3Art markets have been studied through different prisms in the social sciences. The literature has shown that the economic and symbolic value of artists and works is constructed at the intersection of the cultural and commercial spheres (Moulin 1967, 1986, and 1992), and results from a complex interplay between the actors and institutions in the artistic space. From this perspective, there have also been studies of the mechanisms that make commercial exchanges possible by providing a solution to the uncertain status and quality of works, such as exhibitions and their catalogues (Martin 2005; Moulin & Quemin 1993; Moureau & Sagot-Duvauroux 2006; Verlaine 2012). Other studies have identified the “scripts” followed by gallery owners when they set the price of a piece, and analysed how they deny the commercial nature of their activity (Velthuis 2005), a denial stemming from the specific requirements of the market of symbolic goods (Bourdieu 1980, 1994). Certain changes in the art market have been examined, such as the shift of the centre of artistic legitimacy from the Parisian market to the New York market after World War II (Guilbaut 1983; Verlaine 2012), or the recent restructuring of the contemporary art gallery market (Quemin 2021). Finally, certain structural approaches of the market institution have underlined how the relational configuration of the market determines art dealers’ distribution choices (Accominotti 2008), and have identified the cross effect of the market structure and gallery owners’ commercial strategy (Verley 2024).

4Within this literature, few studies specifically focus on the emergence and stabilization of market relations. On the contrary, these relations are analysed once they have been established and are relatively stable. The study by Moureau and Sagot-Duvauroux (2006) on the market of photographic prints is closer to the approach adopted here, but their work is focused more on the classification of the product studied as art than on the genesis of an art market.

5In order to analyse this process through the case of art brut, I use the Weberian definition of the market (François 2008). According to Weber, the market is a social structure linking two types of relations: competition and market exchange. Competitive relations are established between suppliers on the one hand, and between buyers on the other hand. These actors enter into a struggle, each on their “side” of the market, to access the opportunity to exchange. At the end of the competitive process, a supplier and a buyer eventually enter into an exchange relation. Weber (1978 cited in François 2008: 37) writes: “a market may be said to exist wherever there is competition, even if only unilateral, for opportunities of exchange among a plurality of potential parties.” A market can thus exist even if there is only competition on one of its “sides.” Furthermore, in this approach, a market exists provided that market relations are stabilized. For Weber, the emergence of a social form depends on the repeated and stabilized nature of a type of interaction (Grossein 2005).

6This conceptual framework avoids two common pitfalls when it comes to defining a market (François 2008). The first consists in proposing a definition of the market so restrictive that it is highly improbable to encounter such a market empirically. This is a recurrent criticism levelled at the Walrasian market (Orléan 2011), which may also be levelled at White’s model to a lesser extent (1981, 2002). The other pitfall consists in considering too vast a territory, particularly when the market is steered towards the “exchange” or “competition” categories. It then becomes difficult to determine what falls under the market and non-market categories. On the contrary, the Weberian approach is sufficiently precise from an analytical point of view to differentiate the market from other forms of social relations (family, professional, or associative relations for example), and sufficiently flexible to accommodate diverse forms of concrete markets. Furthermore, by analytically differentiating one-off interactions or exchanges from social structures, it offers a prism through which the construction of the art brut market can be analysed: it is first a matter of identifying the emergence of relations of competition and exchange in which art brut was the object, and then the time and the way in which these relations were linked and stabilized.

7To perform this analysis, the article proceeds in two steps. First, it examines the development of the “art brut” category, with the creation of the first collection and the first museum dedicated to it. In these different processes, the role played by Jean Dubuffet appears central. Secondly, the article analyses the progressive emergence of competitive relations to appropriate art brut works, and the way in which this competition was linked to a specific form of exchange, i.e. market exchange. The analytical content of “market competition” and “market exchange” will thus be specified. Finally, it focuses on two factors that contributed to the stabilization of the market.

Study Methods and Materials

The article is based on a study structured in two parts. The first is a “second hand” history compiled from works in sociology, economics, and art history. This history extends from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1970s. It traces the development of the “art brut” category, its entry into the artistic space, and reconstructs the socio-historical conditions that made these processes possible.

