MacGregor, J.

, The Discovery of the Art of the Insane, ‘Dubuffet and the Aesthetic of Art
Brut’, p. 292-308

- Dubuffet more deeply involved with art of the insane than any other artist of 20 th c;
long relationship w/ “psychotic art” & artists. (p. 292)
- Early development beginning in 1918, arrival in Paris to study painting- ‘spasmodic
process’, ‘series of false starts’- until he was 40, ‘his involvement with his own
internal creative processes was extremely ambivalent.’
- Discovery of Hans Prinzhorn’s Bildnerei der Geisteskranken in 1922- ‘The book
appears to have acted as the essential catalyst in changing his conception of the
nature of art and culture, forcing him to an agonizing re-examination of his identity
as an artist.’ – “Prinzhorn’s book struck me very strongly when I was young. It
showed me the way and was a liberating influence. I realized that all was permitted,
all was possible. I wasn’t the only one. Interest in the art of the insane and the
rejection of established culture was very much ‘in the air’ in the 1920s. The book had
an enormous influence on modern art.’ – effect derived entirely from pictures of the
book, didn’t read it.
- Post 1942- artistic productivity rich & copious- fought on behalf of individuals whose
‘activity as image makers was rejected or ignored by the guardians of contemporary
cultural values’- spent vast amount of time, money & energy to ‘discovering,
collecting, preserving, and publishing the work of obscure eccentrics and madmen.’
- Organised Foyer de l’Art Brut, November 1947- intention to attract wider audience
to this ‘’new art”- interest in collection grew- decision made to ‘build up a
retrospective study collection, it was thought best to dissociate the collection from
Dubuffet’s personal ownership. Accordingly, in July 1948, the Compagnie de l”art
Brut was founded with some 50 active members, and over 100 “adherents.” The
founders were, besides Dubuffet, André Breton, Charles Ratton, Jean Paulhan, Henri-
Pierre Roché, and the painter Michel Tapié.’ (p. 293)- founders included no
psychiatrists.
- 1951- financial difficulty + excessive burden on Dubuffet- organisation dissolved &
collection shipped to America. (p. 294)
- ‘The concept of Art Brut, as formulated by Dubuffet, provided both an aesthetic and
a rationale for the existence of the collection, as well as a dogma with which some
individuals, particularly Andre Breton, were to find it increasingly difficult to
identify.’- concept was too closely identified w/ d’s own artistic development for
possibility of real collaboration.
- Lecture Anticultural positions given by Dubuffet at Chicago Art Club in 1951 + essay
‘Honneur aux valeurs sauvages” extended & clarified his aesthetic viewpoint. (p. 295)
- 8 years following- commitment to his own art superseded his involvement w/ art
brut- 1959, interest in collection reawakened. Had money to collect on grander
scale- 1962, collection returned to Paris, Compagnie de l’Art Brut reconstituted in
September. Beginning in 1964, series of elegant of volumes ‘L’art brut’ began to
appear, richly illustrated w/ detailed discussion of artists whose work was
represented in collection- provide essential material for study of psychotic art of 20 th
c + ‘rationale for the inclusion of these images and artists within the boundaries of
contemporary art.’- Dubuffet- ‘His ideas represent an effective challenge to the
whole artistic establishment’
- Dubuffet’s activity as collector & theorist of the art of the insane cannot be readily
separated from his work as an artist.’ – own paintings profoundly influenced by this
art, to extent that he has been accused to imitation. (p. 296)
- Though history of art seen by art historians as a ‘sequence of evolutionary steps that
can readily be characterised as a pattern of influences in which innovations
introduced by one artist inspired further developments in the next, the game has
been seen as taking place within the restricted circle of images recognized as “art.”’
– “primitive” sources i.e. art of insane, children, deemphasised in historical picture
because they are seen as being not really art, so ‘not fitting into the pattern of
borrowings by which the development of modern art has, up to now, been
characterised.’
- Pop art forced critics to recognise that influences could come from outside “art”-
Dubuffet’s art makes similar demands.
- Dubuffet’s interests ranged wider than art brut- art of children, early student of
graffiti w. Brassai, etc- emphasised these distinct forms of human expression “are
rejected with the condescending label “art of children, of primitives, and of the
insane” … conveys a very false idea of awkward or aberrant stammerings standing at
the very beginning of the great road which culminates in 'cultural art'". . . These
works have nothing in common except a rejection of the narrow rut within which
ordinary art is confined, and a tendency to trace freely their own pathways in the
immense territory which the high road of culture has allowed to fall into disuse to
the point of forgetting that other possibilities exist."
