| The impetus for this book came from another Four Walls Eight Windows title, Asphyxiating Culture, by the French artist Jean Dubuffet. Dubuffet there takes a proudly independent stand, arguing for a culture that reveres spontaneity and genuineness, as opposed to the carefully schooled work of a mythic Academy. Editing that fierce, but somehow nave manifesto, it occurred to me that Dubuffet's comments, which to date have been formally applied only to the visual arts, were applicable to the written word as well. |
| In Asphyxiating Culture, which parallels the related work of German artist and thinker Joseph Beuys, Dubuffet exults in individuality. "Where is your normal man?" he writes. "Show him to me!" In his home, he founded the Muse d'art brut, now in Lausanne, Switzerland, dedicated to showing the work of "Outsiders''a word coined by Roger Cardinal, which well indicates the direction of Dubuffet's interest. |
| Dubuffet can be accused of navet for his emphasis on the powers of individualism: one has only to note the almost obscene appropriation of the works of such "Outsider" artists as Martin Ramirez, Henry Darger and many others to realize that a new aesthetic, and consequently, a new Academy, simply imposes itself, and that the rich, anarchic chaos Dubuffet dreamt of cannot come to pass as long as the market economy rules. As Roger Cardinal observed, collectors who once were fascinated with "Tribal Art"so-called "Primitive" worksnow are turning their attentions to the next most easily exploitable area, that of the "Outsiders." Already, lithographs of some of the leading "Outsider" artists are available in editions of one hundreda fact that is neither good nor bad, but to my mind one that would seem to obviate their existence as work "outside" the moneyed, commercial world. |
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