Eternity Has no Doors of Escape dir. by Arthur Bornis (review)

"Art has no boundaries" is the cliché with which we are familiar, and the ability to be freely expressive is the principle upon which many liberal democracies base the freedoms espoused. Of course, we also are familiar with the fact that these principles are qualified, no less so in the cosmology of the contemporary arts.

The film and photo archives of Europe have been thoroughly searched by the filmmaker to be able to document, from the early twentieth century, the recognition of the mentally disabled as equally capable of self-expression and the rating of their output alongside the work of other artists. The development of this acceptance is traced through the doctors in Germany who began to collect the drawings, paintings and objects made by their patients, initially as a part of guiding their treatment. One of these, Hans Prinzhorn, published in 1922 a book that became an immediate bestseller, not least among artists and philosophers of the age.

"Unloading hallucinatory overload onto paper" is how one of the many contemporary experts on the art of the outsider describes the practices of many of the individuals. The French artist Dubuffet legitimated these works—the French Surrealists and even the Spiritualists finding common ground. It was a time when breakdown of social cohesion and religion in rural communities moved many to embrace the practices of "mediums," to freely "guide [the] hand" as a recognized form of expression for participants; the "spiritualists" created an accepting context for the work of patients.

The Company of Art Brut formed by Dubuffet and a group of French artists defined a legitimate area of arts practice. From then on, com-modification became mixed with passionate connoisseurship and a series of rivalries and disagreements about ownership while at the same time following various collections from salon to salon—not least to one of the early flagships of contemporary art, Documenta 5, where in 1972 director Harold Szeeman placed "outsider" works alongside the latest celebrity artists' offerings. It was an attempt to broaden borders around practice and create linking dialogues between such dispersed sources, but it was met with mixed reactions—though not, it seems, from the dealers, who were eager, together with the institutionalization of Dubuffet's collection in Lausanne, to see an official market opportunity opening up. Today, happily, there are ateliers for the mentally disabled where work is sold in support of their care. The film provides a good briefing for newcomers to the topic.