Art Brut, in a few words…
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Jean Dubuffet, together with other artists and intellectuals, initiated research into and the collection of works produced on the margins of society, which he termed Art Brut. A fragile treasure that he wished throughout his life to protect, even to isolate from what he called “official art.”
Who are these creators, these artists whose productions bear witness to another world, at once the object of our fascination and our doubts? They are outsiders to the culture of fine arts, strangers to its rituals and institutions: schools, fairs, market circuits, museums, and cultural establishments. Outsiders to stylistic movements and influences, to accepted labels and technical procedures. They may be found among those whom science or society identify as “mentally ill” yet endowed with highly creative abilities, among spiritualists, among those living in rural isolation, in the anonymity of cities, or in a solitude one might describe as autistic; among workers and craftsmen; and sometimes even among established artists undergoing psychological rupture. If the territory of Art Brut is that of “the common man at work,” to use Dubuffet’s expression, one cannot deny that the destiny of these artists is equally extraordinary, since the inventiveness that characterizes them — of a singular kind — owes much to their own psychic capacities, even in the borrowings they make from common culture. On the borders of the imaginary, lost within reality, splashed with stars, they endlessly redraw the geography of a universe they invent as they go along. With freedom and otherness as their only compasses, they gather, accumulate, fill, decipher, blacken, distort, amplify, organize, and build. Most of them do not address themselves to us, but to the Other, believing themselves invested with a mission to reorder the world, dictated by a “higher” authority.
Jean Dubuffet, who never considered his own work to be Art Brut since he had followed the path of a professional artist, nevertheless brought these productions out of the margins and granted them the status of works of art in their own right. Their mere existence was enough to challenge classical notions of art and creation, as well as the boundaries between the normal and the pathological. Since its invention, the concept of Art Brut has continued to unsettle our aesthetic perceptions, our definitions of art, and our certainties regarding identity.
Today, through the perspectives of new researchers, increasing institutional recognition supported by a growing public, the commercialization of these works, and the enthusiasm of recent collectors, a page is turning. Questions concerning the place of Art Brut are evolving, nuances are emerging, and although its growing visibility invites renewed understanding, it also calls for vigilance in safeguarding this fragile treasure.