The writing on the Wall

The article traces the origins of art brut (or outsider art) in 18th Century art (Hogarth) and literature (Swift), showing how the category of 'the art of the insane' was constructed in the cultural and medical fields of modernity as a useful reservoir of 'transgressive' forms, to be re-evaluated, rather than discovered, by the avant-garde movements of the early 20th Century.