Dubuffet's 'Art Brut' Reconsidered: A Critical Reappraisal

In a 2013 article for artpress, Didier Semin critically reexamines the foundational notions of art brut, the term coined by Jean Dubuffet in 1945. Semin argues that Dubuffet's shifting definitions—from 'obscure' to 'brut'—served to obscure the prior work of psychiatrists like Marcel Réja, Hans Prinzhorn, and Walter Morgenthaler, who had already collected and studied the art of the mentally ill. Dubuffet's 1949 manifesto 'L'art brut préféré aux arts culturels' omitted these pioneers, instead dismissing them as anonymous 'd'aucuns.' Semin contends that Dubuffet's concept relied on a sophism (blurring the line between reason and madness) and a slogan ('no more art of the mad than art of the dyspeptic'), effectively appropriating psychiatric collections. The article details Dubuffet's 1945 Swiss trip with Le Corbusier and Jean Paulhan, where he visited asylums and met doctors Morgenthaler, de Morsier, and Ladame, later thwarting psychiatrist Ferdière's museum project. Semin notes that Dubuffet's label succeeded, but at the cost of erasing earlier contributors and perpetuating a questionable view of madness as merely a product of confinement.