D' Étonnants jardins en Nord-Pas De Calais / Amazing gardens in Nord-Pas de Calais

The Service du Patrimoine culturel de la région Nord-Pas de Calais (Department of cultural heritage Nord-Pas de Calais) in November 2015 has published a book which presents the results of a research project designed to identify and describe art environments in the area.

For a long time this area has been dominated by the mining industry and some fifteen of the twenty creators of art environments presented in the book, were employed by a mining company.

Among the creators of art environments portrayed in the book are those who are already known in the field, such as Charles Pecqueur (1908-1991) from Ruitz, who inter alia decorated a wall in his backyard with the story of Snow White, a site currently still extant, but in decay, the frescoes gradually fading away.

In addition to the presentation in the inventory section of the book, the introductory section has a separate essay about habitants-paysagistes and about Pecqueur written by Bernard Lassus, author of Jardins imaginaires Les habitants-paysagistes (1977).

picture (2013) courtesy of Rita and Pieter van den Boogaart

Also somewhat known is René Pecqueur (1933-2003) who lived in Louches and who embellished the outdoor space of his house with tree-like structures with brightly colored scenes, a site that was demolished after he died,

This self-taught artist also has a separate essay in the introductory part of the book, contributed by Michel Cabal.

picture courtesy of Marguerite Tartart

The sculpture garden of Léon Evangelaire (b 1925) from Pont-à-Vendin, which is portrayed on the cover of the book, is also known in the field of art environments. It is kind of a small zoo featuring Tarzan and Jane. 

 

picture courtesy of Thierry Bariolle

Another well known site presented in this book is the one by Rémy Callot (1926-2001), who created mosaics on the inside of the fences surrounding his home in Carvin, creations that were discovered only when his house for traffic reasons had to be demolished in 2006, which however partly was stopped in time.

In the introductory section of the book, the story of the discovery is related by Tiphaine Kempka.

picture courtesy of Sophie Lepetit

Two more art environments are presented in this book which are familiar to those interested in the field. First the castlelike house realized in Berck-sur-Mer by Joseph Meyer (1914-?), currently still existing.

picture courtesy of Rita and Pieter van den Boogaart

And finally, the Ferme aux avions by Arthur Vanabelle (1922-2014), a site much discussed recently, which after the death of its creator was sold to a private party, whereby it remains to be seen what happens with the various decorative constructions.

picture courtesy A van der Weerd

But then, the inventory section of the book has some twelve art environments made by people whose names are rather unknown in today's field of art environments, some because they wish to remain anonymous, while others might have been mentioned in old publications but are passed by in today's digital forms of publicity.

Sites already reviewed in this weblog when this article was fist published (2015)  are: Jean Cathelain (1932-2011) with his -currently no more existing- small sculpture garden in Billy-Montigny, Philippe Hermez (b. 1964) with his monde fantastique in Meurchin and Jean Poteau (1947-2010) with his -now demolished- havre du pêcheur in Rouvroy. 

Sites added to this blog in later years are: Alain Lefranc (1951-2022) who decorated his garden, which became overgrown after he died, Alfred Flament (born 1947) who decorated his currently stll existing house and garden, Concetta and Michele Sassano (both born in the mid 1930s) who during some fifty years decorated their house and garden, a site that currently doesn't exist anymore and Henri Lhotellery (born 1931) whose in 2023 still existing garden has a mixture of technical and artistic creations.

In addition to the above already mentioned essays in the first part of the book, the introductory section also has contributions that deal with general aspects of art environments, such as the general review of art environments in France by Savine Faupin and Christophe Boulanger (Lille Art Museum), an article by Laure Chavanne about the preservation of Fernand Chatelain's  and Jean Linard's art environments, a description of the design of the research project by Nathalie van Bost and an analysis of the function of the garden in the collective housing projects (cités minières) in the mining area by Marie Patou and Nicolas Selvan.

This is an interesting and informative publication. For all I know it is the first time that a number of art environments is presented in the context of the social and cultural characteristics of a particular region. And, especially now that the mining area in northern France in 2012 was added to UNESCO's world heritage list, it is an excellent initiative to highlight the cultural contribution made by self-taught artists, and capture in pictures and texts their vulnerable creations that seldom can withstand the test of time

Le Service du Patrimoine Culturel de la région Nord-Pas de Calais, D'Étonnants Jardins en Nord-Pas de Calais. Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel (Images du Patrimoine, 293). Lyon (Ed. Lieux-Dits), 2015. ill. -144 p

first published December 2015, updated September 2023

A new book about Spanish art environments

Jo Farb Hernández' new book about art environments in Spain is ready ! It will be available for the public in december 2013.

