s book.

Wólfli’s childhood sounds like the plot of a Dickens novel.

He was abandoned by his alcoholic father,

and his mother died as he was still very young.

He then led a wandering, chaotic life,

drifting from farm to farm,

where he was often the victim of corporal punishments.

In 1890, he was sentenced to two years in prison

for attempted rape of a minor.

He committed the same offence again, was diagnosed with severe schizpphrenia

and institutionalized in the Waldau psychiatric hospital,

where he stayed until his death in 1930.

Upon his arrival, psychiatrists asked him to write down his life story.

This attempt at autobiography

elicited ¡n this simple, thoroughly uneducated man

an irrepressible urge to create.

Wólfli started writing a monumental work of fictional autobiography:

25,000 pages of text and 3,000 dr-awings,

in which he becomes a supernatural demiurge,

thus eclipsing the dire realities of his actual daily life.

I think that his work is a form of emancipation.

he lost any form of mastery

over the narrative of his own I¡fe, his own biography.

His work allowed him to create a new identity for himself.

Wólfli wanted his work to be printed,

and left very detailed instructions

regarding his desired publishing house,

the typography, number of volumes...

In his ¡maginary autobiography,

Wólfli appears under the guise of a number of avatars: the young “Doufi”,

who evokes his childhood and his relationship with his mother,

“Saint Adolf”, an immensely wealthy character

who attempts to conquer the world,

“Saint Adolf II”,

who meets gods and goddesses,

Eve, and even God Himself.

“Oh, miracle and ecstasy:

oh wonderful splendor.

Myriads? No!

Several oberons of stars, fragments of the universe ¡tself

were blown out of this trumpet towards the South:

microscopio partióles at first,

barely visible to the naked eye,

but they kept growing in size

as they moved further away from my instrument.”

Of course, ¡f you take a look at Wólfli’s texts,

they sound like poetry,

but for him it wasn’t poetry at alI,

it was reality as it stood ¡n front of him,

a gaping hole he got sucked into.

And he is desperately attempting

to reconstruct a coherence that has collapsed,

or at least that’s what he’s hoping to achieve.

But people like Wólfli describe what they experienced as their reality,

they never opérate en a symbolic level,

and that’s why their works are so fascinating.

He isn’t building

an imaginary world

but rather a system to explain a world

that utterly puzzles him.

A violent, difficult patient,

Wólfli was an obsessional, compulsiva creator:

“That’s what I cali work!

You have no ¡dea how persistent and meticulous I have to be

in order to remember everything.

That would be enough to drive you mad,

assuming you weren’t already mad of course!”

Jean Dubuffet extends the definition of art brut

to encompass mediumistic works,

or works of visionary self-taught artists

like the Scottish artist Scottie Wilson.

According to Dubuffet, the “common man”

¡s a hero who liberales art from an “asphyxiating culture”:

he ¡s enthralled by the strange creations of this humble, ¡lliterate man.

A wandering salesman,

Scottie Wilson started drawing when he was already forty years oíd.

He sold his works cheaply

in caravans and movie theaters.

I feel irresistibly drawn to sap,

or to what one could cali sap:

all things green and dynamic,

sometimes even brutality, savagery.

That’s the reason why

I draw ¡nspiration

from common people,

humble folks.

Dubuffet first exhibits these “brut” works

at the Foyer de l’art brut,

in the basement of the gallery owned by his friend René Drouin.

He then founds the Compagnie de l’art brut

with Andró Bretón, Charles Ratón, Jean Paulhan,

Michel Tapié, Henri Pierre Roché and Edmond Bonsel.

The works he exhibits there stand in sharp contrast

to the aesthetics of abstract art, which were then dominating

the Parisién and international art market.

Dubuffet’s project was misunderstood

and heavily criticized in the medias:

these works were seen

as ugly,

imperfect productions,

possibly related to decorativo art or primitive art,

but at any rate located outside of artistic producti'on proper.

When ¡t was first defined, Art brut did not occasion any fundamental upheaval.

On the contrary, I would say that it was met with reluctance.

