OUTSIDER ART

Outsider Art and Modernism

Outsider Art and Modernism

Introduction

The term Outsider Art was included into the lexicon of fine arts in 1972 by Roger Cardinal, a well known British art historian. Outsider art was at first meant to be the English substitute of the term Art Brut which was coined by Jean Dubuffet in 1945 to express the art works created by individuals other than the established society like patients in mental hospitals and prisoners in jail (Morris & Caroline, 1993, pp.5). The most significant, aspect was that these artists did not have any exposure to art theory, training in academic art, or the infrastructure of the establishment of art, and countless, who just responded to a creative force, may not even knew that they were creating art. Art Brut signifies that the art was unadulterated or raw and explained a genuine vitality that sprang openly from an individual with an irresistible want to create who was not only unencumbered but also uninfluenced by the trainings and trends of the art world. The term Art Brut was also taken on by the Collection de l' Art Brut in Lausanne to house Dubuffet's personal collection of Art Brut works and other related works (Maizels, 1993, pp.19).

Discussion

Outsider Art, in its purest form is an art created by someone who most likely does not know that he/she is making art, or even, what art is. If we look into the history, Dr. Walter Morganthaler is the grandfather of Outsider Art who recorded and reported the artistic work of his psychologically distressed patient in Switzerland in around 1900. The name of that patient was Adolph Wolfli, who was extravagant in his creative intelligence, and produced monumental work that acted as totems, of a self contained, fabricated world (Carr, 1990, pp.115).

Similarly, famous German Psychiatrist, Dr. Hans Prinzhorn collected the art works of a number of his patients and then published the classic book, Artistry of the Mentally Ill in 1922 (MacGregor, 1989, pp.214). With its origin in a strict documented concentration by these two doctors, this form of art was officialised into a field when Jean Dubuffet, the very popular French artist introduced it into the art world. Dubuffet was a sculptor and a Surrealist painter. Surrealism was a fundamental art movement in late 1920s centred in Paris, which fervently discarded tradition (Carter, 1992, pp.180). Thus, Dubuffet was interested in the writings of Freud's on mental states and wanted to create art through automatic methods in the anticipation of finding a more genuine form of expression. Hence, the art created by mental patients was of course appealing to this group. Dubuffet began accumulating art produced by the insane, building up what is at present a public museum situated in Lausanne, Switzerland, and presenting the genus as 'Raw Art' or 'Art Brut'. With this label, Dubuffet highlighted the most outstanding quality of this art that is it was uncooked by the procedure of culturization (Lippard, 1990, pp.110). The actuality that its artists had never been ...