星期三, 4月 04, 2007

Self-Taught Artists Around the World Create Powerful and Unusual Art


http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/2007-03-20-voa2.cfm
Today, we travel to several countries exploring the world of Outsider Art. This powerful form of creative expression usually involves art made outside the limits and rules of official culture.
Often, outsider artists have not been formally trained. They use their skills to create visual examples of personal observations, invented worlds, and even severe mental conditions.

The Outsider Art movement has many names and forms. Experts debate about the differences between terms such as Naïve Art, Visionary Art, Folk Art, Intuitive Art and Outsider Art. It would be impossible to explain the entire debate, so we will just tell a few stories about some great artists. The art itself will explain what is special about these similar movements.

Mental health experts helped bring public attention to one form of outsider art. For example, in nineteen twenty-one, a Swiss doctor, Walter Morgenthaler published a book about the art of his patient, Adolf Wolfli. Mister Wolfli was one of the early outsider artists who received popular recognition. During his thirty-five years in a mental hospital in Switzerland, Mister Wolfli created twenty-five thousand pages of drawings and stories.
Adolf Wolfli was a poor farm worker who was placed in a mental hospital in eighteen ninety-five. He soon started making color drawings that he organized into books. For example, around nineteen twelve he finished a nine-book series called “From the Cradle to the Grave.” In this work Mister Wolfli turned his sad childhood into a magical travel story. He included detailed drawings of maps, creatures, rulers, and even talking plants to help capture this imaginary world. In other books, he recreated and renamed the world and universe. He described this world using songs, poetry, and drawings.

In the nineteen forties the French artist Jean Dubuffet discovered Mister Wolfli’s works and other artists like him. He called this kind of artwork “Art Brut” which is French for “raw art”. He described Art Brut as being created from pure and real creative forces. He saw outsider artwork as being free from the worries of competition and social acceptance that define the official art world. He argued that the official culture of museums, galleries and artists had lost its power. Art Brut, he said, was still true and powerful art. Jean Dubuffet soon started collecting this kind of art made by mental patients, prisoners and even children. In nineteen seventy-one he donated his personal collection of Art Brut to the city of Lausanne, Switzerland.

--------------------------from Amy-----------------------

I think everyone can be an artist for his life. We human beings can't neither be rational nor emtional. The mental conditions are usually kind of complicated and looking for a way to relieve.

2 則留言:

Anglophile 提到...

i just posted about Wolfli today, check out my blog:
http://anglophilereads.blogspot.com

Alain 提到...

Interesting post about what I consider the deepest and the most authentic artistic expression.