Dubuffet had hope that ¡t would constitute a real event,

a disruption,

that the art market would collapse,

I’m not sure whether he meant that entirely seriously...

well I think he did actually.

The Compagnie de l’art brut was at that time housed in a pavilion

that belonged to the Gallimard publishing house.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, André Malraux,

Jules Superviene, Henri Michaux

also became members of the Company.

The Croatian painter Laslo Kopach

became curator of the collection.

The Company exhibited the works of Aloíse Corbaz,

discovered by Dubuffet in a psychiatric hospital

during a research trip to Switzerland.

From a humble background,

this young girl from Lausanne took singing lessons

and dreamt of becoming a singer.

She was then employed as a maid by the personal chaplain of Wilhelm II ¡n Potsdam,

and fell deeply in love with the emperor.

Upon her return to Switzerland,

she expressed new religious and pacifist beliefs,

and was diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly thereafter.

“I experience my slo.w, unavoidable physical demise,

as wild, fanatic love

tears my body apart:

a miraculous creation,

the only reason for my perpetual ecstasy.

Aloíse considered that her ¡nstitutionalization

Aloíse co.nsidered that her insti'tutipnalizafibn

was a kind of death, or a burial so to speak,

and that she was born again after her death,

into a new world

that was entirel.y theatrical, immate rial,

and where she could develop a form of cosmic epnsciousness.

Aloíse will love forever:

her universe ¡s a delirious theater, a sublime opera

featuring emperors, queens, and princesses.

She sometimes sewed her drawings together,

thus creating a continuous, lyrical narrativa.

“Oh pain, Oh despair!

They remain out of my grasp,

these delicate, fragrant flowers

that you ¡nvoluntarily dropped in each fold of my heart,

that prison of misery.

Why can’t I dip my flaming soul

in the starry skies of a sensitiva man,

whom I would love passionately?”

Jean Dubuffet published

an uncompromising, vitriolic pamphlet titled

“Art brut preferred to cultural arts”,

in which he attempts to dissipate misunderstandings and confusions.”

From one capital to the next, they ape each other perfectly,

and practice a highly artificial form of art, a kind of Esperanto,

endlessly copied alI over the world...

Art brut, on the other hand corresponds to works

created by persons who remained unspoiled by artistic culture,

who never, or very rarely

mimic the works of others:

they draw their inspiration entirely from within themselves,

not from the tired clichés of classical art,

or whatever form of artistic expression is in vogue at the time.”

I looked for people who were able to resist

cultural conditioning.

you should notice

those who tend to rebel just a little bit against customs

and habitual behaviors:

others cali them eccentrics,

bizarre..

But those who completely rebel against them,

who abide by none of these conventions

and uses,

those people are taken away by the pólice,

locked up in psychiatric hospitals,

and medical doctors label them as “diseased”.

The creation of the Compagnie de l’Art Brut

was also facilitated by the short-lived, fraught friendship

between Jean Dubuffet and Andró Bretón.

“You may rightly take credit, as you said,

for the creation of the Compagnie de l’art brut,

because your ideas, your mood, your impulses,

were instrumental in pointing our minds in the right direction on all these topics,

and it was only fair for me to hold a seat for you at the table that I laid:

if you had refused to join,

it would have remained empty, like the angel’s.”

In 1949, Andró Bretón published his essay on the “art of the insane”,

in which he started expressing his disagreement with Dubuffet’s ideas.

I think their friendship carne to an end

because they held very diffQrent views on madness..

According to Dubuffet, “madness” simply didn’t exist,

he didn’t care whether his “art brut” creator's

were suffering from mental illness, and to what extent.

Conversely, for Bretón,

madness greatly enhances óne’s cre.ative abilities: ¡t’s a crucially important phenomenon.

and he presents it very positively,

one could say that he was maybe even idealizing madness to some extent.

Jean Dubuffet left France for the United States

and moved ¡n with his friend, the painter Alfonso Ossorio,

bringing his entire collection with him.

When he left, the Compagnie de l’art brut disbanded,

and Bretón took it as a personal insult.

