What is "Art Brut"? Profound strangeness...

"Art Brut" is another term for "outsider art" or art that is "uncooked by society" (Roger Cardinal, "Outsider Art"). Back in the early 20th century, art collector Jean Dubuffet began to gather up examples of the artwork of mental patients. His collection gradually grew to also include the work of social isolates, eccentrics and obsessives-- all of whom had no academic art training. He found that their work had "profound strangeness and integrity" and eventually his collection grew to more than 1000 pieces.

The terms art brut, outsider art, intuitive art,  visionary art, raw art, noir folk art-- have come to be applied widely and pretty loosely. "Art Brut" is even a name used by a band! All of these terms refer to work that is produced by artists who are driven by an intense need to communicate their inner vision and who may not have much formal training. Much of the work that would fall into these categories is dark, creepy and disturbing, although much is also joyous and spiritual. Today there are a number of galleries and even a few magazines devoted to outsider art.

I'm enclosing a couple of links for anyone who wants to look at some crazy-cool stuff. I'll list and write more later-- these days there are people who are writing whole Ph.d. dissertations on outsider art. Apparently, now it's finally really ok to be totally outside the traditional boxes-- which is a HUGE relief to artists like me who tend to say "Oops! Was there a box? Well, I THOUGHT I heard a crunching noise..."
   Links: http://www.artbrut.com/index.shtml
   http://www.avam.org/index.html
    http://www.outsiderfolkart.com/index.html

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