New weblog by Jean-Louis Bigou

Authored by Jean-Louis Bigou,  in november 2013 a new weblog has been published, entitled De l'art improbable aux jardins insolites dans l'Aude et les environs. Portraits de personnes qui interviennent dans leur environment, par l'objets ou de sculptures. (From improbable art to unusual gardens in the Aude and surrounding areas. Portraits of people who intervene in their environment by objects or sculptures).

Aude is a department in the south of France with a centuries-old history, in the Languedoc-Roussillon area, best known by its cities Narbonne and Carcassonne.

picture from Jean-Louis Bigou's weblog 

Art improbable

Art improbable is a rather new term. As is best demonstrated by above picture, it has to do with (ensembles of) smaller objects used by people to decorate their place of living.

Not all items in this category will be covered by the description. As Jean-Louis Bigou says: Pour être improbable, la création ou l'installation doit avoir un caractère, tout au plus décoratif mais surtout pas volontairement artistique (To be improbable the creation or installation must have a character, which at best is decorative, but certainly not intentionally artistic).

This can be considered as an interesting approach, which might open a new sub-field in the area of outsider art environments.

a scarecrow, picture from Jean-Louis Bigou's weblog

Art environments

As regards art environments the new weblog since November 2013 already has paid attention to a number of creations in the south of France, such as those by René Escaffre, Robert Mathey and Joseph Donadello, which in France already got internet publicity on a national level.

But then the new weblog also has the story of sites about which in France on a national level the internet only has limited information. A good example is La Maison Fleurie  in Lézignan, created by Antoine Puéo. (On my blog a year ago I had a short message about the proposed demolition of the house).

The same goes for the sculpture garden by Georgette and Hubert Bastouil.

The boundary between art improbable and art environments obviously being fluent, it will be exciting to see what insights and information the new blog will bring us.

New weblog about art environments and irregular art in Tuscia, Italy

Begun in August 2010 with a new website, followed in November 2011 by a book and also manifesting itself by various expositions, the Italian Costruttori di Babele research project is proceeding steadily.

In April 2013 a new weblog, BabeleViterbo, dealing with arte irregolare e percorsi babelici nella Tuscia (irregular art and Babylonian pathways in Tuscia), authored by Mario Ciciolli and Gabriele Mina,  has been released.

With the Casa Museo Pietro Moschini as a center point, the blog will report about irregular art and art environments in Tuscia..

On May 11, 2013 this museum has been officially inaugurated and that weekend there have been a number of other events as well, as shown in the following poster. 

The new weblog already has introductions to Bonaria Manca, Santa Bassaneli, Domenico Brizi, Vinzenzo Lucchesi and, of course, Pietro Moschini.

Renewed SPACES website launched

Its mission being Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments, SPACES is a non-profit organization, founded in 1978 by Seymour Rosen (1935-2006), a US west coast photographer who was one of the first to document and raise interest in creative expressions outside the institutional framework of mainstream art..

Fascinated by the "magical world created from what most other people would consider junk", as Rosen said, he spent some fifty years in documenting and photographing environmental and other creations with a folk character, organizing expositions, writing, campaigning.

He took part in the committee that in the late 1950s successfully opposed the demolition of Simon Rodia's Watts Towers, as proposed by Los Angeles authorities.

Seymour Rosen's legacy of documents and pictures is at the core of the SPACES archive, that in the course of the years considerably has grown in size. Directed by Jo Farb Hernandez, the organisation nowadays can be seen as the leading one in documenting and otherwise supporting the field.

Website renewed

With the recent publication of the renewed version of its website, SPACES demonstrates not just its potential of making information about art environments available to a large public in a contemporary, interactive way, it also -in accordance with Seymour Rosen's view- expresses its commitment to support an international approach.

I wholeheartedly endorse such an international approach, and I am honored I could cooperate in delivering material on art environments in Europe, in favor as I am of approaching these phenomena not just on a national, but also on a European and an international level.

In Europe various initiatives indicate a growing interest in a systematic documentation and study of art environments - for example in Italy the Costruttori di Babele project and the Osservatorio Outsider Art (Palermo University), in Spain the Bric-à-Brac/Revista Sans Soleil (not available anymore, replaced by a publication with almost the same name), in France the Patrimoines Irréguliers de France (currently on Facebook), in Finland the Union for Rural Culture and Education. 

A nice task for the European Outsider Art Association to unite these -and comparable- projects into a European platform?

A new web magazine: Bric-à-Brac

Bric-à-Brac is a new Spanish web magazine that will focus upon the multidisciplinary study of selftaught art, outsider art, art brut, i.e. in general all kinds of creative activity in the margin of Art with a capital A..

This magazine, a subdivision of the spanish web magazine Revista Sans Soleil, Estudios de la imagen, will be edited by Gabriele Garcìa Muñoz, who has a PhD on the thesis Procesos Creativos en Artistas Outsider (Madrid 2010, Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and who authors the weblog El Hombre Jazmin.

The theme of the first edition will be Arquitecturas y entornos outsider. Reyes, inventores, santos y héroes (Outsider architecture and environments. Kings, inventors, saints and heroes). Articles for this edition, which have to meet professional standards, are expected before June 1st, 2012. More information on the various pages of the Bric-à-Brac  website.

This initiative may be welcomed as a sign of ever growing professional and academic interest in the field of outsider art.

(update 2017: the links to the Bric a Brac website are not operational anymore, so they have been removed)

Jean Linard, Comment la cathédrale de Jean Linard a été sauvée / How Jean Linard's Cathedral was saved

pictures (May 2014) courtesy of Raija Kallioinen

 

Unite to save

This article describes the activities that after the death of Jean Linard (1931-2012) took place to preserve his creation for the future. For a description of Linard's life and work, see Wikipedia 

Activities to save Jean Linard's Cathédrale after it's creator had died

End January 2012 in accordance with the Linard family, a group of 43 artists, art critics, curators, art collectors and writers about art has signed a petition, adressed to the French minister of culture, asking to do what is in her power -cooperating with regional and local authorities- to keep the site open for the public, protect and save Linard's creation and promote that the complex becomes a cultural center. 

