Product Description

Despite being institutionalized for schizophrenia at age thirty-one, Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930) achieved artistic greatness in his cell at Waldau Mental Asylum near his native Bern, Switzerland. He has had a profound influence on modern art ever since; André Breton described his work as "one of the three or four most important oeuvres of the twentieth century." The Art of Adolf Wölfli offers a fresh vantage point on the artist's remarkably intricate drawings and astonishing collages, as well as his newly translated writings, which are justly celebrated for their dizzying blend of mythology and humor. Also included are illuminating essays by leading specialists on his art and life.

Wölfli's youth was one of deprivation. His alcoholic father ran off when Wölfli was five, and his mother died soon after. Despite these travails, he managed to complete his education, acquiring the sophisticated literacy so evident in his later work. However, beginning at age twenty-six, his repeated attempts to molest young girls landed him first in jail and, in 1894, in the asylum. Though violent at first, by 1899 he calmed down--and began to draw.

Working primarily in pencil on newsprint, Wölfli created a dense, stunningly detailed medley of wildly imaginative prose texts interwoven with poems, musical compositions, color illustrations, and collages. His five-part magnum opus, "St. Adolf-Giant-Creation," comprises 45 large volumes and 16 notebooks--25,000 pages in all--containing 1,620 drawings and 1,640 collages.

Sure to be the authoritative resource for this remarkable oeuvre, this striking book represents compelling testimony that great torment does not preclude great art.

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

American Folk Art Museum, New York February 25 - May 18, 2003

Milwaukee Art Museum September 18 - December 12, 2004

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #277662 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 112 pages

Amazon.com Review
In his day (1864-1930) and after, the Swiss mental patient and self-taught artist Adolf Wolfli inspired some heavy-hitter patrons: Andre Breton, Jean Dubuffet, Meret Oppenheim, Jonathan Borovsky. But most esthetes encountering him today will do so with the later, now more-famous outsider artist Henry Darger in mind. Like Darger, Wolfli sought to tame his pedophilic madness by organizing it into an incredibly elaborate art exploring what Darger called "the realms of the unreal," where a mind incapable of coping with the real world could construct and rigidly control a world of infinite beauty and sights denied all ordinary mortals.

Wolfli was technically superior to Darger, though his collages clipped from magazines (often the Illustrated London News) were not so central to his imagination as the clip-and-trace fantasy battles of little girls that obsessed Darger. In fact, Wolfli was strikingly diverse in his imagery, echoing by turns San Francisco psychedelia, Northwest Coast native-American art, folk art from all over the planet, Bauhaus or Constructivist typographical experiments, and William Blake visions. What windstorms were to Darger, waterfalls were to Wolfli: symbols of the uncontrollable passions that drove through him.

Wolfli conceived of himself as a multimedia artist in a way only a schizophrenic could imagine: his drawings were also musical compositions, images and letters imbued with sounds, and time reconceived as a unit of space. I find Wolfli's imagination less vast than Darger's, and less numbingly repetitive. His narratives are slightly more intelligible: it's all about a Wolfli character's epic journey from poverty and brutal oppression (no fantasy) to apotheosis in the "St. Adolf-Giant-Creation," a realm so immense he ran out of numbers to describe it and was forced to invent 23 new numerals beyond quadrillion, ending with the biggest number of all, Zorn (German for "rage"). This eye-opening book could make Wolfli all the rage, but it can't hope to contain his imagination. --Tim Appelo

Review
"Call it the madman's revenge: from his asylum, Wolfli conquered the world". -- Lyle Rexer, Graphis

"In the catalog to the Folk Art Museum's Wolfli exhibition, we have an excellent account of his art and life." -- Sue Taylor, Art in America

An excellent account of [Wölfli's] art and life. -- Review

Wolfli's lyrical, evocative compositions of his well-ordered, elegantly constructed universe explore the relationship between mental illness and art. -- Library Journal

Wölfli's creations treat the eye to a roller-coaster ride . . . a dizzying multi-cultural universe. -- Roberta Smith, The New York Times