“The concept of ’art brut' itself

has become ¡ncreasingly murky and unsound.

[Dubuffet] attempted to graft the works

of some self-taught creators onto those of the mentally ¡II,

but this operation turned out to be ¡nconsistent, ¡llusory:

the “art of the insane” has prevailed.

But everybody knows that the “art of the insane”

was discovered a long time ago.

This attempt was conducted ¡n the most dictatorial fashion ever.”

Jean Dubuffet probably had the feeling

that this endeavor, ¡the adventure of art brut, that this concept

might end up being taken away from him,

and that Bretón was maybe taking up too rnuch space

and might have shifted the center of gravity of art brut more towards Surrealism.

In the next ten years,

Jean Dubuffet devoted himself entirely to his own painting,

and put his art brut collection on hold.

Dubuffet had his collection shipped back

and reformed the Compagnie de l’art brut,

¡n a new location ¡n the backyard of a bourgeois building in París,

on the Rué de Sévres:

today, the building still houses the Jean Dubuffet Foundation.

He turned this space ¡nto a closed-off sanctuary,

only accessible to the chosen few,

who could visit ¡t by appointment only.

First of all, I don’t have a museum, I don’t like that word, “museum”:

it’s a perfectly grotesque word that reminds one of the Muses.

It’s a prívate .collection, a study center,

a small research institute.

I think that art has to be deserved,

I don’t want randonj people to barge in because they want to warm up.

I think that this kind of art

has highly feverish,

dramatic aspirations,

and that it shouldn’t be spoon fed to just anyone.

Harald Szeemann 1963 - The Kunsthalle Bern - Switzerland

In the early 1960s, Harald Szeemann,

a young, adventurous Swiss curator,

revolutionizes curatorial practicas.

His exhibitions remain landmarks of postwar art history.

For Harald Szeemann an exhibition wasn't just a technijque

for displaying artworks, but rather an all-encompassing experience

whose aim ¡s to shock or puzzle its spectators, encouraging them to think differently.

When I arrived [at the Kunsthalle ¡n Bern],

I had this rather vague ¡dea of setting up a center

where people would just create things

and where you wouldn’t waste too much time

with purely aesthetic ways of thinking,

such as: “between these three paintings, which you already think are bad,

which one ¡s slightly better than the others?”.

I wanted us to leave aside all these questions of aesthetic judgment

to dedícate ourselves entirely to direct action.

Like Dubuffet, Szeemann was a member of the College of ‘Pataphysics.

He had shared his fascinaron for works produced in mental hospitals

since his student years.

Only two years after he took up the direction

of the Kunsthalle in Bern,

Szeemann exhibited thé Prinzhorn Cóllection,

especially works by Wólfli, Aloíse, and Louis Soutter.

It is one of the first times, if not the very first time,

that an exhibition made up entirely of works by mentally ¡II patients

was displayed in an art museum.

And it raises tliie following question:

why can’t the insane also be artists?

The aim of this exhibition was to show the flamboyance,

the ¡ntensity of the Creative act of those

whom Szeemann saw as guardians of a kind of total artwork,

defined as the common goal of all artists.

This form of total artwork

amounts to a fusión between these authors and their creations,

leading us back to the very origins of the Creative act

in its purely metaphysical dimensión,

¡ts relationship with something “beyond” reality.

These artists attempt to rediscover connectiens

that were there befo re and were lost,

and I think that when the French ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss

tells us that there ¡s an extremely strong link

¡n tribal, "primitive" civilizations and societies

between reality and poetry,

which was lost in the Western-worid..

I think that’s what art brut creators are attempting to recreate.

It’s an aesthetic represent-ation of knowledge,

and that’s why it’s puré genius.

It mebilizes all spheres of knowledge,

of o.ur euriosity towards the worid.

of what we could cali philosophy, sociology, Sciences:

these artists have the ability

te make a synthesis of all these forms of knowledge aesthetically.

For Harald Szeemann, the notion of “¡ntensity”

was at the very heart of the Creative act.

“What draws me to a painting above all else

is it-s intensely expressive character.