This history is supplemented by fieldwork divided into two parts, one statistical and the other ethnographic. The statistical component is based on the analysis of a database listing the auction sales of 315 “art brut artists.” This database contains 7,209 public sales that took place between 1985 and 2016. The ethnographic component is made up of observations during events linked to art brut (fairs, exhibitions, openings, auctions, and conferences) and of 40 interviews with market actors: gallery owners, museum curators, foundation managers, artists, collectors, and the director of the OAF.

The second part of the fieldwork specifically focuses on the development and stabilization of the market. The statistical data allows identifying the period when auctions were first organized, and then studying their dynamics. The ethnographic approach has several purposes: identifying the actors and institutions that took part in the market and the relationships that existed between them; collecting data on the inception of the market in the 1970s; and lastly, understanding the processes that contributed to the emergence of market relations and the institutions that perpetuated them.

1. The Genesis of a Category and of a Collection of Works of Art

1. 1. Art Brut: a Category between Primitivism and Avant-Garde

• 6 Jean Dubuffet, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants. Volume 1, op. cit., p. 167–168.

The Art Brut collections […] seek productions of all types […] that feature a spontaneous and highly inventive nature, borrowing as little as possible from customary art or cultural clichés, whose authors are obscure individuals, outsiders to professional artistic circles. […] Let us add that we call for productions […] that respond to a feverish impulse and not to some episodic incentive or whim in which exaltation plays little part.6

9The first criterion, which was aesthetic, was based on the originality of art brut productions compared to works that were already known in the artistic space. The second concerned the social characteristics of the artists, who were generally presented as people without any art training, whether theoretical or practical, and without any relationship with the art world. To this supposed form of artistic outsiderness was added a form of social outsiderness: people linked to art brut were described as “loners, misfits, residents of psychiatric wards, prisoners, and unconventional individuals of all stripes” (Thévoz 2016 [1975], cited in Peiry 2010 [1997]: 197). The third criterion was based on the authors’ spontaneity and disinterestedness: they were supposed to produce for their own sake, without caring about the possible recognition garnered by their production, which was to be an irrepressible burst coming from their deepest interiority.

11Art brut also resonated with the quality criteria applied to works by the avant-garde of the artistic space in the mid-twentieth century. The institutional transformations that the art world underwent in the twentieth century (White & White 1965; Bourdieu 2018) contributed to the emergence of an avant-garde field (Joyeux-Prunel 2016) in which the “young” generations of artists sought recognition by distinguishing themselves on the one hand from the previous generations of who had become famous, and on the other hand, from contemporary generations and art movements. In this inter- and intragenerational game of identification-differentiation, the originality of artistic proposals was the basis for assessing their value (Moureau & Sagot-Duvauroux 1992, 2016). When art brut was invented, originality always served as a basis to justify the value of the works. In his analysis of the Parisian art market after the Second World War, Verlaine (2012: 147) reports that in the struggles which opposed the different artistic proposals for access to recognition, “novelty, topicality, and innovation were systematically invoked as arguments to guarantee the value of the works, sometimes without any other justification […]”. Dubuffet used the same argument to construct the value of art brut and thus inscribed this artistic category in the struggles for artistic recognition.

Meeting with a “deviant” art brut artist

While many artists included in art brut do not correspond to the typical ideal of the trained professional artist, seeking to make a career for themselves and to obtain recognition, they do not correspond either to the ideal figure (tinged with sociocentrism [Marpsat 2006]) constructed starting in 1945. Dubuffet himself put his definition into perspective and considered art brut as an “unachievable idea.” For example, Baumann (2005) provides biographical information about artist Adolf Wölfli (1864–1930) that qualifies the canonical figure of the “art brut artist.” These deviations between the definition of art brut and the actual attitude of artists did not only concern the early days of art brut, but its whole history.

Observing a meeting between an artist and his gallery owner sheds light on art brut and on the potential gaps between its original definition and the way in which art brut artists consider their artistic production and its recognition. In the fall of 2017, I met Théo, an art brut gallery owner, as part of my fieldwork. He offered that I come with him to meet one of his artists, Pierre, to help load his latest works, which he anticipated would be heavy and unwieldy, into his van. Pierre, who was retired, used to work in the service industry. Without formal art training, he began producing around the age of fifty and achieved significant recognition in the field of art brut, his works being featured in numerous prestigious public and private collections.

