le livre des livres the Book of Books
“Direct your eye inward, and you’ll find a thousand regions in your mind yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be expert in home-cosmography” Henry David Thoreau
Art Brut. The Book of Books invites the reader to turn the pages of more than sixty book works by the mystical geniuses, visionary artists, and “literary madmen” who are the great figures of Outsider Art.
This unprecedented gathering of handmade books, personal sketchbooks, treatises, storybooks, grimoires, and journals, has been brought together expressly for this publication from both public and private collections. Each volume is showcased in separate chapters featuring the cover and a selection of inside pages, with accompanying commentary. They cover the period from the early 20th century to the present, and include works by Horst Ademeit, Alöise, Giovanni Bosco, James Castle, Henry Darger, Charles Dellschau, Malcolm MacKesson, Dan Miller, Michel Nedjar, Jean Perdrizet, Royal Robertson, Charles Steffen, Oskar Voll, August Walla, and Adolf Wölfli, among others.
This rare invitation into these volumes, to follow their inner rhythms, brings us closer to their authors than ever before. So close that the obsessions, passions, and sufferings to which we are made privy reveal their deepest humanity, and thus ours as well.