I tend to privilege pietorial problems, questions ®f intensity ¡f yeu will,

over psychopathologieal problems.

In Szeemann’s work, this ¡ntensity is a lite experience,

something you experience ¡n your own body: ¡t ¡s both intellectual and physical.

That’s his most important contribution to our understanding our art brut.

Twenty-five years after the horrors of the “Degenerate Art” exhibition

organized by the Third Reich,

the wretched of the art world,

many of whom were massacred by the Nazis,

are finally rehabilitated.

For five years, Jean Dubuffet dedícales himself entirely

to his “Hourloupe” cycle.

He makes an important donation of his works

to the Museum of Decorative Arts in París,

then agrees to let a broader audience access his collection

on the request of his friend Frangois Mathey.

Those are not artists:

questions of valué,

of artistic quality are ¡rrelevant here.

Let’s say those are people

whose common denominator is that they all lived

and worked ¡n a clandestina manner,

¡n the full sense of the word: that they remained

completely outside of all social and commercial networks.

I think that as soon as artist become part of such a network,

their works cease to be part of art brut.

Oh, are you leaving already?

Alain Bourbonnais was a renowned Parisian architect.

In 1971, he read an article in the French daily newspaper Le Monde

announcing that Dubuffet was moving his art brut collection to Switzerland.

Bourbonnais wrote to Dubuffet to express his support

and asked to be alíowed to visit the collection at the rué de Sévres;

he also sent DCibuffet pictures of his own works.

Like Dubuffet, Alain Bourbonnais was a collector and an artist

who was fascinated

by marginal creations.

The word “art” is kind of... hum..

¡f it’s all derived from the head of a horse on the Parthenon

from Greek art...

that’s was is taught in Europe, and I really wonder why...

Could be based on I iterally anything else...

For me, making art is inventing.

The word “creation means “invention’

you have to invent your own thing.

Dubuffet was favorably impressed by Alain Bourbonnais’ paintings.

“They are all oriented under the same wind,

which is the wind of art brut, and also my own personal wind.

Your works are highly fascinating, they spoke to me directly.”

This first epistolary exchange was the first stage of a friendship

and a correspondence that lasted for more than ten years.

Encouraged by Dubuffet,

Bourbonnais opened the Atelier Jacob a couple of weeks later.

Jean Dubuffet lent works of Aloíse Corbaz for its first show

but didn't allow Bourbonnais to use the label “art brut”

to describe or advertise the activities of the Atelier Jacob.

He suggested that Bourbonnais use a new term, “art beyond the norms”,

for the works he was exhibiting at the Atelier Jacob.

Even though they are all “under the wind of art brut”,

the artists exhibited byAlain Bourbonnais

are more akin to the annex collection

that Dubuffet had just created ¡n order to avoid any confusión

or overlap with art brut proper.

Several years later, Dubuffet decided to cali this particular collection “New Invention”

because ¡n his view such works were still overly influenced

by academic and “cultural” art.

Alain Bourbonnais decided to follow ¡n the footsteps of Dubuffet.

For instance, he acquired works by Giovanni Podesta or Emile Ratier.

He also discovered new artists

who were officially recognized by Dubuffet as belonging to the field of art brut:

Janko Donpsic, for ¡nstance, whose work was discovered by Alain Bourbonnais.

However, Bourbonnais also decided to distance himself

from Dubuffet’s art brut.

The exhibitions he curated at the Atelier Jacob

were a public and critical súccess.

But in spite of the admiration and curiosity they elicited,

it remained difficult to find buyers for such works.

Right before an exhibition opening,

the first thing he would do would be to put red dots next to the paintings

he wanted to keep for himself.

Let’s just say he wasn’t particularly good at selling...

He kept saying: “Oh, we really shouldn’t sell that one...

But that’s what allowed him to gather this exceptional collection.

Emulating the “common man” held dear by Dubuffet,

Alain Bourbonnais met all the artists

and maintain.éd warm and friendly ties with them.

He befriended Emile Ratie.r,

a former sabot maker

who created mobile wooden sculptures...