Observing the meeting revealed a relationship to money and to artistic recognition that was very different from that suggested by Dubuffet, which was based on disinterestedness. For instance, the question of production costs and the price of works was central during the interaction. When Pierre showed his works to the gallery owner, he insisted vehemently that the materials used in these pieces were expensive:

Théo: “And did you get the frame back?”

Pierre: “What do you think? No, I didn’t get it back, I paid for it. And these materials are really expensive,” (he repeated this about ten times while showing the piece) “you’ve got to tell the customers, they cost a fortune, you’ve got to tell the customers.”

He also reminded the gallery owner that some of the pieces required the paid collaboration of one of his relatives:

Théo: “Well I don’t know, since he’s a family member, I thought he was doing it for free to help out –”

Pierre: “Well isn’t that cute? He must still believe in Santa Claus. No, it isn’t free, it cost my nephew 200 euros to come here, and I paid him, so it’s really expensive for me.”

The artist showed the gallery owner his checkbook so that he would see the expenses due to his artistic activity:

Pierre (showing his checkbook): “Look, look, see what it cost me.”

Théo: “No, but I believe you!”

Pierre: “Yeah, but look at the checkbook still.”

Pierre emphasized his production costs in order to justify the selling prices that he demanded for his art. These prices, around 10,000 euros for each of the two pieces that we collected during the meeting, were relatively high for art brut works. As Théo explained when we left Pierre, if he demanded such prices, it was because from his point of view they were synonymous with the recognition of his work: “Selling is very important to Pierre. The [financial] value of his works is very important to him; it’s a form of recognition.”

1. 2. Scouting, Collecting, Conserving, Exhibiting, and Publishing Art Brut (1945–1976)

14The activities of the Compagnie de l’Art Brut were put on hold in 1952, but Dubuffet started scouting again in France in 1959. In 1962, the organization was reactivated and the works were kept in Paris. The Fascicules de l’Art Brut, monographs on the artists in the collection, was published in 1964. It was distributed in France, as well as in Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. A major exhibition organized at the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris in 1967 further promoted the category: 700 works from the Compagnie’s collections were presented during the event, which drew more than 20,000 visitors. In addition, the publication of the first book on art brut, entitled Outsider Art (Cardinal 1972), helped introduce the category into the English-speaking art world, mainly in the United Kingdom and the United States.

15At the beginning of the 1970s, Dubuffet donated his collection to the city of Lausanne so that a permanent space could be created for it. The Compagnie’s 6,500 works were transferred to Switzerland in 1975 and the first museum dedicated to them, the Collection de l’Art Brut, opened the following year. The museum continued searching for works, acquiring and conserving them, as well as promoting them through exhibitions and publications. A world-renowned institution, it is currently one of the main museums to devote all or part of their activity to art brut.

16It was through this process of defining art brut, of including the category in the quality criteria applied in the artistic space and in the struggles for artistic recognition, of scouting for works and promoting them through conventional methods in the artistic space (conservation, exhibition, and publication) that art brut became an artistic category, and that the objects making up the first collection became artwork, and their producers artists. This process of classification can be described as a “rise in objectivity” (Heinich 2004): as objects, people, and a category as a whole accumulate the hallmarks that grant them the status of art in the eyes of other actors in the artistic space, this status stabilizes and is no longer (or significantly less) up for debate. The category finds a position among all artistic categories; there is consensus on the status of the objects; and the status of artist is lastingly associated with their producers.

17In the case of art brut, this process began in the mid-1950s. The category was then identified and known within the artistic space, particularly in France. This was for example apparent in a 1956 article in Le Monde presenting “a snapshot of the structuring of the Parisian art world […] by giving a simplified, but already complex image of the artistic production of the period” (Verlaine 2012: 384). Among the fifteen trends presented, “outsider and informal art” was featured, in relation with the Drouin gallery. From this period on, art brut was part of the Parisian art scene, a testament to the efficiency of the Compagnie de l’Art Brut and Dubuffet.

