Adolf Wolfli. Untitled (Saint Adolph Bitten in the Leg by the Snake), 1921; colored pencil and pencil on paper;
 26-3/4 x 20-1/8 in.; Waldau Clinic, Bern, Switzerland. Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland. Photo: Marie Humair.

The importance of this documentation is hard to overestimate. In addition to providing insight into Dubuffet’s early process and philosophy in formulating art brut as a new aesthetic paradigm, it also chronicles the moment when the seeds for what would later become outsider art were first planted in the United States. Many of the artists included in Art Brut in America, like Aloise Corbaz, Augustin Lesage, and Adolf Wolfli, are now well known to American audiences through the robust and active network of outsider-art galleries, fairs, and publications. Through revisiting and partially re-creating art brut’s American debut, the exhibition also inevitably tells outsider art’s genesis story. While it is undeniable that the outsider-art genre was built from art brut’s blueprints, and inherited the slippery criteria for inclusion and false dichotomies that plagued its predecessor, it is crucial to remember the differences between the two fields, in particular the historical context that informed Dubuffet’s motives for collecting in the first place.

Robert Gie. Distribution d’Effluves avec Machine Centrale et Tableau Métrique (Distribution of Emanations with Central Machine and Metric Table), 
circa 1916;
 pencil and India ink on tracing paper; 19-1/2 x 26-3/8 in.
; Rosegg Psychiatric Clinic, Switzerland. Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland. Photo: Arnaud Conne.

Dubuffet, whose work is most closely tied to the tachisme and art informel movements, was highly involved in the European avant-garde art world and an active contributor to conversations about the role and importance of art after the horrors of World War II. He was influenced by Hans Prinzhorn’s 1922 book, The Artistry of the Mentally Ill, and Walter Morgenthaler’s 1921 book, A Psychiatric Patient as Artist, which described the artwork of Morgenthaler’s patient, Adolf Wolfli. By the time Dubuffet proposed the transfer of the art brut works to Ossorio in 1952, he had been collecting across Western Europe for about six years, primarily from psychiatric institutions whose doctors donated works in the hopes they would be preserved. Set against the very recent trauma of the Nazi party’s persecution of the mentally disabled—referred to as the murder of the “unfit”—it is not surprising that Dubuffet approached his collecting with great urgency and that many medical professionals were eager to cooperate with his efforts. [1] He exhaustively documented the details about every new acquisition, recording his direct observations of the creators, interactions with their doctors, and descriptions of the institutions. While his self-interests were certainly tied to art brut gaining prestige and cultural value—not to mention that he heavily borrowed many formal and stylistic elements for his own art practice—Dubuffet is responsible for the preservation of this work as well as the only records of many of these individuals’ lives. His project, in the aftermath of unprecedented atrocity, is a deeply redemptive one.

Aloise Corbaz. Baptême de Pie XII / Un Baiser à l’Aviateur – Le Pape Pie XII Monnayeur et son Sphinx sur le Siège (Baptism of Pius XII / A Kiss to the Aviator—Pope Pius XII Counterfeiter and His Sphinx on the Seat), c. 1955; colored pencil on a sheet of paper folded in the middle; 59 x 39-3/8 in.; De La Rosière Psychiatric Hospital, Gimel, Switzerland. Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland. Photo: Olivier Laffely.

Grounded within this historical frame, the exhibition’s extensive use of biographical information doesn’t feel out of place. The names of the asylums where the artists were institutionalized are included on the majority of the exhibition’s object labels. Small booklets with the artists’ biographies are available in every gallery. When such strategies appear in the contemporary outsider-art marketplace, however, they risk being reductive and exploitive. The present landscape of attitudes concerning mental-health issues in the United States is considerably different from the one Dubuffet was responding to in postwar Europe, thankfully so. Mental illness is no longer unequivocally determinative of cultural marginalization. Positing that it promises the kind of artistic purity and uncontaminated creativity that Dubuffet proclaimed distinguished art brut from the established, academic, mainstream art world just continues a romantic mythology.

Augustin Lesage. Composition Symbolique, Amour pour l’Humanité (Symbolic Composition, Love for Humanity), 1932;
 
oil on canvas; 38-1/4 x 27-1/2 in.; Pas-de-Calais, France.
 Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland. Photo: Claude Bornand.

The 200 works in the show range wildly in medium and complexity, and there is no formal thread that definitively or comfortably ties them together. One of the undeniable appeals of the show, however, is imagining the reception of these boldly unselfconscious works by the New York art-world elites who were deep in the trenches of Abstract Expressionism.

Art Brut in America provides a focused spotlight in which to examine a pivotal moment in art brut’s history and a germinative moment for outsider art’s reception and formation in the United States. The exhibition confirms the breadth and importance of Dubuffet’s efforts while acknowledging that he was constantly reevaluating and revising the field’s definition from its beginning.

Art Brut in America: The Incursion of Jean Dubuffet is on view at the American Folk Art Museum through January 10, 2015.

[1] http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/nazi-persecution-of-the-disabled

"Alfonso Ossorio at the Creeks," 1952. Photograph by Hans Namuth ©1991 Hans Namuth Estate, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography.

The 53 paintings and prints in the exhibition tell the story of how Pollock, Ossorio and Dubuffet influenced each other through not only their close friendships, but also through the sharing of ideas, techniques and even studio spaces. Ossorio, both an artist and collector, bought one of Pollock’s paintings in 1949 and was later introduced to him and Lee Krasner through art dealer Betty Parsons. Pollock then prodded Ossorio to travel to Paris in November of the same year to meet Dubuffet and purchase some of his works. Ossorio’s collection would later be hung in an East Hampton estate purchased in 1951 at the suggestion of Jackson Pollock. Dubuffet wrote a monograph on Ossorio in 1951.

Pollock, Ossorio and Dubuffet were concurrently challenging the canon of painting by forging their own abstract styles. All three grappled with abstraction versus figuration, and each had an interest in process and materials. It seems not a coincidence that Pollock returned to figuration for a period during 1950, as in Number 7, 1952 when he was living in Ossorio’s New York studio.  You can see the influence of Dubuffet in Ossorio’s abstract figural paintings such as Reforming Figure. In the same work, you can see how Ossorio took from Pollock the overall gestural abstraction that fills the rest of the canvas. Dubuffet was highly criticized in his native France, but found solace and praise in New York among Pollock and Ossorio in the burgeoning Abstract Expressionist scene.

Jackson Pollock, "Number 1, (Lavender Mist)," 1950.

While angels, demons and savages are literal subjects in the exhibition’s works, they also serve as metaphors for the personal battles that each artist addressed through their artistic practices. Pollock was a known alcoholic with a volatile personality. His anxiety is palpable in a painting such as Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), a great example of his “‘demonic’ gestural force.” Ossorio struggles with his Catholic upbringing and incorporates different representations of Christian iconography and values throughout his canvases. Dubuffet fights the idea of art in general, and after abandoning the medium several times, he returns during this period to explore the art of the mentally ill in his “art brut” paintings. The emotionally charged themes throughout the exhibition make clear why these artists got along so well as friends and confidants.

This exhibition gives a rare glimpse into a web of relationships between artists, collectors, critics and dealers that helped shape the Abstract Expressionist movement as well as the aesthetic of each individual artist. Although strong relationships between artists are frequently discussed in writing, it is illuminating to see how these close ties manifest visually when canvases are hung side by side.

Angels, Demon, and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet will be on view at The Phillips Collection until May 12, 2013.