Jean Dubuffet
L'Art brut préféré aux arts culturels
Paris, France: René Drouin, 1949
52 pp., 20 x 17 cm., staple-bound
Edition size unknown
The term outsider art was coined by art critic and professor at the University of Kent, Roger Cardinal in 1972. The term was an English synonym for the French term Art Brut, or "raw art" or "rough art"), a term used by Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture.
He viewed fine art as too influenced by academic training, and favoured graffiti, and the work of
psychiatric hospital patients, children and "primitive" artists untrammelled by convention. He began incorporating these qualities into his own practice.
This volume was published on the occasion of an exhibition of Art Brut organized by the Compagnie de l'Art Brut at Galerie Rene Drouin in Paris, the venue that gave Dubuffet his very first exhibition.
He penned an impassioned catalogue essay, which came to be regarded as the group's manifesto. Alongside this text are 52 black and white illustrations and a checklist of 200 works by 63 artists. Fittingly, the volume is printed on cheap brown and pink paper.
"Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses – where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere – are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professionals. After a certain familiarity with these flourishings of an exalted feverishness, lived so fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade."
- Jean Dubuffet
