Rouge Ciel, un essai sur l'art brut (2009)

Genres - Culture & Society, Visual Arts  |   Sub-Genres - Art History, Graphic & Applied Arts, Sociology  |   Run Time - 93 min.  |   Countries - France  |   MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Mark Deming

Filmmaker Bruno Decharme examines the lives and work of artists who live outside the boundaries of ordinary culture in this documentary. In the late 1940s, artist Jean Dubuffet coined the phrase art brut ("raw art") to describe works created by inmates of mental institutions, whose style and technique bore no resemblance to the accepted methods of the day. Art brut has since given way to the designation "Outsider Art," which includes the work of a broad range of people who create without standard art training or the desire to conform to accepted creative templates. In Rouge Ciel, Decharme profiles several outsider artists and offers a look into their lives and creative processes. His subjects include Fernand Desmoulin, who drew in total darkness and claimed spirits took control of his hands; George Widener, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome but has a remarkable facility with numbers that he believes allows him to predict the future; Zdenek Kosek, who documents what happens outside his window for weeks on end, convinced the world will stop if he isn't paying attention; and Ferdinand Cheval, a French postman who spent more than thirty years building his own ideal palace. Rogue Ciel was an official selection at the 2010 Seattle International Film Festival.

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Keywords

art, outsider