Entre art des fous et art brut. La Collection Sainte-Anne

Dubuffet became famous through his “art brut”, presented as the production by artists who have never been in contact with the academic world. Mental hospitals were a choice reservoir in this quest. He was surely not the first to be interested in it - doctors like the psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn were pioneers long before him. In Paris, the hospital of Sainte-Anne made up a collection early on. It sheds a particular light on it for its 150th anniversary, celebrated this year, 2017. The collection was begun in an irregular manner, since the end of the 19th century. It then went much faster, in 1950, when doctor Robert Volmat (1920-1998), who had done his thesis on the subject, organized a large “psychopathological” art exhibition. Over 2000 works brought from 17 different countries (among them an interesting selection from a Brazilian, avant-garde hospital, Juquéri at São Paulo) were shown in the hospital as well as in the chapel of the Sorbonne. The works are naive or on the contrary technical (some beautiful charcoals by H.A.R. that resemble the work by Daumier), poetic or looking like technical drawings. The great variety of works shows that this art cannot be reduced to a unique category. Certain works correspond to the deep, permanent, psychotic ill being. Other works express the aesthetic tastes of a temporary patient. The catalogue accompanies an exhibition in two parts at Sainte-Anne, the first until 26 November, the second from 30 November 2017 to 28 February 2018, which will be more focused on the surprising retrospective in 1950.

• Entre art des fous et art brut. La Collection Sainte-Anne, by Anne-Marie Dubois, Somogy, 2017, 160 p., €22.