Outsider Art/Art Brut A large collection of volumes to include: Feilacher (Johann) Walla!, Museum Gugging, Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 2012, folio, cased set of four books; Cardinal (Roger) Visions from the left Coast: California Self-Taught Artists, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, 1995, folio, card covers; together with further volumes and ephemera on outsider art and self-taught artists (qty)

The Library of Roger Cardinal

Roger Cardinal (1940-2019)

Roger Cardinal was one of Britain’s most distinguished art historians, best known for defining what is generally known as Outsider Art - that is, art by people with no formal training. He began his career as a lecturer at the French department of the University of Manitoba, Canada, subsequently moving to Warwick University and finally to the University of Kent at Canterbury, where he taught for fifty years and held a professorship.

Roger Cardinal was not only a leading authority on Outsider Art, but also on Surrealism. He was a prolific writer and a master of literary style. His eloquent, percipient writings include several books on a wide range of subjects such as Outsider Art (1972), German Romantics in Context (1975) Figures of Reality (1981), Expressionism (1984), The Landscape Vision of Paul Nash (1989), The Cultures of Collecting (1994), and Kurt Schwitters (2011). He also acted as a curator and was a regular contributor to art-historical publications.

Cardinal’s interest in art lay in its margins - the neurodiverse, psychotic, uneducated, autistic, self-taught and ‘other’. His fascination with artists such as the violently psychotic Adolf Wölfli lay in their creativity rather than in the sensationalism of their lives. Certainly, it did not lie in the resale value of their work. That outsider art should have its own multimillion-dollar annual fair in New York and specialist departments at Christie’s auctioneers ran quite contrary to Cardinal’s thinking.

Much of Roger Cardinal’s library has recently been donated to the Tate Gallery including the handwritten diaries that he kept his whole life. Cardinal often used books as working tools, heavily annotating in the margins - as with many volumes in the current sale. The library offered reflects Cardinal’s varied interests and fluent command of French and German. Alongside a large collection of art reference works in his specialist subjects, we also find collections of books on fairy tales and science fiction.