Portraits et Personnages
Jun - May, 2002
About
Portraits
et Personnages: Selected Works from the Collection
de I' Art Brut's Neuve Invention presented 50 works on paper
that depicts portraits or human characterizations from the internationally
recognized museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. Co-curated by Genevieve
Roulin and Tom
Stanley, the exhibition provided a glimpse of some of Roulin's
favorite artists from the museum's Neuve Invention Collection. Roulin
was the curator at the Collection de I'Art Brut until her death
this past January.
The Collection
de I'Art Brut was established in Lausanne in 1976 to house art
works collected by French modern artist Jean
Dubuffet (1901-1985). Disillusioned from an early age by what
he considered the "artificial, elitist, venal and publicity-seeking
institutions set up to support the arts," Dubuffet
looked outside of the established art world for a purer, more honest
art form. He found it in artwork that had not been compromised by
the academy or gallery system.
Though the artists that Dubuffet
discovered often existed on the margins of society, he contended
that their art revealed a raw, singular vision. According to Michel
Thevoz, director of the Collection
de l'Art Brut, Dubuffet
sought out "an art free of the dictates of tradition or fashion,
an art liberated from all social compromise, an art which draws
its strength from an impassioned way of thinking and an almost autistic
inner necessity."
In addition to the primary collection of Art Brut, Dubuffet established a second collection called "Neuve Invention" (fresh invention). Though many of these works did not represent the initial "radical distancing" from the art world that typified Art Brut, they nonetheless challenged the fine-art system that, according to Dubuffet, stifled a revolutionary art of consequence. In many ways, Dubuffet's passionate advocacy of Art Brut and the Neuve Invention was a political attack on what he considered to be a stagnant cultural establishment. "
Another aspect of this exhibition, which was meaningful, was the opportunity to see an aesthetic accepted by many collectors in Europe. Certainly different from "Outsider" or contemporary folk art that has a following in the United States, Art Brut and the Neuve Invention has a more psychological edge; said co-curator Stanley.
