Appellations are numerous in the world of art brut. “Marginal art”or “hors-les-normes art” range among those which can be used as generic terms. However, the name “hors-les-normes art” remains inseparable from Alain Bourbonnais’s collection. This appellation, which was suggested to him among others by Jean Dubuffet in 1972, refers to art whose norms differ from those of official art. Most often born from a strong urge to create, these works are made by autodidacts for whom creation can be seen as a labour of love or some sort of “re-creation”. These creations blur all artistic categories , dissolve borders as they stand at the junction of folk art, naive art, art brut , outsider art… Hors-les-normes is beyond norms.
Jean Couchat
