First published:Spring 1998
Willem Volkersz: Can you perhaps briefly discuss the invention, if that's the right word, of the term 'Outsider Art,' and has your definition of that term changed over the years? Is the term synonymous with Art Brut.
Roger Cardinal: Well, it all happened when I produced this book. I wanted to call it 'Art Brut', and I had studied the Dubuffet collection, and had a lot of examples from the collection and some that I'd chosen myself, but fitting into the general rubric of Art Brut.
And with that, with Dubuffet as the coiner of that particular concept, and his definitions fairly clearly in mind, I showed the publisher what I wanted to do, and I said, 'Well, you've got Art Nouveau, and you've got Art Deco, now you've got Art Brut and everybody will get on with it.' But the publisher was very worried about this particular title and wanted something more easy to get on with for the English ear and said, 'Well, shouldn't we call it something else?' And we went through hundreds of titles: 'The Art of the Artless', I remember was one of them.
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #22