1. 3. A Classification Made Possible by its Inventor’s Artistic Journey and Resources

20This journey was nourished by the ambition of the painter, “whom one would have sworn had secretly promised himself, once launched, to be Picasso or nothing, and who always strived […] to be among the greatest artists of his century, and undoubtedly, of several others” (ibid.: 20). In addition to the social and economic resources available to the artist, his journey was made possible by vast cultural capital “in the incorporated state, […] lasting dispositions of the organism” (Bourdieu 1986: 3). For Dubuffet, the initial conditions of appropriation of this capital were good: an early transmission in a well-off family of Le Havre’s merchant bourgeoisie. He benefited from artistic and literary socialization in his childhood and teenage years. This socialization was altered and extended in the first half of the 1920s, when he moved to Paris, taking courses at the Académie Julian for a while and moving in the avant-garde circles of the time. He developed a fine knowledge of the 1920s art scene, gradually detaching himself from the rather academic training that he had received until then, and began to form the positions on art that he would develop later and that would be exemplified in art brut. The category was thus invented and then promoted by a prestigious artist, endowed with considerable relational, economic, and cultural resources which served his invention.

2. Art Brut at the Centre of Competition and Commercial Exchange Relations: The Beginnings of a Market and its Stabilization

2. 1. The Effects of the Collection de l’Art Brut

21Dubuffet and his supporters introduced art brut into the artistic space and initiated processes of classification and legitimization of the category. By being visible and valued in the artistic space, art brut aroused the interest of artists, collectors, and gallery owners who wanted to exhibit and market such works, “discover” new artists, and assemble collections, as André, an art brut collector who started his collection in the 1970s, explained:

So in fact the market did not exist until— I guess you could say it started when the collection arrived in Lausanne in the 1970s. That’s when there was a market that began to take shape because people were discovering this collection, me included obviously, and they were curious, even eager not necessarily to collect, but to discuss it, to see it, and there you have it. So things started off like that with the first collections.

22While gallery owner Alphonse Chave was one of the first to participate in this process by marketing art brut in Vence in the 1960s, it was mainly in the 1970s and 1980s that such initiatives developed in Western Europe and the United States. Among these, gallery owner Charlotte Zander was a pioneer when she opened a naive art and art brut gallery in Munich in 1970, just like gallery owner Phyllis Kind when she sold art brut at her Chicago and New York galleries during the same period (Maizels 1996). In France, architect, collector, and artist Alain Bourbonnais created the Atelier Jacob gallery in 1972 before founding the Fabuloserie museum in 1983. In the 1980s, the Aracine organization was founded by Madeleine Lommel, an artist and regular visitor of the Dubuffet collection, with the aim of collecting and exhibiting art brut works (Chérot, Faupin & Boulanger 2010), while British art dealers Monika Kinley and Victor Musgrave began a vast “outsider art” collection.

23During this process of making art brut known, and of creating sales outlets and new collections, the collection assembled by Dubuffet and bequeathed to the city of Lausanne played the role of what Boltanski and Esquerre (2020) term “collection idéelle” in French. For these authors, a collection gathers objects by placing them under a guiding principle (here, “original” works produced by individuals without art training) and, simultaneously, introduces differences deemed relevant by collectors between these objects. Among collections of a certain type, the “collection idéelle” refers to “the complete series of objects subject to the same principle of gathering, distinguished from each other by the fact that they bear differences deemed relevant, according to processes which are themselves of a conventional order” (ibid.: 272). Often assembled by a “seminal collector” endowed with “artistic authority […] acquired during previous experiences in the art world” (ibid.: 272), this sort of perfect collection partly guides “second-tier collectors,” who follow in the footsteps of seminal collectors: they seek works produced by the artists featured in the “collection idéelle.” Naturally, all collectors of a certain type do not only seek to reproduce the “collection idéelle” in question, but also attempt to “discover” artists who are not featured in it. The “collection idéelle” nevertheless contributes to channelling part of collectors’ searches and acquisitions towards a relatively small set of works and artists, thus generating a deeply structuring effect for market formation.

We’re also looking for historic works, collected by Dubuffet, obviously given that, since the arrival of the L’Aracine collection, we’ve acquired or received works to strengthen the L’Aracine collection, or fill gaps in the collection.

