Jean Dubuffe’ activity and a discourse of Art brute

Abstract

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985), artist, collector, theorist, made a significant contribution to the formation of Art Brut in the period of the mid-twentieth century. The article reveals the Art Brut discourse during the analysis of the collector’s, exhibition’s, organizational activity of Jean Dubuffet, as well as his theoretical reflections. The study was conducted in the perspective of the methodology of the Michel Foucault discourse and the emergence surfaces, demarcation authorities, and gratings of Art Brut specifications were defined. The study analyzes a large range of biographical sources and theoretical texts of Jean Dubuffet, as well as works on the history of outsider art and Art Brut. In the course of the research is determined that Art Brut as a historical phenomenon at the initial stage was formed through Jean Dubuffet’s passion for the art of the mentally ill, which he had got from the book of Hans Prinzhorn. During the 1940-1950s the community of collectors, art dealers, gallerists became the main authorities of delimitation of Art Brut discourse and at the stage of the 1950s – the beginning of the 1960s museum institutions and various forms of scientific discourse were also connected to that circle. The grids of Art Brut specification were described through the gap between European culture and the “savages’ values”.