All language subtitles for Eternity has no door of escape subs en inglés para Andrés

“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 00:57:05,999
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.”