Published by Raw Vision, Singular Spaces. From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments has 595 pages and 1306 color photo's to document, describe and analyze over forty art environments in Spain, most of these having been created by self-taught artists.

Director of the US association that aims to save and preserve singular sites, SPACES,  and of the Thompson Art Gallery in San José, California, USA, Jo Farb Hernández with her new book has provided the field with both scholarly analyses and a wealth of documentary material, which -apart from text and pictures in the book- is available on a CD with site plans and over 4000 pictures.

A complete review of the various sites which are discussed in this book in the relevant entry in my page Annotated Bibliography

Exhibition

In conjunction with the publication of the book, during october 2013 the Thompson Art Gallery has an exhibition that features with photographs, documentation and selected artifacts spanish art environments.

Among the artists presented at the San José exhibition, are Joseph Pujiula (Labyrint environment, Argelaguer) and Francisco Gonzàlez Grajera (Capricho de Catrino)

(Most well known internet booksellers already accept orders) 

A photobook about Pietro Moschini by Pavel Konecny

This month (may 2013) edited and published by Pavel Konecny a photo-booklet has appeared about Pietro Moschini,  

Konecny, a collector of outsider art from the Czech Republic, by chance came along pictures of Moschini's work, published on the internet by tourists, who had visited the self-taught artist in his home in Tuscania. It was a discovery with a major impact, resulting in the opening of Moschini's house as a Casa-Museo, thus doing justice to an hitherto unknown artist. 

In the introduction to his book (in Czech, Italian and English), Konecny not only relates this story, he also has a biographical sketch of the artist and a first artistic appreciation of his work, recommending there is every reason for an art historian to delve into Moschini's life and work and produce a comprehensive study.  

However, almost seventy of the hundred pages of the book, have photographs by Konecny of Moschini's sculptures, both pictures of the various locations were Moschini has resided (houses in and outside Tuscania) and pictures of free standing sculptures in wood, porous concrete, stone, cork and gypsum.

These pictures give a wonderful impression of Moschini's creative talent..

The photo-book (16x23 cm) is self-published and since it has a limited edition.

Gilles Ehrmann, Les inspirés et leurs demeures / The inspired and their abodes Exposition Brest 2013

screenprint of the webpage of the Artothèque

France's westernmost city Brest, in the spring of 2013 had a manifestation entitled l'Art Brut à l'Ouest (Art Brut in the West).

Besides various lectures, film screenings and theater performances, there were expositions featuring the creative work of Abbé Fouré and Pierre Jaïn (in Breton: Per Jaïn).

And there also was an exposition entitled Gilles Ehrmann, Les inspirés et leur demeures, 1962-1982. 

The art library of the Musée des beaux arts presented photographs by French photographer Gilles Ehrmann, from the collection of FRAC Bretagne (Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain Bretagne), showing pictures he made of art brut artists and art environments.

This is a good opportunity to pay attention in this blog to the photographer, whose photo book, published in 1962, marked French developments in the 1950s with regard to art brut artists and art environments.

Gilles Ehrmann

Born in Metz, Gilles Ehrmann (1928-2005), after WWII studied decorative arts in Paris, started a theater group and ventured making a movie, to subsequently turn to photography, making portraits of Picasso and other French artists with a big high-quality camera.

Through his relationship with artistic circles, including the surrealists,  he may have been put on the track of people who were or had been active in making art brut creations, a topic of interest that in the 1950s in France only just began to develop.

In any case in 1956 Ehrmann decided to travel the country to portray these people and/or their creations, like the Palais Idéal of facteur Cheval, the Rochers Sculptés by Abbé Fouré or the Maison Picassiette by Raymond Isidore.

This adventure resulted in the book published in 1962 entitled Les inspirés et leurs demeures (The inspired and their abodes), with portraits of Gaston Chaissac, Fréderic Séron, Hyppolite Massé and Joseph Marmin and images of the Palais Idéal, the Rochers Sculptés and the Bomarzo gardens in Italy.

Although fellow photographers such as Robert Doisneau in the 1950s also made pictures of art brut artists and their constructions (naming them bâtisseurs chimériques, fanciful builders), Ehrmann's 1962 publication, with an introduction by André Breton, can be seen as the first coherent presentation in book form that introduced the general public in France to a phenomenon that before that time was rather unknown.

The book has become a collectors item, occasionally available antiquarian.

In 1958 Ehrmann became connected to the French illustrated monthly Réalités, a magazine that -like other magazines- in the 1950s and 1960s, was important in informing the general public about social and cultural developments before this role partially was taken up by television.

