본문 바로가기
  • Home

Minor Art: Deleuze’s Aesthetics and Art Brut

  • The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art
  • Abbr : JASA
  • 2014, 41(), pp.213-238
  • Publisher : 한국미학예술학회
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Other Arts and Kinesiology
  • Published : June 30, 2014

HAN EUI JUNG 1

1강원대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Deleuze and Guattari explain the others in terms of ‘minority’ and distinguish majority and minority. Majority is the criterion of the evaluation with power and domination. On the contrary, minority, outside the criterion of the majority, has the potential ability to become, to change, and to create. Deleuze/Guattari consider Kafka’s literature as minor literature, and formalize its three characteristics: deterritorialization of the language, the political and the collective. This study tries to extend the characteristics of the minor literature to the minor art and to apply to art brut. This approach presents a new aesthetic basis to the earlier studies of art history or psychiatry. Deterritorialization, the political and the collective are the characteristics of the minor literature, as we look at the minor literature in terms of the expression’s medium, socius, subjet of production. As we examine art brut from these three aspects, firstly, we can define Art brut as the art of the minors. Because Art brut defined by Jean Dubuffet is a term indicating the artistic creations of the people in psychiatric hospital, of the medium who can create hallucinations, and of the neglected social groups. Secondly, deterritorialization of the language can be explained by the uniqueness of the expression’s medium. As the creators of Art brut don’t have a sense of artistic purpose nor consciousness of the artistic activity, the process or the methods of description of their work are illogical and informal. In particular, the total art of Adolf Wölfli shows the flow freely escaping from the earlier grammar of art. Thirdly, in terms of the subject of production, Art brut is characterized by the solidarity of minority. Wölfli’s unique art world was not accepted as the activity of one individual. Because of Dr. Morgenthaler who has observed him for 11 years, because of Jean Dubuffet who dressed Wölfli in the clothes of Art brut, the art world of Wölfli has been known to the public. Deleuze considers an authentic art as art escaped from the power of life. It can be called a minor art. Art brut can be functional as art of becoming and of transfiguration. Art brut is the art of the minority, and its expression away from the norm of art existing draw the line of flight. However, the work of the minority, only when it connects to the flow of becoming-minor, is completed as resistance.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.