gugging : the crazed in the hot zone
An emblematic art brut space, the artists’ house of the Gugging psychiatric hospital near Vienna, in Austria, has, since its creation in 1981 by Doctor Navratil, uncovered some of the most iconic Brut artists of our time. It is less well-known that David Bowie – who, with Brian Eno, had visited them in 1994 and collected their works – found inspiration for his album Outside there. Meanwhile the artist and collector of Art Brut Arnulf Rianer had been a regular visitor of the space for many years, even doing one-on-one hands-on work with many of its residents. Ever since an Art Brut fascicle was dedicated to them in 1983 – with the imprimatur of Dubuffet, although he was usually reluctant to endorse institutional spaces of creation – the artists of Gugging are certainly the ones who, in this field, have been the focus of the greatest number of publications, films and exhibits. Not to mention that, like Hartung, Merz, Baldessari or Kentridge, they were even collectively honored in 1990 with the Oskar Kokoschka Preis, the highest artistic distinction in Austria. Today, with about fifteen artists still living and working there, the international renown of this pavilion – the fruit of seeds planted in the 1950s by the visionary psychiatrist Léo Navreatil – continues with a
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