Review
Wölfli was an obsessive artist par excellence. He spent the last 35 years of his life locked up . . . and in that time he produced thousands of pages of intricate drawings and novelistic narratives. . . . [He] was recognized as a creative power before his death. . . . After his death in 1930, Wölfli's popularity grew among adherents of Surrealism and those stressing the importance of buried, asocial consciousness.
(Carly Berwick ArtNews )

With the stunning retrospective of the work of the artist-composer-poet Adolf Wölfli at the American Folk Art Museum, the distinction between insider and outsider art should finally be declared null and void. . . . [He] created an enormous body of ornate, densely patterned drawings whose incantatory power, formal scope and cultural richness defy category. . . . Wölfli's creations treat the eye to a roller-coaster ride through a terrain bounded by Piranesi, biblical myth, illuminated manuscripts, tantric mandalas and Swiss cuckoo clocks--in other words, a dizzying multi-cultural universe.
(Roberta Smith The New York Times )

Wölfli's lyrical, evocative compositions of his well-ordered, elegantly constructed universe explore the relationship between mental illness and art. Mandala-like pieces highlight the artist's high-quality draftsmanship and artistic vision. . . . The introductory essay . . . provides an excellent overview of the artist's life within a Swiss mental asylum and the extraordinary drawings and collages of transformation and rebirth that he produced until his death.
(Library Journal )

Adolf Wölfli . . . is among the greatest of outsider artists. Indeed, he could serve as Exhibit A in a study of the outsider phenomenon. . . . [His] large, incredibly dense drawings combine religion, sex, language, music, geography, economics, and other aspects of the artist's fantasy empire. . . . Besides having an immensely complicated and subtle technique, Wölfli is scary. . . . To do Wölfli justice--that is, fully to honor our spontaneous pleasure in his work--requires a bravely open mind.
(Peter Schjeldahl The New Yorker )

Freakish, hallucinatory, amusing, ingenious, sensuously soft in touch, and overwhelmingly rich in their detailing, Wölfli's lead and colored-pencil drawings can at first resemble overelaborate, geometric folk-art decorations. Looked at more intently, they can seem like fiendishly complex game boards. . . . Ultimately, these pictures . . . all blended into a web of flowing, arching, interconnecting shapes, defy categorization.
(Sanford Schwartz New York Review of Books )

A significant and elegant contribution to the history of the Swiss artist most closely associated with the artistic practices labeled variously as art brut, outsider art, or self-taught art.
(Choice )

An excellent account of [Wölfli's] art and life.
(Sue Taylor Art in America )

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Customer Reviews

Three essays, four prose selections, and the drawings in wonderful colour
THE ART OF ADOLF WOLFLI: St Adolf-Giant-Creation is a presentation of the works of the mad Swiss artist, whose institutionalization in a Bern asylum in 1895 led to a prolific career of thousands of drawings and literary endeavours. The book was prepared to accompany a 2003 exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum.

The book contains three essays on various facets of Wolfli's life and work. Elka Spoerri's "Adolf Wolfli: Artist/Builder" is a bibiography and presentation of the basic techniques of his work, including the various shapes he used due to horror vacui. Daniel Baumann's "Calculation of Interest" tells of the reaction to Wolfli's work among critics, other artists, and mental health professional. I was surprised to find that his work was known even before Morgenthaler published his notable monograph. And as I discovered Wolfli through the music of Per Norgard, I was delighted that Baumann talks of the many composers inspired by Wolfli's work. Edward M. Gomez' "Adolf Wolfli: Visionary Graphic Designer" sees Wolfli not as a curiosity, the madman who can draw, but as a truly original creative figure whose art is a contribution to modern design. In between these essays are selections from Wolfli's writings, including poetry, a tale from his imaginary travelogue, and an aetiology from his peculiar cosmology where God the Father is created by Orpheus and the pregnant Mary.

The latter half of the book are the plates. Wolfli's drawings are presented in gorgeous full colour, with many being full-page (and a few half-page). I've seen many Wolfli works before, but not in such fine quality. Drawings such as "The Rings of the Ocean and the Island, Scepter-Giant-Fountain in St Adolf-Kiss-Giant-Sea" and "Holy St Adolf Tower" are awesome in this presentation. This and the critical/historical material makes this all a very recommended book for those interested in the art of Wolfli.