- Search for his own artistic language, relevant to individuals whose vision was not
clouded w/ traditional delusions of “art & beauty”- Dubuffet tried to free himself of
the burden of culture.
- End of his life- ‘began to feel that intensive knowledge of the culture is a means of
escaping from it. “It seems to me that the only possibility there is of escaping from
cultural conditioning resides in becoming aware of it and in an active determination
to remove oneself from it.”’ (p. 297)
- Sought purely personal language and images reflective of his own being- turned to
art forms he saw as having achieved that goal effortlessly- avoided “cultural art”-
“other artists identified with da Vinci or Michelangelo- in my head I had the names
Wolfli or Muller, etc. It was these artists whom I loved and admired. I was never
directly influenced by Art Brut. I was influenced by the freedom, liberty, which
helped me very much. I took their example.”
- His art in 1940s does ‘betray a debt to the paintings of children’- “In 1942 I was
looking a lot at the paintings of children, and liked them very much. I was influenced
by them.”- critics recognised only superficial similarities accused him of copying,
described work as “graphic demonstration of a laboriously achieved infantilism”-
ignores search for freedom underlying them- desire for shared vision.
- ‘The whole of Dubuffet’s oeuvre, from 1942 on, reflects his deep involvement with
spontaneous art created in the absence of aesthetic intention and cultural influence.’
(p. 298)
- Driven by consuming desire to invent new materials & methods that would permit
expression of deepest & most rudimentary feeling-states.
- Essential connection between Dubuffet’s work & art of insane rooted in ‘his
conviction that art is exclusively the expression of the individual, free of the stamp of
 society and culture, the ultimate act of rebellion and non-conformism. Image making
has as its aim the externalization of otherwise inexplicable and unreachable human
experience. Art, if it exists at all, exists as an expression of our deepest inner selves,
of our being, a reality for which D invented the term paysages mentaux. “A work of
art is of no interest, to me, unless it is an absolutely immediate and direct projection
of what is occurring in the depths of an individual… In my view, art consists
essentially in the externalisation of the most intimate internal events occurring
within the depths of the artist.” – LINK TO AUTOMATISM?
- On his paintings: “They are no longer – or almost no longer – descriptive of external
sites, but rather… the immaterial world which dwells in the mind of man: disorder of
images, of beginnings of images, of fading images, where they cross and mingle, in a
turmoil, tatters burrowed from memories of the outside world, and facts purely
cerebral and internal – visceral perhaps. The transfer of these mental sites on the
same place as that of the real concrete landscapes, and in such a way that an
uncomfortable incongruity is the result … the discovery that they are perhaps not so
foreign [to one another] as one had believed, attracts me very strongly.”
- Position as an artist can be split into 2 standpoints- 1) hostile attitude toward
western art & culture, 2) positive belief in art of individuals who are able/forced to
create outside of this world view. (p. 299) – anticultural position.
- Opposed to art of past & art establishment of present, l’art culturel, & any overly
elaborate and sophisticated civilisation.
- Attracted to the primitive as a ‘precivilised state’- search for humanity’s origins (p.
300)
- Dubuffet’s conception of the primitive indicated by word insanity (délire) – unlike
artists who turned to Africa/Oceania for contact w/ primitive, Dubuffet ‘sought his
pure savage on the edges of his own world, among the unrecognised- the outcasts
and rejects of the society in which we live.’ – hunger for images ‘free of the
pathology of Western civilization, images expressive of human nature in its purest
and most individualistic state. For Dubuffet, Art Brut is an art free of the sickness of
Western rationalism, untouched by the perverse notion of “beauty.”’
- Attack on concept of beauty at center of his anticultural position- ‘I don’t find the act
of assembling colors in pleasant arrangements to be a particularly noble function.
[…] Art addresses itself to the spirit and not to the eyes. […] Art is a language, an
instrument of understanding and an instrument of communication.’
- Carl Jung 1930s- idea that outside of dominant Christian world view was a hidden
but parallel conception of the nature of things that had persisted in officially
unrecognised body of ideas known as alchemy- 2 world views were complimentary,
alchemy held profound significance for understanding of history & human nature,
but official world view imposed blindness to it. (p. 301)
- Dubuffet’s position = similar- parallel to accepted art of the West had always been an
unrecognised “underground art”, art brut. – Link to Bataille formlessness?
