Outsider Art

AWD 4M1

What is Outsider Art?Art made outside of the boundaries of official culture; art made by self-taught or ‘naïve’ artists with little or no contact with art institutions;

and/or art made by people who suffer from mental illness.

Outsider Artis an English equivalent for the French term “Art Brut”, meaning “raw” or “uncooked” art,a term

coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art made by mental patients.

Outsider Artistsare almost always untrained, not influenced by styles and trends in the official art world;

Outsider Artistsshould not be confused with amateur artists or hobbyists; their uniqueness arises from their isolation from mainstream society and culture.

Outsider Artistsoften make their work secretly and their art is often not discovered until after they die.

Jean Dubuffet described Art Brut as:"Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses;where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere;are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professionals.”

Adolf Wolfli 1864 – 1930; Swiss; served jail time for sexual assault; diagnosed schizophrenic in 1895 and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital;

- began to draw spontaneously in 1899; obsessively made art, wrote books and composed music using his own form of notation.- Wolfli’s artwork was studied seriously by his psychiatrist starting in 1921, a first for a mental patient.

Adolf Wolfli

Adolf Wolfli

Adolf Wolfli

Henry Darger1892 – 1973; American; grew up as a ward of the state and was put into a home for ‘feeble-minded children’ where he suffered abuse; escaped to Chicago and worked his whole life as janitor for a Catholic hospital.- starting in 1909, Darger began to write, in secret, a massive book called “In the Realms of the Unreal”, which he worked on until his death; in the end it was 15,145 densely- typed pages in 15 volumes with illustrations; he also kept a daily weather journal.

- entirely self-taught, he would trace images from magazines and advertisements, giving his work a somewhat Pop Art look; his life’s work was only discovered upon his death.

Henry Darger

Henry Darger

Henry Darger

Nek Chand 1924 – ; Indian; worked as a roads inspector but in his spare time began to illegally build, in 1962, fantastical sculptures, courtyards and structures in a local nature preserve from building waste; - he kept it a secret until 1975; by this time his garden had grown to a 12 hectare series of interlinked courtyards filled with concrete sculptures of animals, dancers and musicians.-in 1976 Chand was hired by the city to keep up his work, which he did for many years.

Nek Chand

Nek Chand

Nek Chand

Nek Chand

Jean Dubuffet argued:that mainstream culture assimilates every new development in art, and by doing so takes away whatever power it might have. The result is to asphyxiate genuine

expression. Only Outsider Art is immune to the influences of culture, immune to being absorbed and assimilated, because the artists themselves were not willing or able to be assimilated.What do you think?

Think:

What is an artist?

Who are artists?