Merry-go-rounds, animáis, an Eiffel Tower, imaginary vehicles...

That's his own personal universe, evoking childhood and fairy tales,

¡n which he took refuge after losing his sight.

There were several characters who were playing and galloping.

One of them played the accordion,

and another óne played the cymbal.

After running it for ten years,

Alain Bourbonnais and his wife Carolina

are forced to cióse the Atelier Jacob.

They decide to move their collection to the Fabuloserie,

their country house ¡n Yonne (near París).

They saved the merry-go-round created by the artist “Petit Pierre”,

which was about to be demolished, and ¡nstalled it at the Fabuloserie.

This work belongs to the category of art brut environments,

like Ferdinand Cheval’s famous “Ideal Palace”.

Pierre Avezard; also known as “Petit Pierre”,

was born deaf and mute, with severe facial deformatlons.

He worked as a cow herder„and, for forty years,

kep.t’creating visionary, facetious works,

and,allowed other people to yisit them.

In a society that entirely revolves around money and machines,

creation... man, who knows, maybe creation is our new god?

There’s love, religión,

there are tons of things that belong to the realm of the spiritual

and help people to live.

If some people like that stuff or want to produce some of it themselves, "Bravo!".

So it’s like reinventing a kind of mysticism?

Of course, of course.

Cheers!

Several weeks after the qpening of Bourbonnais’ Atelier Jacob,

the British scholar Roger. ©ardiñal published his book, titled “Outsídér Art”.

This term, which was originally meant as a translation of “art brut”,

was widely used internationally.

However, this new label also caused a number of misunderstandings and confusions.

Outsider art is a k in there a lot of different things,

like art produeed by homeless people, because they are social outcasts.

People will also throw ¡n Naive art and Art brut for good measure.

So it can ¡nclude any number of things.

That’s pretty convenient for art merchants

because ¡t allows them to sell practically anything as “outsider art”,

but it’s also causing a lot of confusión.

And te this 0iy, Roger Cardinal, who eoined this term,

feels rea’lly sorry abjaut h©w things turned out.

As hippie and counter-cultural movements blossomed everywhere ¡n the world,

art brut creators were ¡ncreasingly coming uriderthe spotlight.

Documenta 5 1972 - Kassel - Germany

Harald Szeemann curated the fifth edition of Documenta,

an ¡nternational artfair held in Kassel (Germany):

¡t had a major ¡mpact on the art world.

The goal of this monumental exhibition,

divided into several subsections,

was to question established taxonomies

and the boundaries between artistic genres and media,

in order to shed new light on the way art interrógales and represents reality.

Harald Szeemann decided that works produced ¡n psychiatric hospitals

should be featured prominently in the show.

“Only mádmen, or those who are cióse to them,

can guararítee the ¡ntensity of art,

an ¡ntensity whose lack was acutely felt, these last couple of years,

in this mass of official artistic production.”

Exhibited in a subsection titled

“Expressions of Madness: Identity of the Image in the Productions of the Mentally III”,

the hospital cell of Adolf Wólfli,

the works of Heinrich Antón Müller and of Armand Schulthess

were shown in the larger section under the title “Individual Mythologies”,

alongside the works of forty contemporary artists

such as Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski.

or Arnulf Rainer.

The term “individual mythology” was coined by Etienne Martin,

an artist whose works [Szeemann] had exhibited in the Kunsthalle,

who created sculptures

that looked like coats and houses at the same time,

establishing a link between introspection,

the artist’s inner world, and the outside world;

he wanted to show how in the act of creation,

artists can build up and enrich their own ¡nner life.



The concept of individual mythology

corresponds to life-works:

there ¡s a fusión between art and life, an attempt at “total art”,

and the creation of an aesthetic world

¡n which a whole new world would be reconstructed,

a phenomenon that is frequently observed in art brut.

Individual mythologies correspond to the ¡dea

that these artists often build cosmogonies,

and that their cosmogonies are extremely self-referential.

