The Outsiders
Untrained artists, architects without diplomas, low profile drawers, obsessive sculptors, their imagination has no limits. They upset aesthetic codes, art dealers customary criterias, and upper class references.
They paint on used cardboards, build houses without roofs, carve and sculpt in roots, and offer a delicate and charming offset to the art institution.
This feature, intitled « the Outsiders » visits visionary architects, lingers in psychiatric wards, admires sculptures of untamed sexuality, and celebrates inventive and « exceptional » artwork. The aesthetic shock is genuinely brutal.
These « out of nowhere » artists are wonderfully moving, and rouse interesting questions on norms, culture, the art world, and on eroticism, without gloating about it.
On top of that, the market seems to take interest in this new art form usually consigned in the background. Art galleries dedicated to these « outsiders » see the day. The international fair in New York, and recently in Paris have attracted many collectors.
Artists who have spent their whole lives in utter destitution observe some of their creations sold and bought for considerable amounts of money. Is this at long last acknowledgement a deserved reward, or is it just a market value appropriation ? The art business will not be robbed of its profits. The third state policy is expanding with total disregard to the carefree and reclusive creators.
In the « outsiders » we meet artists who live in trailers not very far away from nuclear power plants, inspired by « the good energy », others reinvent film history with plywood figurines, a museum manager wanders around mental institutions, playing hide and seek with private art galleries. The press saw it coming, from the Huffington Post to the newspaper Le Monde, the journalists, opposed veterans to this marginal art form, are finally coming around to these indigents ex-votos, and this in spite of their rotten teeth.
The ousider art experts, lying in ambush, are also anxious to mark their territory.
In this well researched and a bit weirdo film documentary, the director Philippe Lespinasse takes us for an adventurous and original ballad in a world full of poetry, of culture shocks, of stories concerning the needy, big money, moments of love, as well as utopian anecdotes. One way or another we’re in for a good laugh.
Philippe Lespinasse : Documentary film maker, and contributor to the “Art Brut” (Outsider Art) Collection in Lausanne. Passionate about the world of the sea, he has travelled the globe dealing with a wide range of unusual ethnological or maritime topics. He has directed over twenty short films dedicated to the main figures of folk art, among whom François Burland, Nek Chand, Judith Scott and many others.