Of course, France has more art environments that deserve to be saved for the future. One of the three most important sites in France, les Rochers sculptés by Abbé Fouré. even hasn't a protected status, and then you have the sites of Chomo, Gabriel Albert and Bodan Litnianski that need attention, not to mention other less known sites.

However, it could be that Linard's art environment precisely has the connotation and circumstances that may lead to actions by public officials, which not only are relevant for this site, but also for other ones.

Maybe this is the moment. So, that's why this post is subtitled "unite to save".

Activities in 2012 and following years

Mid-march 2012 the minister of culture has reacted by paying a visit to the site and expressing a positive attitude towards measures promoting the survival of the site.

At first a committee was formed, with members of the Linard family and representatives of local and regional public bodies. A poster summarized the activities foreseen for the summer of 2012. In July and August the site would be open for visits by the public, there would  be shows, live concerts and meetings with artists.

And there would be lectures and bookshops about art environments in France in general.

The association "Autour de la cathédrale Jean Linard" 

In the course of 2012 the association Autour de la cathédrale Jean Linard was established to organize activities related to the maintenance of the site (done by volunteers), the reception of visitors, the publicity, the organization of various discussions, meetings and events and -last but not least- the preparation of a plan for the future of the site.

In the same year 2012, on July 16, the site was officially declared to be a Monument Historique

In 2013 the site was open during the summer, which was continued in the following years. 

In 2019, 8,000 visitors visited Linard's art environment. 

All those years regular maintenance was carried out by volunteers and all kinds of meetings took place.

2019: a plan for the future management of the site

A plan was also developed for the future management of the site via what in France is called a SCIC (Société coopérative d’intérêt collectif), the formation of a cooperative of involved people who purchase shares to raise the capital to buy the site.

In November 2019 the association discussed this plan with the heirs, also asking for a period of three years to realise their plan to form a cooperative. The association had three proposals to continue the management of the site: a free rental, a lease-sale, an emphyteutic lease (a type of real estate contract used in France that includes that the lessee must improve the property).

However, the heirs in majority did not accept the plan. This meant that in summer 2020 the site didn't reopen.

2020: The site reported as unsafe for visitors

In October 2020 the regional newspaper Le Berry reported that in the course of 2020 an official safety committee had visited the site and had concluded that the safety conditions for welcoming the public were not met and that the site presented a danger. 

The heirs then turned to the local, departmental and regional authorities with an urgent appeal to make the site public property and to arrange the exploration as it exists for Maison Picassiette or Cheval's Palais Idéal. It is not clear if and how the authorities reacted.

November 2021 The association has been dissolved

In November 2021, the association reported that it had decided to dissolve the organization for lack of any prospects.

July 2022: new owners

At the beginning of July 2022, the regional press reported that the Cathédrale had been bought by Charlotte Coller and William Rouger. Charlotte is from Achères, a community very close to the site. Charlotte and William worked in Paris as pastry chefs, jobs they have now left behind to bring the cathedral back to life.

The couple had work carried out to ensure the safety of visitors to the site, hoping to be able to receive the public again. And indeed, the site officially reopened on July 14, 2022 (national holiday Quatorze Juillet).

In 2024 the site was open for visitors from March 30. There is a new website available, with info about opening hours etc.

Links

* A link to Facebook (february 2012), with the background (in English) of the campaign to save the site 

* A new website "La cathédrale de Jean Linard" (launched May 2012)
* Video (published September 2014) by the direction de l'inventaire du patrimoine de la region Centre (Heritage board of the Centre region), with views from the air of the site
* Article (December 2018) in regional journal le Berry Républicain about the plan to form a cooperation
* Article (December 2019) in regional journal le Berry Républicain about the rejection of the plan by the heirs

* Article (October 2020) in regional journal le Berry Républicain about the appeal of the heirs to the authorities

* Article (July 2022) on website France Bleu Berry about the sale to the new owners

first published January 2012, last revised April 2024

Jean Linard
la Cathédrale
18250 Neuvy-deux-clochers, dept Cher, region Centre-Val de Loire, France

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!

A new website: Costruttori di Babele / Builders of Babel

picture as shown in the header of the website

Authored by cultural anthropologist Gabriele Mina Costruttori di Babele (Builders of Babel) is a new Italian website about Italian visionary architecture made by self-taught artists.

Mina's aim is to inventorize and document these visionary constructions (in my terms: outsider environments) in an archive that is available on the internet, in this way providing the public with objective information,  illustrative images and bibliographic references.

He explains that the website "is dedicated to Italian visionary architecture, made by little known self-taught artists who - often in isolation - have devoted decades of their lives to building a complete work, a personal microcosm in the open air. An anarchist positioning, always balancing between accumulation and collapse, made of stone, concrete, wood, recycled materials, populated by appearances, faces and symbols"

The editor of the new website hopes that it will become a collective project like the tower of Babel was (and that it will hopefully not fall down, like Babel did).
  
Constructors who have been documented so far are Mario Andreoli, Umberto Bonini and Marcello Cammi. In prospect are Filippo Bentivegna, Giovanni Cammarata, Guerino Galzerano, Ezechiele Leandro and Angelo Stagnaro

The website is in Italian. In the end of 2010 a French version might become available.

I admire and welcome very much this initiative to inventorize and document Italian outsider environments, and will in my turn see how I can contribute to help disseminate information about these constructions and their creators.