Documentation/pictures
* Article in Wikipedia 
* Website of the Centre Pompidou documenting Ehrmann's work, with titles and pictures

first published April 2013, revised August 2017

Les inspirés et leurs demeures
Artothèque du Musée des Beaux Arts
24 rue Traverse
Brest, France

Costruttori di Babele, a new book about Italian art environments

In November 2011 a new book about Italian art environments was published:  
Gabriele Mina (red). Costruttori di Babele, Sulle tracce di architecture fantastische universi irregulari in Italia, Milano (Elèuthera).  In English: Constructors of Babel:  On the trace of the architecture of fantastic irregular universes in Italy.

It is probably the first Italian book about this subject.

The publication has contributions by Cristina Calicelli, Luisa Del Giudice, Eva di Stefano, Bruno Montpied, Daniela Rosi, Bianca Tosatti and Roberta Trapani. 

On December 3, 2011 it has been presented in Galeria  Rizomi, a gallery in Torino (Turin)  which around that time had an exposition entitled Liguria Brut, featuring Mario Andreoli, Marcello Cammi, Davide Mansuitto Raggio and Vittorio Rullo (25-11-2011/15-1-2012)

A new book about art environments in France: Bruno Montpied, Éloge des jardins anarchiques / In praise of anarchic gardens

cover of the book

Early april 2011 a new book about art environments in France was presented:

Bruno Montpied, Éloge des jardins anarchiques.Montreuil-sur-Bois (Ed l'Insomniaque), 2011, -224 p, 17x24 xm, 250 ill, DVD 

Although this book was presented in conjunction with the premiere of the film Bricoleurs de paradis. Le Gazouillis des Èlèphants (2011, 52"), it doesn't parallel it. 

The book is a production on its own, with a series of monographs dealing in depth with some thirty art environments in France, including the ones shown in the movie, and it has a lot of documentary material about many more sites.

   

Bruno Montpied is known for his effort to give very precise descriptions of the creations, so this is a rather welcome contribution to the knowledge of the subject. 

The author has decided to focus upon what he calls spontaneous environments, broadly speaking the category which in France is referred to as works of les inspirés du bord des routes or habitants paysagistes. So it´s about artistic creations made by folk artists, farmers, artisans, laborers, in general ordinary people, active in and/or around their house. just like many of the art environments presented in this blog.

Of course, in France some well known sites like Cheval’s Palais Ideal, Picassiette’s house with mosaics and the sculpted rocks of Abbé Fouré are widely recognized and written about in various publications. But  Montpied’s merit is that his book also deals with sites that are relatively unknown to the general public or which up to now got little publicity.

The book comes with a DVD, which has the Bricoleurs movie, and in bonus an interview (2010) with Savine Faupin, who is head of the art brut department of the LaM museum in Lille. 

More bonuses on the DVD: the super 8 movies Montpied many years ago has made of the sites of Marcel Landreau (site has disappeared)  and Raymond Guitet (site in decay).

New website and new book about outsider art in Finland

This is the logo of a new website about contemporary finnish folk art. ITE is the abbreviation of itse tehty elämä, which means self-made life. As it is said on the site: "ITE is art which is dependent on its maker’s environment and experience; it is a way to live a good life that emphasizes aesthetic values".

The website is in english, which gives a broad international audience acces to information about the -in my opinion- very interesting and fascinating world of finish outsider art. This is particularly important because so far just a few resources in english are available on this subject.

In april 2011 a book about ITE art in english, the first in its kind in Finland, was published:

Seppo Knuuttila (Red), ITE art in Finland. Helsinki, 2011. -120p. ISBN 978-952-5870-40-4.

In 2004 Raw Visison  already had a number of articles about Finnish ITE art in its issue nr 46.

The website has information about expositions, conferences and other actual activities, and there is a section about life and work of individual Finnish artists. I understand the current version is just the beginning, the site will further develop.

This project is supported by the Union for rural culture and education and  the Kokkola ITE Contemporary Folk Art Museum (and, although it is not explicitly stated who are authoring the site- I am quite sure that Minna Haveri and Raija Kallioinen are rather active in editing it).

Must visit, must read!

Armand Schulthess, A book by Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf

In my post of December 14, 2008 about Armand Schulthess I already referred to Swiss photographer and filmmaker Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf.

Now I am happy to announce that Schlumpf has composed a book about Schulthess' oeuvre:

Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf, Armand Schulthess. Rekonstruktion eines Universums (Reconstruction of a universe), Zürich (Ed Patrick Frey), 2011. -400 p, 460 b/w and colored pictures, 20x27 cm, ISBN 978-3-905509-93-9

Between 1963 and 1973 the author regularly paid visits to Schulthess and he took the opportunity to make a  lot of pictures. He also was present when after Schulthess died, the heirs completely cleared the house and the garden and destructed almost everything Schulthess had written down, both on the panels in the garden and in the some seventy books he himself had composed.

 picture from the website of 

Patrick Frey, editor, Zürich

Schulthess' single-handed written (in typescript) and illustrated books dealt with sexuality, and could be seen as worthwhile artistic editions. Except the few Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf succeeded in saving, they have been destructed.

