Privacy Policy. Please visit My Account to verify and manage your account. An account was already registered with this email. Please check your inbox for an authentication link. Who would have been included in such a history, and who would have been left out? And what about artists who had missed out on a membership card to the mainstream β those who were never part of any school or movement, or formally trained in the history and techniques of making art?
Art Brut in America: The Incursion of Jean Dubuffet , a just-opened exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum in New York on view through January 10, , examines the aesthetic concerns that led the inquisitive French modernist to investigate, amass and promote this kind of art. In his research and field trips, Dubuffet found more of what he was looking for, examples of a kind of art made by non-trained artists whose evident creative impulse was urgent, pure and compelling. At that time, Dubuffet gave nearly works to the new museum.
Today, its collection includes some 60, objects. Born into a wealthy family in the Philippines, Ossorio was educated as a youngster in England and the U. In her catalog essay, Rousseau notes that Ossorio, who became a naturalized U. Pollock encouraged Ossorio to reach out and try to meet the French artist. Dubuffet showed Ossorio his latest works as well as examples from his collection of art brut.
With it, Dubuffet also declared his rejection of established artistic values and his embrace instead of those he found embodied in art brut. In this bracing manifesto, he described this art as:. These artists derive everything β subjects, choice of materials, means of transposition, rhythms, styles of writing, etc.
Dubuffet, who was as prolific a letter-writer as he was an art-maker, sent Ossorio dispatches about his art brut finds and even technical advice about painting on cement. In late , he traveled to New York with Ossorio, who installed the collection in his East Hampton mansion, where it stayed for a little over a decade. In December of that same year, in conjunction with an exhibition of his own paintings at the Arts Club of Chicago, Dubuffet traveled to Chicago to deliver a cri de coeur declaring a new aesthetic.
