Outsider Art Of The South

An intimate glimpse into the lives and work of 34 self-taught artists. Over 400 color photos show a wide range of artwork that has been called Outsider, Visionary, and Folk. Whatever the labels, the work is passionate, religious, fantastic, heartrending, cryptic, naive, and compelling. What could be more exciting?

In the early 20th-century, European avant-garde artists began to look beyond the accepted canons of Western art in a search for new sources of inspiration. "Primitive" art, drawings by children, the art of the insane, and graffiti all opened up new avenues for experimentation and artistic creation. At the end of World War II, leading French artist Jean Dubuffet became interested in the works being produced by psychiatric patients and by other social outcasts. In 1948 he founded the Compagnie de l'Art Brut to document the collections he had begun, and in 1976 the collection moved to its permanent home in Lausanne. This critically acclaimed book traces the history of the concept of Art Brut, a movement which has had a profound effect on artistic and social history. The account is completed by biographical notes on the featured artists and an extensive bibliography. This revised edition contains up-to-date information about modern exponents of Art Brut and the collection itself, including two new images of artist Judith Scott's work. All the works reproduced, most from the collection created by Dubuffet, have retained their subversive freedom, which continues to fascinate and inspire artists and collectors today.

The art of self-taught artists - including visionaries, folk creators, spiritualists, recluses, the 'mad' and the socially marginalized - was once scorned by the art establishment. Among the first to value and collect such works was the French artist Jean Dubuffet (1901-85), who coined the term Art Brut, or 'raw art'. He saw Art Brut as the purest form of creation because it was 'uncooked' by culture, touched by a raw nerve and deriving directly from the psyche. Some 50 years later, a wave of enthusiasm for contemporary folk art has gripped countries as far apart as India and the United States. John Maizels ties these disparate strands together, providing an extensive survey of the self-taught art of the twentieth century. Today a bewildering range of terminology has emerged, along with growing enthusiasm, for strains of creative expression outside the conventional art world. In Raw Creation, Maizels traces the history of the recognition and study of this art and examines different theories and definitions that have grown up around it. He provides detailed expositions of the work of individual artists ranging from such Art Brut masters as Adolf Wolfli and Aloise Corbaz, to such gifted American folk artists as Bill Traylor and Mose Tolliver. Devoting several chapters to large-scale visionary environments, Maizels takes a broad view, embracing Rodia towers in Watts, Los Angeles, the Palais Idéal in the South of France and Nek Chand's sculpture garden in north India. Raw Creationprovides an indispensable guide to self-taught art and a fascinating account of human creativity.

The term outsider art has been used to describe work produced exterior to the mainstream of modern art by certain self-taught visionaries, spiritualists, eccentrics, recluses, psychiatric patients, criminals, and others beyond the perceived margins of society. Yet the idea of such a raw, untaught creativity remains a contentious and much-debated issue in the art world. Is this creative instinct a natural, innate phenomenon, requiring only the right circumstances—such as isolation or alienation—in order for it to be cultivated? Or is it an idealistic notion projected onto the art and artists by critics and buyers? David Maclagan argues that behind the critical and commercial hype lies a cluster of assumptions about creative drives, the expression of inner worlds, originality, and artistic eccentricity. Although outsider art is often presented as a recent discovery, these ideas, Maclagan reveals, belong to a tradition that goes back to the Renaissance, when the modern image of the artist began to take shape. In Outsider Art, Maclagan challenges many of the current opinions about this increasingly popular field of art and explores what happens to outsider artists and their work when they are brought within the very world from which they have excluded themselves.

"Walks to the Paradise Garden is the last unpublished manuscript of the late American poet, photographer, publisher and bon viveur Jonathan Williams (1929-2008). This book chronicles Williams' road trips across the Southern United States with photographers Guy Mendes and Roger Manley in search of the most authentic and outlandish artists the South had to offer. Williams describes the project thus: 'The people and places in Walks to the Paradise Garden exist along the blue highways of America.... We have traveled many thousands of miles, together and separately, to document what tickled us, what moved us, and what (sometimes) appalled us.' The majority of these road trips took place in the 1980s, a pivotal decade in the development of Southern 'yard shows' and many of the artists are now featured in major institutions. This book, however, chronicles them at the outset of their careers and provides essential context for their inclusion in the art historical canon"--Back cover.

Folk art is as varied as it is indicative of person and place, informed by innovation and grounded in cultural context. The variety and versatility of 300 American folk artists is captured in this collection of informative and thoroughly engaging essays. American Folk Art: A Regional Reference offers a collection of fascinating essays on the life and work of 300 individual artists. Some of the men and women profiled in these two volumes are well known, while others are important practitioners who have yet to receive the notice they merit. Because many of the artists in both categories have a clear identity with their land and culture, the work is organized by geographical region and includes an essay on each region to help make connections visible. There is also an introductory essay on U.S. folk art as a whole. Those writing about folk art to date tend to view each artist as either traditional or innovative. One of the major contributions of this work is that it demonstrates that folk artists more often exhibit both traits; they are grounded in their cultural context and creative in the way they make work their own. Such insights expand the study of folk art even as they readjust readers' understanding of who folk artists are.

A fascinating examination of the Bible's influence on seventy-three self-taught artists and 122 works of art

A look at twenty-nine artists who are "outside culture," unencumbered by "all kinds of cultural, social, indeed psychological prejudices."--p. 7.