Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art

Los Angeles, Calif., Princeton, N.J.: Los Angeles County Museum of Art ; Princeton University Press, 1992. First Edition. Folio in grey stiff paper wraps; 334 pages: illustrations (many color); 31 cm As new; very fine with extremley faint shelf-wear to exterior. Paperback. ISBN: 0875871666

Publisher description: In 1912 Paul Klee declared that the art of the mentally ill, as well as the art of children, "really should be taken far more seriously than are the collections of all our art museums if we truly intend to reform today's art." What Klee found most fascinating and instructive about the art of "outsiders"--those self-taught individuals, sometimes mentally disturbed, who create while isolated from mainstream culture--was the sincerity, depth, and power of their un-adulterated, unmediated expressions. Parallel Visions, an exhibition and catalogue organized and produced by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, reveals the considerable influence that outsider art has had on the development of twentieth-century art. The work of such "marginalized" artists and compulsive visionaries as Antonin Artaud, Ferdinand Cheval, Henry Darger, Howard Finster, Madge Gill, Martin Ramirez, P. M. Wentworth, Adolf Wlfli, and Joseph Yoakum is juxtaposed with the work of devotees of outsider art among modern artists. Essays by the curators of the exhibition, Maurice Tuchman and Carol S. Eliel, and by other commentators offer a history of this phenomenon as well as an exploration of issues crucial to the formation of our aesthetic and critical judgments and our notions of creativityContents: Eyes outside and eyes inside / Jonathan Wiliams. Moral influences and expressive intent: a model of the relationship between insider and outsider / Carol S. Eliel. Biographies of outsider artists / Barbara Freeman. Expressionism's ancients / Reinhold Heller. Surrealism and the paradigm of the creative subject / Roger Cardinal. From the asylum to the museum: marginal art in Paris and New York, 1938-68 / Sarah Wilson. Looking to the outside: art in Chicago, 1945-75 / Russell Bowman. Playing tennis with the king: visionary art in central Europe in the 1960s / Mark Gisbourne. Contemporary artists and outsider art / Carol S. Eliel and Barbara Freeman. Constructing creativity and madness: Freud and the shaping of the psychopathology of art / Sander L. Gilman. I see a world within the world: I dream but am awake / John M. MacGregor. Nostalgia for the absolute: obsession and art brut / Allen S. Weiss. Art history, museology, and the staging of modernity / Donald Preziosi. Notes: Catalog of an exhibition organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and held October 18, 1992-December 12, 1993. Artists include: Aloïse (Aloïse Corbaz); Gregory Amenoff; Karel Appel; Antonin Artaud; Donald Baechler; Georg Baselitz; Hans Bellmer; Christian Boltanski; Jonathan Borofsky; Victor Brauner; Karl Brendel (Karl Genzel); André Breton; Roger Brown; Carlo (Carlo Zinelli); Case 411; Gaston Chaissac; Ferdinand Cheval; Joseph Crépin; Salvador Dalí; Henry Darger; Jim Dine; Jean Dubuffet; Norris Embry; Max Ernst; Howard Finster; Madge Gill; Joseph Glasco; Paul Goesch; Leon Golub; Red Grooms; Johann Hauser; George Herms; Carl Fredrik Hill; Jess (Jess Collins); Paul Klee; Johann Knüpfer (Johann Knopf); Alfred Kubin; Augustin Lesage; Richard Lindner; Heinrich Hermann Mebes; Annette Mesager; Heinrich Anton Müller; J. B. Murry (John B. Murry or Murray); Andy Naisse; Walter Nävratil; August Neter (August Natterer); Gladys Nilsson; Jim Nutt; Claes Oledenburg; Viktor Orth (Clemens von Oertzen); Alfonso Ossorio; A. R. Penck; Roland Penrose; Franz Pohl (Franz Karl Bühler); Arnulf Rainer; Martín Ramírez; Simon Rodia; Barbara Rossi; Niki de Saint Phalle; Italo Scanga; Clarence Schmidt; Julian Schnabel; Fiedrich Schöder-Sonnenstern; Hélène Smith; Louis Soutter; Jean Tinguely; August Walla; Heinrich Welz (Hyacinth von Wieser); P. M. Wentworth; H. C. Westermann; Scottie Wilson (Louis Freeman); Adolf Wölfli; Joseph Yoakum; Ray Yoshida. // **Somewhat large, heavy item. Additional shipping fees may be needed for expedited or international orders. Please inquire**