- ‘The massive defences within the individual and within civilisation against the pure
products of the unconscious are far more profoundly based than Dubuffet
recognized.” – Freud recognised man’s hatred of forces within himself, & immense
sacrifices society & civilisation demand of us- but placed himself on side of
civilisation, unlike Dubuffet.
- Art Brut- 2 essential criteria- intensity of expression, and freedom from cultural
influence. Creation free of any concern w/ art, motivated only by intense inner need
to make images- excludes Dubuffet himself.
- Distinction between “naïve art”, folk art, kitsch & Art brut- naïve art profoundly
influenced by cultural art.
- Dubuffet’s creator not concerned w/ making art- works betray ‘a violent origin, an
irresistible impulse producing images of raw intensity borne upward with volcanic
force from deep within the central core of the individual.’ (p. 302)- BATAILLE ARCH
OF TRANSGRESSION
- Art Brut can’t be equated w/ art of the insane, can emerge from any group who opts
out/is rejected by society- psychiatric thinking is in itself evidence of a form of social
pathology, rooted in desire to differentiate. Dubuffet’s stance is as much anti-
psychiatry as anti-cultural. Link to surrealist celebration of hysteria.
- “It is quite obvious that in regard to what is called insanity, European man has
formulated the problem incorrectly. He approaches insanity with the idea that it is
something radically different in nature from normal mentality, that it is in fact its
opposite (in-sanity), that it possesses a bad or negative value, and that one should
aim at its destruction. […] Insanity is, …, so incredibly varied and different from one
case to another, that it is senseless to include all cases under such a vague
identification. One identifies as insanity anything which departs from “normality”, or
a prototype of this normality…” (p. 303)
- Dubuffet wrested image from psychiatric milieu, moving them from madhouse to
the museum by labelling them as art rather than psychiatric material – but should
not be seen as coherent body of works- totally heterogenous collection of images
and artists, no underlying unity or common purpose. – D: “It is in reality cultural art
which is specious and uniform, while those forms of art originating elsewhere offer
infinite variety.”
- Essence of Art Brut lies in ‘intense individuality of each creator. A strong belief in the
individual lies at the center of all of his thinking.’ – art of the insance represents
extremes of individualism- having abandoned life in society, they are driven to
explore own inner reality- insanity represents a rebellion, a revolt against imposed
reality; “I believe that the creation of art is intimately linked with the spirit of revolt.
Insanity represents a refusal to adopt a view of reality that is imposed by custom. Art
consists in constructing or inventing a mirror in which all of the universe is
reflected.”
- For Dubuffet art represents greatest possibility of freedom available. Totally rejected
notion of genius or talent- put forward that image making in the most profound
sense is a normal human function, similar to the dream.
- Civilisation has interfered massively in process of art making via overemphasis on
technique & representational skills and on perverse idea of art & beauty that
convinces us that image making is only available to experts or those with god given
talent. (p. 304)
- Alienation key to process of artistic creation for Dubuffet- unique value of individual
in opposition to society- ‘His conception of creativity derives from the conviction that
one man, by himself, can renew the world.’ (p. 305)
- ‘By restricting his experience of the insane to those rare individuals who master the
experience of psychosis, and function creatively within it, Dubuffet arrived at as
 idealistic a conception of insanity as a sociologist would of “normal” society were he
to restrict his investigation to artists and writers. Only a unique individual can create
a new world out of chaos. Dubuffet knew this’
- Paradoxical that ‘Dubuffet, through his writings and efforts on behalf of Art Brut,
carved out a place for the art of the insane in the world of arts.’ (p. 307)
- Exhibition of African tribal sculpture in museums; ‘Primitive art has found acceptance
at the cost of losing its significance and meaning.’
- Works not aimed at art lovers- “it is the man in the street that I’m after” – referred
to art brut as “the voice of the common man”- goal difficult to reach- “Perhaps in the
1940s I had more confidence in the man in the street. Now I’m more discouraged. He
is more strongly conditioned by cultural ideas that are the intellectuals. It is far more
difficult to decondition him.” (p. 308)
- ‘Dubuffet’s whole activity as a writer can be seen as an attempt to liberate individual
human beings from the burden of an artificial and irrelevant aesthetic.’