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Psychopathological Expression


   The collection of the Museum of Outsider Art comprises a lot of examples of psychopathological expression. These works can not be referred to Outsider Art nevertheless, they have their attractiveness in art. These are the works of the people with the unstable nervous organization, who formally graduated from some art schools and amateur authors. In Russia the attempts to analyze similar material were done by the psychiatrists only to investigate different clinical variants of mental illness. Nobody spoke about any artistic value of such work and nobody even thought of making a collection. Psychopathological expression was examined neither from the point of view of sociology nor from the point of view of the history of arts.

   However, active exhibition activity of the Humanitarian Center (now the Museum of Outsider Art) at the end of 1980-s - beginning of 1990-s showed that the audience is interested in the activity of socially inadequate authors. Many specialists now regard psychopathological expression as autonomous object worth to be investigated. The notion of a "norm" is still dubious and the problem of vision "from another side" is still interesting for the wide audience.

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