In most cases, by the way,

it has been demonstrated that they are not addressed to us,

they don’t need spectators: they are simply constructions

or projections of extremely complex mental universes,

whose aim ¡s to provide a form of infernal coherence.

Jean Dúbuffet was wary of Szeemann’s attempt

to bridge the gap between art brut and contemporary art:

The term 'art brut', in order to avoid confusión for the viewers,

has to be reserved exclusively

for the collections and activities of the Compagnie de l’Art brut.

It would also be best to avoid any equivalence

between art brut and mental illness.

The goal of Art brut was to dispel the confusión

that consists in applying the idea of pathology

to creations that are actually the exact opposite:

admirable inventions."

Szeemann equated art brut with psychopathological art.

But it is important to underline the fact that sickness,

and madness in particular,

have never been criteria to establish

whether or work belonged to “art brut” or not.

Dubuffet used to say that “there could be no more an art of the insane

than there could be an art of people with bad knees”:

¡n other words, we are all mad, because we all have knee problems.

The thought and the curatorial practice of Szeemann

was a generous one,

whereas that Dubuffet operated ¡n a much less open manner:

he wanted to defend the boundaries

of the aesthetic domain that he had defined. and wanted to ¡solate ¡t.

He was terribly scared that it might be “contaminated”

by the elites and by culture.

I think this exhibition ¡n particular clarifies the fact

that all these parallel picture worlds,

as they’re called ¡n this exhibition, these art worlds, parallel picture worlds,

are altogether different from art.

And that’s obvious ¡n the mentally ¡II.

Sure enough, the mentally ¡II follow something

of an individual mythology.

They are possessed, but because of that, they are not free.

That is very clear throughout their works.

They are compulsive.

The mentally ¡II artist can’t break free of himself.

Unlike Jean Dubuffet,

who vehemently opposed all attempts to bridge the gap between art brut

and what he called “cultural art”,

Harald Szeemann’s goal was to foster a dialogue

between these two seemingly incompatible definitions of art.

The Art Brut Collection 1976 - Lausanne - Switzerland

Dubuffet's oollection is rel'ooated to Laüsanne. to the c-astle of Beaulieu.

It is still houses the Collection de l'art brut today.

Michel Thévoz became the director of the Collection,

which comprised the totality of the works

that Dubuffet had been patiently gathering

for more than thirty years.

In order to preserve

Dubuffet donated his collection to something

that wasn’t called a museum but a “collection”,

along the lines of Dubuffet’s anti-cultural theories, of his ¡nstitutional critique.

On the other hand, ¡t was probably the only way for Dubuffet

to make sure that the spirit of his collection would be preserved,

and to put it beyond the grasp of the art market:

he stipulated in the donation act

that the collection of the future museum was inalienable,

i.e. that you can’t, you’re not allowed to

sell an artwork in prder to buy another one,

which ¡s what some museums do in the United States for instance.

Jean Dubuffet abhorred all official ceremonies:

his Collection was inaugurated

without the usual pomp of exhibition openings.

He told me once: “Imagine the following scene:

peasants entrust aristocrats with their daughter;

she ¡s wearing sabots and has jam stains on her nose.

They see her again two years later,

she has ribbons on her dress and in her hair.

That’s more or less how I felt

when I saw my art brut collection in this new setting.

I don’t really know why,

but our viewers ¡mmediately understood

that this was a different kind of artistic creation;

people immediately asked about the way

¡n which these works were created,

and about the mindset of their creators,

without labeling them as pathological, as the creations of sick people.

"I think that for once - for the first time, presumably

the viewers are directly confronted

with the questions raised by art brut.

And I am very pleased with this."

Michel Thévoz, helped by his assistálftt Geneviéve Roulin,

continuéd the work of Dubuffet b^ acquiring new works,

creafed by artigts from all-over the twtorld.

Aloíse, Wólfli, Lesage et al.

have finally found a safe haven.

Madeleine Lommel was fascinated

by the discoverjes of Jean Dubuffet,

whose collection she first saw at the rué de Sévres.

Lommel was working as a hairdresser, but was well-versed ¡n art and poetry.

