Collecting as Obsession

In this interview the Paris-based film maker and art brut collector, Bruno Decharme, talks about his passion for collecting works of art. He speaks poetically of his fascination for the works of psychotic patients and of his attempts as a director to capture the essence of outsider artists in his documentaries. He compares his collection to a creation that tries to provide answers but instead raises new questions.

Collecting – An Addiction
Not without irony, the author relates the story of the origin and development of what, in the course of about 45 years of collecting, would become probably the world's largest collection of Art Brut, Naive and Outsider Art. Charlotte Zander started collecting as a young adult when for the first time she began to earn some money. The objects of her collecting passion were so-called votive pictures and gifts. After her marriage her interest shifted to avant-garde art and still…
The Mastering of the Drive in African Art and its Collecting: An Interview with Julien Quackelbeen, March, 2006
This interview explores the origins of the African art collection of the psychoanalyst Julien Quackelbeen. A small Ikoko mask of the Pende tribe was the first object in his collection. This was given to him when he was just five years old and was then stolen. In this way it was to become the mythical first object of the collection he has been cultivating for more than seventy years. His fascination for Congolese art lies in what he calls "the…
Arnulf Rainer and Outsider Art
The Austrian artist Arnulf Rainer has been collecting outsider art for half a century already. In the Vienna of the 1950s he himself was regarded as a mad outsider. In 1994 Rainer worked with psychotic artists at the mental hospital in Gugging. His interest is not so much in the visual aspect of outsider art, but rather in the way madness moves the hand across the page.

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