[Z] Art, Disability and Madness

Art, Disability and Madness a collection of volumes on art, disability and concepts of madness, to include Navratil (Leo) Gugging 1946-1988, Vienna: Christian Brandstaetter, 1997, 4to, two volumes; James (Tony) Dream, Creativity, and Madness in Nineteenth-Century France, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, inscribed by Roger Cardinal; Navratil (Leo) Schizophrenie et art, Editions Complexe, 1978, inscribed by author with dedication to Roger Cardinal; Boulange (Luc) et Jean-Luc Lambert Les autres: expressions artistiques chez les handicapes mentaux, Belgium: Pieree Mardaga, inscribed and annotated by Roger Cardinal; Wexler (Alice J) Art and Disability: The Social and Political Struggles Facing Education, with a foreword by Roger Cardinal, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2009, inscribed by Roger Cardinal, with other volumes largely concerning art and disability including several on the Prinzhorn collection

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.