In 1978, in the exhibition “The Singulars of Art”,

she discovered Michel Nedjar.

She was a fascinating person, so...

full of energy, she was incredibly charismatic,

and had already begun corresponding with Jean Dubuffet,

she had discovered authors... lots of letters already,

With her friend Claire Teller,

they were going all around France in their small car to find these authors.

Impressed with the puppets created by Michel Nedjar,

Madeleine sent pictures to Jean Dubuffet,

who integrated her “soul fleshes

in the holy of holies of his personal collection.

Madeline Lommel, Claire Teller and Michel Nedjar

organize an exhibition together,

titled “Barbarían Gardens”,

the first stage of a passionate adventure.

Encouraged by around thirty friends and s^igporters,

tUiey founded a non-for-profit association called l’ARACINE,

and opened a museum in Neuilly-sur-Marne.

When [Dubuffet’s] collection was moved to Lausanne -

and ¡t’s wonderfully exhibited there

all the people who knew the rué de Sévres were ¡ncredibly sad,

and with a couple of friends, we decided

to ope'n a,mor‘e traditional kind of museum here ¡n F.rance.

With unmatched energy and willpower,

Madeleine rallied people to this cause,

while Michel sold his own works, or exchanged them for others,

¡n order to enrich the museum’s collection.

Madeleine Lommel was the president of this association; from the very beginning.

her ambition was to gather a collection

that would be accessible to the public.

This ¡s why, according to the charter of the association,

¡ts founding members are not allowed to own a prívate collection.

What do you think? Is it nice?

Yes, of course! Thank you so much!

After the death of Jean Dubuffet,

Madeleine, Claire, and Michel perpetúate his legacy:

they constantly discover new works,

and exhibit them for a small but highly devoted audience.

When Daniel Cordier donated his collection to the Pompidou Center,

art brut made its grand entrance in one of the temples of modern art.

The puppets created by Michel Nedjar

haunted ¡ts exhibitions spaces and ¡ts reserves,

causing great distress to one of the museum’s curators.

She told me: “I can’t touch them,

can’t hang them...l just can’t. I can’t even look at these things!”

I thought she was going to puke,

so I hung them myself in twenty minutes.

After being on display for seven months,

these works were sent to the museum’s reserves.

She called me, she was freaking out:

“Monsieur Nedjar, it's terrible!” I said: “What’s the matter?”

“¡t’s a total catastrophe”, she erupted: “there are mites in them”.

“So what”, I answered: “they are made out of cloth after aII”,

She said: "But there are Picassos ¡n there, a Max Ernst right next to them,

The mites are going to eat up everythingü

And I thought:

“wouldn’t it be great if my work

could eat up the entire collection of the Pompidou?”.

1 Then she said: “Wait, I got an idea! I got an idea!”.

“ e are going to gas them”.

I was petrified.

I mean, “gassing them”, the word “gassing” alone...

She added: “yeah, we’re going to gas them!”.

And I answered:

“Well. I believe this has already been done”.

Art brut ¡s ¡ncreasingly coming under the spotlight.

John Maizel founded "Raw Vision

an ¡nternational magazine entirejy devoted to brut and outsíder art.

Art brut artists stand at the center

of a number of exhibitions and retrospectivas.

The Outsider Art Fair held ¡n both New York and París,

hosts art galleries specializing in brut and outsider art;

those come from all over the world.

Innovative workshops are created ¡n several places,

especially in Belgium and Germany.

Following ¡n the footsteps of the famous House of Artists

at the Gugging psychiatric hospital (Austria),

¡ts residents have no obligations of any kind, as opposed to art therapy,

they don’t have to undergo any training,

their Creative gestare isn’t dictated by a mentor.

L’ARACINE ¡s the result of the passionate,

entirely self-effacing struggle of ¡ts founders:

the association ¡s now looking for a new exhibition space,

in order to ensure the preservaron of its significan! collection,

now totaling more than 3,500 works.

We had to cióse the museum

because the city couldn’t support it financially ambitions;

there was also a certain reluctance to engage in an ambitious cultural program.

