After a long winter and a terribly longer and troubled spring spent in isolation, this summer many among us have taken the chance to spend time outdoor, to reconnect with nature and other people (with all necessary precautions) and to keep away from all big and small screens which – despite being precious allies against gloom and boredom during the lockdown – we grew weary of: it feels a lot better to see the world through our own eyes and walk through it with our own feet!

For those who didn’t have the chance to spend some time off at the seaside or in the mountains or those who, despite being on holidays, would like to find out more about Outsider Art related themes – not just virtually – Casa Museo Pietro Ghizzardi put together a list of resources dedicated to irregular art – not only Ghizzardi’s, of course – that you can go through in order to find out more about this world and its protagonists, online or at the bookshop!

To read

There are quite a lot of online magazines and blogs devoted to Outsider Art. Here we’re going to list a small yet remarkable selection of the most interesting, up to date and well structured ones: by surfing these online pages a whole new world of artistic expereinces and figures will literally unfold before your eyes.

• Raw Vision: is a British magazine devoted to outsider art and edited by John Maizels. It features content about the subject worldwide and it is considered the “outsider art’s Rolling Stone”. On its website you may find plenty of irregular art related articles written by major scholars and specialists.
• Outsider Art Now: the Outsider Art blog curated by Gloria Marchini, available both in Italian and English. The blog allignes various sections which provide an in-depth exploration of the many spontaneous art forms that can be framed as “irregular” and their diverse declinations.
• Rivista Osservatorio Outsider Art di Palermo: the first and only made in Italy Outsider Art-centered scientific journal, directed by Eva Di Stefano and edited by Palermo-based Glifo Edizioni. All issues are downloadable in .pdf on O.O.A.’s website and you can find a feature about Pietro Ghizzardi on n.11/2016.
• Sulle tracce dell’arte irregolare (On the trail of Irregular Art): the itinerant reportage written by Sara Boggio in 2015 on Artribune magazine and on its online version dedicated to Irregular Art in Italy and across Europe. A detailed study of the promotion of irregular art heritage in Italy as well as of the cultural and istitutional resistances which still hinder Outsider Art full recognition in the Country.
• Notes d’Art Brut: Lucienne Peiry’s blog provides sharp and competent insights on European and International Outsider Art and artists. No wonder, being Mrs Peiry one of the major Art Brut scholar and curator in Europe!
• Mi richordo anchora (I remembre still): it is Pietro Ghizzardi’s autobiography, edited in 1977 by Einaudi Editore and reprinted by Quodlibet nel 2016. Obviously the novel is not about irregular art yet it offers a first-hand testiomony of one of its most important Italian representatives. The book is flamboyant, redundant, visionary: it’s not easy reading yet it is well worth trying in order to give a closer look to an out of the ordinary artist!
• L’Art Brut. Le guide: a volume curated by Céline Delevaux and edited by Flammarion which traces back the history of this “against the current art current”!
• The bibliography on Pietro Ghizzardi’s official website could give you many interesting cues…

To watch

Here you can find a selection of video resources (documentaries, video contents, films…) to get to know better outsider art stories and protagonists.

• on Pietro Ghizzardi’s official website the videography section hosts the complete filmography on and about Pietro Ghizzardi: some contents are available online, just follow the highlihted links!
• Casa Museo Pietro Ghizzardi’s Youtube channel playlist: short videos and fragments about Pietro Ghizzardi and his art.
• Thanks to the below mentioned #SurvivalKit by OAN we discovered – and want to share with you now! – the video resources available on the websites of Galerie Christian Berst in Paris, collection abcd by Bruno Decharme (France) and the web serie “Costruttori di Babele”.
• On RaiPlay the documentary Douanier Rousseau. Un pittore nella giungla (Douanier Rousseau. A painter in the jungle).

To listen

Audio docs, podcasts and exclusive audio contents: some tips to listen with your own ears the many incredible stories which make up the outsider art universe.

• Les origines de l’Art Brut: a brief audio doc in French that unfolds the Art Brut history from Dubuffet until today.
• the American podcast TalkArt by actor Russel Tovey and galersit and self-taught artist Robert Diament devoted to Contemporary Art and with special attention on outsider art.
• the episode of “Archivio/Protagonisti” on Pietro Ghizzardi curated by Vittorio Ferorelli on RadioEmiliaRomagna.
• this episode of “Psicoradio” by Radio Popolare recorded in January 2020: psychiastrist, psychologist and art curator Giorgio Bedoni, from the Festival dell’Outsider Art in Verona, explains what we talk about when we talk about irregularaArt.
• Hyperallergic weekly podcast on contemporary art themes.

Our brief selection of irregular contents ends here: in a few days we will be back again with a few travelling tips on babelic itineraries across Europe, for those who haven’t been on holiday yet or those who are already planning the next getaway!

*Discalaimer: to draft these lists we widely relied on Outsider Art Now’s #SurvivalKit, a collection of audio and video contents put together by Gloria Marchini last spring, during the Italian lockdown (many thanks Gloria!).