Outsider Art Brut - McKenzie Gallery - Oct. 19th - Nov. 19th, 2007
Outsider Art Brut - Extended for 2 more weeks!
Program available at www.liptonstudios.com
This three week long exhibit of Outsider Art Brut is at the McKenzie Art Gallery, 100 Cameron Street, Moncton, NB.
The vernissage (opening) will be on Friday, October 19th from 7-9pm. Refreshments will be served. It will be open to the public weekdays from 9am to 5pm beginning October 19th through to November 19th, 2007. The show will include Atlantic Canadian artists representing various forms of expressionism, abstract, photography, and sculpture.
The term Outsider Art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for Art Brut (which literally translates as “Raw Art” or “Rough Art”), a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture.
Art Brut: Raw art, ‘raw’ in that it has not been through the ‘cooking’ process: the art world of art schools, galleries, museums.
“Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses - where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere - are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professions.” Jean Dubuffet. Place à l’incivisme (Make way for Incivism). Art and Text no.27 (Dec. 1987 - Feb 1988). p.36
Dubuffet argued that ‘culture’, that is mainstream culture, managed to assimilate every new development in art, and by doing so took away whatever power it might have had. The result was to asphyxiate genuine expression. Art Brut was his solution to this problem - only Art Brut was immune to the influences of culture, immune to being absorbed and assimilated, because the artists themselves were not willing or able to be assimilated.