And the founding members of the association are not getting any younger, myself included...

You know, it’s really hard to be at the helm of an association

if you don’t have a certain level of bourgeois notability -

which we certainly don’t. I wasn’t trained as a curator either.

We couldn’t buy our own exhibition space,

so we had to use one that was lent to us by a town council.

We will probably end up somewhere near Lille,

we’re waiting for the green light from the local authorities.

After years of negotiating with politicians and institutions,

the Aracine collection found its new home

at the Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary, and Outsider Art.

Art brut, which Dubuffet deemed irreconcilable with “cultural art”,

made ¡ts grand entrance ¡nto the collect-iens of a major French museum.

Lots of people were reluctant about that ¡dea;

his created a lot of difficulties.

Lots of people who worked ¡n contemporary art didn’t like that ¡dea at all,

especially contemporary artists who worked with the museum

or were well acquainted with it.

[Dubuffet’s binary opposition of] “art brut” and “art culturel”,

“true” art on the one hand and the “art of art history scholars,

of chameleons and apes” on the other... they didn’t like that at al I.

Dubuffet’s c-elleetion was often exhibited ¡n a wáy

that emphasized the oppesition he drew between art brut and msdern

or contemporary art, which I think is a shame

and just amounted t® a waste ®f time.

When I think about André Breton’s wall ¡n [his apartment of] the rué Fontaine,

where he mixed primitiva art, art brut, and modern art:

it created extremely fruitful echoes.

Zíll these works resonated with oné ánother ¡n exíremely powerful and meaningful ways,

witho'ut cancelling each other out, annexing, abolishing,

or destroying one another.

Quite the opposite:

each of them was magnified and enriched by this experiment.

Art brut is increasingly in vogue.

It ¡s celebrated at biennales and major museums.

Some collectors regularly display the highlights of their collection

for an ever-growing audience.

Oliva Creative Factory,

the first Art brut museum ¡n the Iberian península,

opened its doors in 2014.

It displays works from the personal collection

of Richard Treger and Antonio Saint Silvestre,

covering more than a century of art brut.

A highly diverse collection,

it encompasses both art brut “classics"

and more recent works of art brut.

Art workshops are crucially important

to contemporary art brut production.

Works created in these workshops are regularly displayed ¡n art galleries,

bought by prívate collectors,

and displayed in art fairs, such as the 2013 and 2017 Venice Biennale.

One of these workshops, calleó “La S Granó Atelier”,

was founded in 1992 by Anne-Frangoise Rouche.

Thirty artists suffering from mental disability live there year-round.

- Well, it’s getting there.

- Yeah, should I leave it like that, or...

- What is that right there,

a small Virgin?

-Yes...

Oh ok.

- Marie, oui.

Irene?

- He drew your portrait.

- It’s good, right?

Really looks like you.

- But that’s not the point!

- Well, you have to keep drawing more lines.

- All right boss.

- Yes, yes, I had already gotten that.

Art brut unleashed new revolutionary currents ¡rito art history.

Like Maree! Duchamp,

art brut compels us to rethink the boundaries of art

and question existing aesthetic and artistic cátegories.

These works, often the result of a total existential commitment

on the part of their creators,

abolish the frontier between art and life.

They remitid us of our own alterity,

topple our prejudices against madness,

lead us to question our wonldview.

These enigmatic and compelling works

reactívate the poetical and spiritual dimensions of art.

Art brut has reached a turning point of its history.

It is still too often neglected and misunderstood.

Several practices endanger its future:

works misleadingly labeled as "brut" in order

to feed rapidly expanding niche market,

tendency to negate its specificity

¡n order to simply turn ¡t ¡rito a subsection of contemporary art...

But there wiII always be solitary wanderers

sailing off towards new horizons,

inspired prophets bringing us divine messages,

visionary builders

who will leád us towards faraway planets of unspeakable

and insane beauty.

“True art only appears in places where it is least expected,

where no one will think of it

or even whisper its name.

Art hates being recognized and greeted by its name.

It will immediately run away.

Art loves being incognito.”