The sign in outsider art
James Hampton
Series of mini editions on the sign in outsider art.
James Hampton is considered as an outsider artist who lived a solitary life obsessed with religious salvation. He left at his death a notebook of a hundred pages written about his mysterious divine revelations, in a language of his own, a kind of secret writing, esoteric signs, showing this obsessive need to express himself .
These writings are therefore derived from supernatural inspiration. The very existence of these writings appears to be proof of the authenticity of his revelations.
This book includes 42 signs taken from page 81 of James Hampton's notebook.
We don't understand the meaning of these signs, but when they are isolated we can imagine what they say, because some are close to the Latin alphabet. We can also see the importance of the sign through its number of repetitions.
These signs appear throughout his notebook, where new ones are added. They are all written in a similar way, with the same tool, a black feather pen.
James Hampton being literate, we notice that these are complex signs, containing several characters where the lines are varied and numerous.
This collection deploys a range of isolated signs, transcribed, classified by typologies of rhythm, thus revealing the particular use of this secret writing by a literate artist, at once irrational, articulate and obsessive.
This is to highlight the richness of the signs produced by cataloging them in order of frequency of appearance, and allowing a wider audience to enter the artist's own universe.
Fernando Nannetti
Fernando Oreste Nannetti, at the age of twenty-nine is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Taciturn and solitary, he has no contact with anyone.
In 1958, he was transferred to the psychiatric hospital in Volterra, Italy, where he expresses himself on the facade of the establishment he used as a support for his writings.
He repeated these engraved inscriptions for nine years - from 1959 to 1961, then from 1968 to 1973 -, always using the same tool: the buckle of his jacket. A monumental creation is born, it measures seventy meters long and is deployed on several walls of the interior courtyard of the establishment.
His script recalls Etruscan writing, and his writings reveal a world between dream and reality, science and imagination. He always begins by drawing a large rectangle on the facades, like an empty page in his "stone book", before inscribing biographical statements, inscriptions referring to the war and evocations of imaginary places and characters.
These inscriptions transcribed here are taken from part of his engraved work. Most of them represent Latin characters - he was literate and wrote in Italian - however the porous support of the stone wall and the tool he uses give straight and rigid letters. At first sight you don't really notice that these are Latin characters, due to their shapes and the abundance of his writings, and some signs are not really recognizable.
This collection deploys a range of isolated Latin characters, transcribed, classified in alphabetical and numerical order, then by type of repetition for unidentified signs.