The Art of Adolf Wölfli

The Art of Adolf Wölfli PDF Author: Elka Spoerri
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691114989
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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Book Description
Despite being institutionalized for schizophrenia at age thirty-one, Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930) achieved artistic greatness in his cell at Waldau Mental Asylum near his native Bern, Switzerland. He has had a profound influence on modern art ever since; André Breton described his work as "one of the three or four most important oeuvres of the twentieth century." The Art of Adolf Wölfli offers a fresh vantage point on the artist's remarkably intricate drawings and astonishing collages, as well as his newly translated writings, which are justly celebrated for their dizzying blend of mythology and humor. Also included are illuminating essays by leading specialists on his art and life. Wölfli's youth was one of deprivation. His alcoholic father ran off when Wölfli was five, and his mother died soon after. Despite these travails, he managed to complete his education, acquiring the sophisticated literacy so evident in his later work. However, beginning at age twenty-six, his repeated attempts to molest young girls landed him first in jail and, in 1894, in the asylum. Though violent at first, by 1899 he calmed down--and began to draw. Working primarily in pencil on newsprint, Wölfli created a dense, stunningly detailed medley of wildly imaginative prose texts interwoven with poems, musical compositions, color illustrations, and collages. His five-part magnum opus, "St. Adolf-Giant-Creation," comprises 45 large volumes and 16 notebooks--25,000 pages in all--containing 1,620 drawings and 1,640 collages. Sure to be the authoritative resource for this remarkable oeuvre, this striking book represents compelling testimony that great torment does not preclude great art. EXHIBITION SCHEDULE American Folk Art Museum, New York February 25 - May 18, 2003 Milwaukee Art Museum September 18 - December 12, 2004

The Art of Adolf Wölfli

The Art of Adolf Wölfli PDF Author: Elka Spoerri
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691114989
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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Book Description
Despite being institutionalized for schizophrenia at age thirty-one, Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930) achieved artistic greatness in his cell at Waldau Mental Asylum near his native Bern, Switzerland. He has had a profound influence on modern art ever since; André Breton described his work as "one of the three or four most important oeuvres of the twentieth century." The Art of Adolf Wölfli offers a fresh vantage point on the artist's remarkably intricate drawings and astonishing collages, as well as his newly translated writings, which are justly celebrated for their dizzying blend of mythology and humor. Also included are illuminating essays by leading specialists on his art and life. Wölfli's youth was one of deprivation. His alcoholic father ran off when Wölfli was five, and his mother died soon after. Despite these travails, he managed to complete his education, acquiring the sophisticated literacy so evident in his later work. However, beginning at age twenty-six, his repeated attempts to molest young girls landed him first in jail and, in 1894, in the asylum. Though violent at first, by 1899 he calmed down--and began to draw. Working primarily in pencil on newsprint, Wölfli created a dense, stunningly detailed medley of wildly imaginative prose texts interwoven with poems, musical compositions, color illustrations, and collages. His five-part magnum opus, "St. Adolf-Giant-Creation," comprises 45 large volumes and 16 notebooks--25,000 pages in all--containing 1,620 drawings and 1,640 collages. Sure to be the authoritative resource for this remarkable oeuvre, this striking book represents compelling testimony that great torment does not preclude great art. EXHIBITION SCHEDULE American Folk Art Museum, New York February 25 - May 18, 2003 Milwaukee Art Museum September 18 - December 12, 2004

Madness & Art

Madness & Art PDF Author: Walter Morgenthaler
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803231566
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Recently interest has surged in what Jean Dubuffet called Art Brut, “raw art” produced by persons operating outside cultural norms, reflecting inner need rather than any “official” artistic attitude. Of the known practitioners of Art Brut, one of the most gifted was the Swiss peasant Adolf Wölfli. From 1895, when he was thirty-one, until his death in 1930, Wölfli was incarcerated in Waldau hospital, severely afflicted with rage and depression. Supplied with colored pencils and paper by his primary physician, Walter Morgenthaler, he began to draw. Morgenthaler’s pathbreaking study of Wölfli and his art, published in 1921, aimed at the center of contemporary debates about the relationships between creativity, madness, and art. This first English-language edition includes twenty-four color reproductions of Wölfli’s art and Wölfli’s brief account of his own life.

Self-Taught and Outsider Art

Self-Taught and Outsider Art PDF Author: Anthony Petullo
Publisher:
ISBN: 0252072774
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
A collection of self-taught and outsider art with a European representation of artists.

