When I saw the artwork of Aloïse Corbaz, an outsider artist from Switzerland, at the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art I was entirely unsure what to make of it. At first I thought her paintings looked like elaborate children’s drawings, especially since she used crayon in many of them.
One part that stood out for me in her paintings were the eyes, which reminded me of some form of classical art I can’t place now that has unusually large and round eyes. The sexual themes also stood out prominently, as many of her paintings featured curvy women with exposed breasts.
Apparently Aloïse had schizophrenia, so the art did give me a sense of what the world looked like through her eyes. A close friend remarked that even those intellectuals who were not familiar with “art brut” would experience her artwork as disturbing upon seeing it for the first time.
The idea that people would experience this art as disturbing reminded me of my experiences with anthropology, where individuals sometimes experience other cultures as disturbing. The trick is that after the initial “culture shock” disappears people are left with new ways of seeing, just as with Aloïse’s art.
