Chicago Calling
du 13 mars 2020 au 1er novembre 2020
Jean DubuffetJackson PollockThe Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne is hosting the exhibition Chicago Calling, after its presentation in 2019 at lntuit, The center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, in Chicago, at the Halle Saint-Pierre, in Paris, and at the Kunsthaus de Kaufbeuren, in Germany.
Of all the great cities in America, Chicago has demonstrated the most artistic independence. From the 1940s, while the New York scene was turning towards abstract expressionism, Chicago's artistic circles were moving not only towards German expressionism and surrealism, but also towards primitive art and Art Brut. Their interest in the latter was nourished in particular by reading the writings of the German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn and the French artist Jean Dubuffet, at the origin of the concept of Art Brut.
In 1951, on the occasion of the first retrospective of his work in Chicago, Dubuffet delivered his famous lecture Anticultural Positions at the Arts Club, arousing much enthusiasm among artists, collectors and informed amateurs. During that same year, he entrusted his collection of Art Brut works to his friend the painter Alfonso Ossorio, who lived in East Hampton, near New York. Stored and presented in his vast home for 10 years, it will be seen by influential people in the art world in New York, including the painters Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Clyfford Still.
In the 1960s, a group of artists known as the “Chicago Imagists,” including Roger Brown, Jim Nutt, and Gladys Nilsson, began collecting works outside the formal scope of art. Art Brut and Outsider Art will therefore quickly establish themselves among Chicago collectors, dealers and curators, leading to the founding, in 1991, of lntuit, a center dedicated to Outsider Art and Art Brut in the United States.
In Europe, the Collection de l’Art Brut, inaugurated in 1976, and heir to Dubuffet’s historic collection, is the first public museum institution to present works of Art Brut. And, from 1987, she regularly exhibited a large body of work by Henry Darger, an author from Chicago, some of which she owned thanks to an exceptional donation from the widow of Nathan Lerner. This photographer who was Darger's landlord, with the help of his wife Kiyoko Lerner, enabled the preservation of this masterful production.
Chicago Calling therefore offers us the opportunity to discover or rediscover this author who is among the most famous representatives of Art Brut in the United States, alongside five other self-taught creators also natives of Chicago: Lee Godie, Mr. Imagination, Pauline Simon, Wesley Willis and Joseph E. Yoakum. Their works come from Intuit and American private and public collections but also, as far as Darger is concerned, from the collection of the Collection de l’Art Brut.
The presentation at the Collection de l'Art Brut brings together works selected by Sarah Lombardi, from the exhibition designed by curators Kenneth C. Burkhart and Lisa Stone, and organized by Intuit, The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art.
Chicago Calling is organized by Intuit, The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art and supported by The Terra Foundation for American Art. The Collection de l’Art Brut thanks the Library of the Institute of Humanities in Medicine for the loan of an original work for exhibition purposes.
Visite virtuelle de l'exposition
Six artistes américains à découvrir dans "Chicago Calling" à l'Art Brut