Artistry of the Mentally Ill

Artistry of the Mentally Ill PDF Author: H. Prinzhorn
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662009161
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
No one is more conscious of the faults of this work than the author. Therefore some self -criticism should be woven into this foreward. There are two possible methodologically pure solutions to this book's theme: a de scriptive catalog of the pictures couched in the language of natural science and accom panied by a clinical and psychopathological description of the patients, or a completely metaphysically based investigation of the process of pictorial composition. According to the latter, these unusual works, explained psychologically, and the exceptional circum stances on which they are based would be integrated as a playful variation of human expression into a total picture of the ego under the concept of an inborn creative urge, behind which we would then only have to discover a universal need for expression as an instinctive foundation. In brief, such an investigation would remain in the realm of phenomenologically observed existential forms, completely independent of psychiatry and aesthetics. The compromise between these two pure solutions must necessarily be piecework and must constantly defend itself against the dangers of fragmentation. We are in danger of being satisfied with pure description, the novelistic expansion of details and questions of principle; pitfalls would be very easy to avoid if we had the use of a clearly outlined method. But the problems of a new, or at least never seriously worked, field defy the methodology of every established subject.

Adolf Wolfli

Adolf Wolfli PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Adolf Wölfli

Adolf Wölfli PDF Author: Terezie Zemánková
Publisher: Arbor Vitae Press
ISBN: 9788087164952
Category : Art brut
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Adolf Wölfli is the original outsider artist. Before Darger, Rizzoli and Rodia, there was Wölfli: orphan, laborer, criminal, artist and the subject of a 1921 monograph titled A Psychiatric Patient as Artist, authored by his doctor--the first publication on an outsider artist--which won him the admiration of André Breton and Jean Dubuffet, and gave birth to the outsider phenomenon. "Wölfli's creations treat the eye to a roller-coaster ride through a terrain bounded by Piranesi, biblical myth, illuminated manuscripts, tantric mandalas and Swiss cuckoo clocks," New York Times critic Roberta Smith once wrote--"in other words, a dizzying multi-cultural universe." Adolf Wölfli: Creator of the Universe is the most comprehensive publication on Wölfli ever published. It surveys his entire artistic and literary oeuvre, scrutinizing his intricately detailed drawings and collages and explicating his complex personal mythology. Translated here are texts such as Wölfli's "Short Biography," written shortly after his arrival at the Waldau Clinic in Bern, in 1895; his astoundingly bizarre list of inventions; and other prose works, alongside Wölfli's doctor's 1921 catalogue essay and other critical examinations. Visual and textual selections are included from the epic From the Cradle to the Grave, in which the artist recounts a fictitiously idyllic childhood; the Geographic and Algebraic Books, which describe his elaborate cosmology; and the St. Adolf Giant Creation, a chant in which Wölfli transposes music into abstract sounds and numbers. Orphaned at the age of ten, Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930) was arrested for sexual crimes in his late 20s. Upon his second arrest for such offences, in 1895, he was admitted to the Waldau clinic in his native town of Bern, Switzerland, where he soon began to draw, eventually amassing an oeuvre of thousands of works on paper. After his death, the Adolf Wölfli Foundation was formed to preserve his art.

Groundwaters

Groundwaters PDF Author: Charles Russell
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
ISBN: 9783791344904
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
KEYNOTE:More than 100 years of unschooled artistic genius is gathered in this wide-ranging survey that will delight and inform Outsider Art's rapidly growing audience. Visionary art, art brut, art of the insane, naïve art, vernacular art, "raw vision"--what do all these and many other categories describe? An art made outside the boundaries of official culture, first recognized more than a century ago by German psychiatrists who appreciated the profound artistic expression in the work of institutionalized patients. Promoted by brilliant museum curators like Alfred Barr and artists like Jean Dubuffet, such work became a wellspring of modern and contemporary art. This volume brings together works by twelve of the most influential self-taught artists to emerge during the past century. Each represents a facet of the outsider art phenomenon, from mental patients like Adolf Wölfli and Martín Ramírez, through vernacular masters like Bill Traylor and Thornton Dial, to artists who seem to be in touch with other worlds, such as Madge Gill and Henry Darger. Related artists are featured along with each key figure, allowing a fuller picture to emerge. This book presents a narrative of the history of outsider art, clarifies predominant theoretical issues, and draws comparisons with the modernist tradition. It brings into focus the enormous contributions self-taught artists have made to our understanding of creative genius and presents them in a book that will enthrall anyone interested in Outsider Art. AUTHOR: Charles Russell is Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Rutgers University, Newark. He is a contributing editor to Raw Vision, an international magazine of outsider art, and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Self-Taught and Outsider Art. ILLUSTRATIONS: 180 colour

Adolf Wölfli

Adolf Wölfli PDF Author: Manuel Anceau
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788090516816
Category : Art brut
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description


Outsider Art

Outsider Art PDF Author: Roger Cardinal
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A look at twenty-nine artists who are "outside culture," unencumbered by "all kinds of cultural, social, indeed psychological prejudices."--p. 7.

Adolf Wölfli

Adolf Wölfli PDF Author: Adolf Wölfli
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated, this volume traces the path of Wolfli's art on its long road from the asylum to the museum.