Lausanne's Collection de l'art brut presents its Anonymous artists
Bilan, Étienne Dumont, 1er août 2021
Some works are searching for authors. Medical secrecy is sometimes to blame. Originally, these paintings were considered clinical evidence.
Anonymity? A vast subject... From society to unsigned letters, it is the grand ballet of those who do not want or cannot give their names. For its current exhibition, Lausanne's Collection de l'art brut fortunately limits itself to the artistic field. The scope is even narrowed to creation in confined environments: prisons or mental institutions. Yet the topic refers to a more general notion of signature in painting and sculpture. If signing became the norm in the first two decades of the 19th century in fine arts, it remained superfluous for craft production - at least in middle- and lower-range work. Apparently, it mattered little who made this or that chair or water jug.
The current project was brought by a man of the theater, which may seem odd. Gustavo Giacosa brought the subject on a silver platter to Sarah Lombardi, director of the Collection de l'art brut, who delegated curator Pascale Jeanneret. The Argentinian had conceived a double program with La Grange de Dorigny, where he intended to stage a performance titled "La Grace." The theater hosted him for three years as a resident, which is no small thing. The piece will be performed on October 28 and 29. At first he was more interested in victims of the dictatorship in his country, whose identities needed to be restored. In other words, this exhibition, opened on June 26, 2021, marks a radical change of direction.
First name only
And why is that? Because the creators presented in the attic spaces on Avenue des Bergieres are not unknown soldiers. It is simply that their works were not initially considered as such, which would have made things easier later. For psychiatrists, who began preserving them (and thereby saving them), they were, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, pieces of evidence - in other words, materials for clinical files. Those files were confidential. Medical secrecy exists, just as Swiss banking secrecy once did. Names could not be communicated to third parties. Jean Dubuffet and his successors sometimes found ways around this: first name only; first name plus initial... (1) This explains why Vaud native Aloise Corbaz, now an art brut superstar, was long known simply as Aloise.
This confusion between the medical and the cultural still goes very far today, as readers of the accompanying book, edited by Anic Zanzi, can discover. In some cases, anonymity could only be lifted 120 years after the artist's birth - or rather the patient's birth. A patient in every sense of the word... It has never been possible to place the interest of the art-loving community above the demands of science, or rather of its presumed ethics. For historians, it is therefore a cat-and-mouse game. The Collection de l'art brut can now present a few "outing" cases, such as the now well-known author of the Barbus Muller. That man, who this time suffered from no pathology, was named Antoine Rabany, known as "Le Zouave."
Composite names
What has always been possible, since Jean Dubuffet (whose interest had been preceded by physicians Hans Prinzhorn and Charles Ladame), is to make groupings. This uncertain technique mirrors that of art historians. A huge number of medieval and early Renaissance creations (though not all!) bear no signature. But they have a maker's mark: their author's personality. One need only gather works with the same characteristics. The resulting "corpora" are designated by conventional names: "Master" of this or that. One can hope to someday find the archival document restoring a surname. The 14th-century "Master of the Ovile," for instance, has become for most experts Bartolomeo Bulgarini again, while the Master of Moulins (around 1500) was very likely Jean Hey.
Specialists have thus created composite figures in art brut, meant to carry bodies of work. There was "The French Traveler," who has just reached port. We now know his name was Laurey and that in another life he had been a porcelain painter. Barbarian Guillaume remains. The Czech Postman remains. Raymond Oui Oui, who appears on the cover of the accompanying book. The anonymous are, in this way, slightly less anonymous. They draw closer to us. They have flesh: their production. They are somewhat like the unknown people we speak to regularly without knowing their identity.
Scholarly debate on identity
Built from the Collection de l'art brut but also from Turin's Museo Lombroso (more criminal than artistic) and Heidelberg's Prinzhorn Collection, the exhibition remains small in size. Sarah Nedir's scenography nonetheless avoids any clutter. Wall texts remain fairly simple compared with the book, where authors watch themselves write the way people can enjoy hearing themselves talk. I have always been struck by how people in the art brut world use complex language to speak over the heads of those whose own voices were missing during incarceration.
The tone becomes openly academic in the oral debates at the end of the book, conducted by eleven researchers from the University of Lausanne (UNIL). These "avenues for reflection" on anonymity and identity in general address no real public. Everyone preaches to their own choir, Michel Thevoz occasionally erupting with ready-made phrases. "Identity was invented by cops," "Anonymity is a practice unworthy of an activist." Easy to say when one is retired from a comfortable institution like the Collection de l'art brut...
(1) Anonymous pieces remain an infinitely small minority at the Collection de l'art brut. This should still be stated.
"Anonymes," Collection de l'art brut, 11 Avenue des Bergieres, Lausanne, through October 31. Tel. 021 315 25 70, website www.artbrut.ch Open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., daily in July and August. The book, 176 pages, is published by Antipodes.