The concept of Art Brut, coined during the summer of 1945 from the notion of “raw” material, aimed to challenge the materiality of art, good taste, and academic values. With an avant-garde perspective contemporaneous to Surrealism, Jean Dubuffet invented a new way of looking at art that shed light on the production of objects often marginalized in dominant art historical narratives due to systemic racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination, by creators— often self-taught—working outside professional artistic networks, notably in rural, psychiatric, or prison contexts.
During the same time period, across the globe, other artist-collectors, intellectuals, and doctors paid attention to autodidacticism and artworks emerging outside the art mainstream. Globalization and the rise of digital technology gradually dissolved the Eurocentric contours outlined by Dubuffet’s initiatives. The notion of Art Brut has expanded exponentially to other continents: Africa, Asia, the Americas, Oceania. Art Brut has entered into dialogue with other historically related terms like Outsider Art, Self-Taught Art, Folk Art, Aboriginal Art, Visionary Art, and Vernacular Art, but also with the contemporary art world and the diverse collections of encyclopedic museums. The associated works, often created with unexpected materials (breadcrumbs, mashed potatoes, toothpaste, sand, textile fibers, saliva) and using original techniques, continue to challenge artistic categories and underrepresented areas of art history, exhibition frameworks, as well as conservation and restoration methods.
This session seeks to open new research perspectives through an academic and cultural heritage approach. The analysis of the material characteristics of these works — from the context of their creation to their sphere of reception — provides a novel understanding of these concepts that have become categories in the field of contemporary art. Our session reflects upon the current issues, not only looking at “paintings, drawings, statues” traditionally sought by the Compagnie de l’Art Brut, but at a variety of artistic mediums and multidisciplinary forms of expression.
The session “Art From The Fringes: Material and Materiality” proposes the following lines of inquiry:
Materiality, knowledge, and skills: What do materials, formats, and the state of conservation teach us about creative processes, the artist’s intention and knowledge? How are traditional skills tied to artistic innovations? How do artists from the aboriginal peoples of Canada and Australia reinvent ancestral practices?
Inscriptions on matter and writing on the materiality of the works: How is meaning constructed between the support, the inscription and the title? Which “myths” (Barthes) are made with regard to the materiality of works historically situated in the fringes? Which discourses according to which cultural areas?
Exhibiting and conserving works from the fringes: What museum practices and methods of conservation-restoration do these works require? How do artists envision the material presentation and conservation of their works? In what ways these works and artists’ display strategies invite us to rethink museum and cultural heritage practices?
Archiving materiality: How to envision, constitute, and preserve the archives of such creations? From which material or immaterial, archivable or non-archivable traces?
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