Kirjahaku

Outsider art has exploded onto the international art scene, gaining widespread attention for its startling originality and visual power. As an expression of raw creativity, outsider art remains associated with self-taught visionaries, psychiatric patients, trance mediums, eccentric outcasts, and unschooled artistic geniuses who create things outside of mainstream artistic trends and styles. Outsider Art: Visionary Worlds and Trauma provides a comprehensive guide through the contested terrain of outsider art and the related domains of art brut, visionary art, ""art of the insane,"" and folk art. The book examines the history and primary issues of the field as well as explores the intersection between culture and individual creativity that is at the very heart of outsider art definitions and debates.Daniel Wojcik's interdisciplinary study challenges prevailing assumptions about the idiosyncratic status of outsider artists. This wide-ranging investigation of the art and lives of those labeled outsiders focuses on the ways that personal tragedies and suffering have inspired the art-making process. In some cases, trauma has triggered a creative transformation that has helped artists confront otherwise overwhelming life events. Additionally, Wojcik's study illustrates how vernacular traditions, religious worldviews, ethnic heritage, and popular culture have influenced such art. With its detailed consideration of personal motivations, cultural milieu, and the potentially therapeutic aspects of art making, this volume provides a deeper understanding of the artistic impulse and human creativity.

A vibrant collection of artworks by, and interviews with, the Romanian-American visionary artist Ionel Talpazan. In the early 1960s, after a terrible beating by his foster mother outside their home in rural Romania, the young Ionel Talpazan had a life-transforming vision of a beautiful blue light of energy that he later believed to be of extraterrestrial origin. Four years after his experience, at age 12, he attempted to depict his numinous encounter, and began to obsessively draw otherworldly vehicles and celestial energies. In 1987, he escaped from Ceausescu's regime in Romania, swimming the Danube River to Yugoslavia where he was imprisoned and then sent to a refugee camp. He was later granted political asylum in New York City, where he survived by selling his art on the streets and in the flea markets of Manhattan. Over the years, Talpazan experimented with a wide range of materials and techniques, from sculptures and paintings to detailed, diagrammatic representations of flying discs and their propulsion systems, later claiming that his art incorporated the secrets of free energy and intergalactic travel. He produced more than 1000 works during his lifetime and said that his work possessed a scientific as well as artistic value. Despite ongoing adversity and a life of poverty, Talpazan's impulse to create was relentless, ending only with his death in 2015. His work now has achieved international acclaim and is included in important collections and museums throughout the world. Folklorist and art writer Daniel Wojcik has spent many years interviewing Talpazan and documenting his remarkable artistic vision and this book is the culmination of his fascination with this truly otherworldly artist.