Art Brut XXL

The Collection de l’Art Brut will be closed until September 17th (2019) for construction work entailing, above all, the installation of an elevator. Given this time frame, we take pleasure in inviting you to a show extending from June 28th to September 22nd in the gardens of the Château de Beaulieu in Lausanne and featuring large-scale photographs of Outsider Art “environments” from around the world. These represent architectural feats or installations set up, for the most part, on private plots or gardens belonging to self-taught builders. Some of the latter have, however, taken over such sites covertly: to such creators, the very act of creating is part and parcel of their entire life.

The photographs to be presented hail from various sources. Some, now belonging to our museum archives, come from a group of slides donated to the museum by the photographers Cynthia Carlson, Francis David and Beryl Sokoloff. Others (Scott Miller, Willem Volkersz, Robert Foster) hail from the SPACES (Saving and Preserving Art and Cultural Environments) association — a non-profit organization born in Los Angeles in 1978, and spearheaded, at the time, by the renowned and militant community founder Seymour Rosen, who passed away in 2006. SPACES was the first institution devoted to documenting and conserving Outsider Art environments, initially in the United States and, later, worldwide. The selection on display will also include several photos by resp. Hervé Couton, Mario Del Curto and Philippe Lespinasse. We are most grateful to them for their support of this project, as we are to Jo Farb Hernández (currently heading SPACES) and to the Vevey Images festival.