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OAF Talks

Sex and Outsider Art: Basic Instinct and Sexual Representation in the Artworks of Aloïse Corbaz, Henry Darger, Miroslav Tichy and Eugene Von Bruenchenhein

Paris 2015

OAF Talks

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What is the contribution of sexual impulses in the creation of Outsider Art? How do Outsider artists embody these impulses in their paintings, drawings and photographs? Is sex one of the conditions for the emergence of the Outsider Artist? To answer these questions, our panelists, will examine the works of four artists: Henry Darger, Aloïse Corbaz, Miroslav Tichy and Eugene Von Bruenchenhein. This panel will provide an opportunity to analyze the "Vivian Girls" of Darger (1892-1973), these young, naked girls sometimes represented with male genitalia, and a chance to understand the meaning of the pink lotus concealing the sex of the naked body of the great Juliette Récamier of Corbaz (1886-1964). Isn’t the obsession of Tichy (1926-2011) to photograph every day, furtively, the women of Kyjov near the swimming pool or in their intimacy related to the artist's life and sexuality? As for Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983), he only took photographs of one woman, his wife Evelyne Kalke, known as Marie, mostly in erotic poses that placed sexuality at the center of his work.

 

Moderator:
Fabien Simode
Editor-in-chief of the magazine L'Œil

Panelists: 
Magali Croset-Calisto, 
sex therapist, psychologist and author.
Dr. Gerhard Damman,
psychiatrist and psychologist, Outsider Art collector.
Hervé Di Rosa,
artist, pioneer of ‘Figuration Libre’ movement in the 1980s, co-founder of the International Museum of Modest Art (MIAM).
Choghakate Kazarian,
curator at Museum d’Arte Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and its recent exhibition Henry Darger: xxx.

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