The 2011 publication has an introduction and gives in some 460 pictures an impression of the garden, the interior of the house and Schulthess' books, as far as they have been saved. 

The book had its vernissage on May 16, 2011 in Zürich, Switzerland.

Minna Haveri, Nykykansantaide / Modern folk art

picture from Maahenki website

The picture shows the cover of a book on Finnish art environments, that just has been published. Entitled Nykykansantaide it is the doctoral dissertation (in Finnish) of Minna Haveri, to be defended today, May 7, 2010.

Minna Haveri, a teacher of visual arts from Helsinki, is very interested in contemporary Finnish folk art and art environments and she has been following, documenting and analyzing developments in this field for a number of years.

sculpture of Finnish president Tarja Halonen
by Edvin Hevonkoski

In her study Minna Haveri tries to disclose the features and characteristics of contemporary folk art expression in Finland. She notices that contemporary folk art has abandoned the collective nature and traditionalism of traditional folk art. This has been replaced by individualistic artistry and original creativity. Contemporary folk art is rustic visual art, based on skill and creativity.

sculpture by Alpo Koivumäki 

(lotus and Egyptian lady)

The study is based upon interviews with some twenty-five Finnish folk artists, whose works have been analysed. Their creations have been described and documented with an abundance of visual material.

This book might be a landmark in the study of contemporary folk art/outsider art and art environments in Europe.

Minna Haveri, Nykykansantaide.
Helsinki (Maahenki), 2010, -272 p, ill.,
ISBN 978-952-5870-14-5

Clovis and Claude Prévost, Exposition multimédiale / Multimedia exhibition

The poster above announces an exhibition that from april 10 until july 10, 2010 could be visited in the French city of Melun, south-east of Paris.

I gladly refer to this expo because it gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to Clovis and Claude L. Prévost's documentary work with regard to art environments by non-professionals

Clovis Prévost (Paris, 1940) after his study of architecture at the École des beaux arts in Paris turned to film and photography. Together with his wife, Claude L. Prévost (who often provided the texts) for many years he has been active in documenting through film, video, photography and text a large number of -mainly French- art environments and their creators.

By these media and by panels the exhibition in Melun presented the creations of monsieur G, Robert Garcet, Raymond Isidore, Marcel Landreau, Irial Vets, Camille Vidal, Fernand Châtelain, Abbé Fouré, Facteur Cheval, paying a special tribute to Chomo.

During the exhibition the following films could be seen:

1. Monsieur G., dans le sanctuaire des lasers (Monsieur G, in the sanctuary of lasers), 1976, 26.37';
2. Chomo, le fou en bout de la flèche (the madman at the end of the arrow), 1978, 28";
3. La legende du silex de Robert Garcet (the legend of the flints of Robert Garcet), 1993, 41.40';
(In 1979 they made another film about Garcet, Eben-Ezer, la tour de l'Apocalypse, 27.50',)
4. Le facteur Cheval, où le songe devient la réalité (the dream becomes reality), 2001, 26.37';
5. Chomo, le débarquement spirituel - images de lumière (the spiritual landing - images of light), 30" (this is a compilation of 15 hours of film, shot between 1987 and 1990, by Chomo with the assistance of Clovis Prévost).

This is a selection of Prévost's filmography, but it gives an idea of the couple's field of work ¹.

Entitled Bâtisseurs de l'imaginaire (Builders of the imaginary) the couple put together a multimedia exposition featuring creators of art environments, which from 1975 on for over twenty years traveled through France and other European countries. With the same title between 1976 en 1981 a series of seven films about art environments was broadcasted on television. 

Clovis and Claude Prévost also made a number of books with photographs of art environments by non-professionals. In 1978 they published Raymond Isidore, dit Picassiette, de Chartres, Ed du Chène, -75 p.

One of the best known publications is (once more) entitled Les bâtisseurs de l'imaginaire, Ed de l'Est, 1990, -275 p.

A new, enlarged edition with 420 pages and 595 photos was published in 2016 by Ed Klincksieck. The video has an interview with Clovis and Claude Prevost during the presentation of the new edition at the Halle Saint Pierre in Paris.

The exhibition in Melun not only highlighted the creative activity of a number of outsider artists, it also was a tribute to the creative effort of the Prévost's to document these creations.

Documentation
* Information sheet about the exposition

note
¹  A biography, bibliography and filmography of Clovis and Claude L. Prévost was published in 2016 by Halle Saint Pierre, Paris.

Les bâtisseurs de l'imaginaire
Espace de Saint-Jean
26 place Saint-Jean
77000 Melun France