25To this first “channelling” effect played by Dubuffet’s collection can be added a second effect, which I term the “supporting” effect. When an actor wants to promote little-recognized art brut works that are not featured in the collection idéelle, a common strategy consists in jointly exhibiting “new” works and “classic” works so that the legitimacy of the latter may extend to the former. Two gallery owners explained this during interviews, describing how they resorted to this strategy during art fairs: “If I hadn’t had classics in the booth, I think people wouldn’t have been interested in the artist I discovered that was featured alongside them. That’s what’s complicated.” In the words of the other gallery owner: “We put the classics in a little corner, to establish the booth’s legitimacy, and then there were these two new artists we really wanted to introduce.” Thus, even when the objective is to make new works or new artists known, those that are recognized and generally featured in the collection idéelle serve as a point of reference, which underlines and reinforces their value.

2. 2. A Progressive Connection between the Competition for the Appropriation of Works and the Commercial Exchange of Art Brut

27Due to the formation of a competitive relationship for the appropriation of works, a specific method of acquiring works prevailed, to which competition was linked: market exchange. Testart (2001) provides a precise analytical definition by differentiating between gifts, non-market exchange, and market exchange. Exchanges (non-market and market alike) are distinguished from gifts insofar as compensation can legitimately be demanded by each of the exchangers. This first distinction is akin to that made by Bourdieu (1994: 175–211) between gifts and the “give-and-take.” Testart then differentiates between non-market exchange and market exchange based on what “governs” the relationship between the exchangers. In market exchange, “the relationship to things governs the relationship between people” (2001: 725), while in non-market exchange, “personal relationships […] prevail over the exchange relationship” (ibid.: 736). The relationship between exchangers is “governed” by the relationship to things when the object of exchange is a good: the owner has decided to sell their property, which is “already cut off from them” (ibid.: 725) and they merely expect compensation, namely the exchange value that will determine whether they sell their property. On the other side, the relationship to the good (its price and its characteristics) also determines the buyer’s behaviour and their possible entry into the exchange. Such an approach does not ignore the fact that the market exchange relationship is embedded in other types of social relationships (for example, personal relationships [Granovetter 2000; Velthuis 2005; Quemin 2021]), but “what is characteristic of this form of exchange is that it can dispense with them” (Testart 2001: 725).

29The development of the competitive relationship for the acquisition of works contributed to making such exchanges commonplace. By making works rarer and valuing them, it has encouraged certain actors to favour market exchange over other forms of transfer, such as gifts. Thus, since he started his collection in the 1970s, André was able to accumulate numerous works through gifts, a highly unlikely situation today:

André: In fact between 1975 and 1990, there was almost nothing [in terms of market exchange], and that’s when I was able to start—

Author: Yes, that’s when it had to be done—

André: Oh yeah, because you’d go to hospitals and the like, you’d find stuff. And then you’d meet shrinks and the like, and then they’d give it to you, that’s for sure!

Author: Yes, that was it—

André: Yeah, because it didn’t have any value. So when you’d meet someone and they thought you were nice, a decent kind of guy, and you had a fun project, they’d say: “Well, you can have it,” and that was it. That’s really how it went down. No, no, the market started in 1990 actually, you’re right. Well, no, it was going strong in 1990 and it started in 1983, 1984 with hot spots like Phyllis Kind’s [gallery].

30As market exchange became a common way of acquiring art brut, the competitive relationship for the appropriation of works specifically became a relationship of market competition. Following Weber’s approach, this form of competition has two main characteristics (François 2008). First, it is a formally peaceful struggle for opportunities that are also desired by other actors. Market competition occurs when an opportunity targeted by competitors is an opportunity to exchange. In the case of art brut, the competitive relationship for the appropriation of works persisted, but some of these appropriations came from a specific type of transfer: market exchange. In this way, the two types of interconnected social relations which constituted a market gradually unfolded and arranged themselves around art brut at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s in Western Europe (mainly in France, Switzerland, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and in the United States. Art brut underwent “marketing,” a process through which “things become goods and people act as buyers and sellers” (Dubuisson-Quellier 1999: 672). However, it was in the following decades that market relations would stabilize and generate a social structure that can be described as an art brut market.

31Numerous works in economics and sociology have shed light on the institutional foundations without which it is impossible, or tricky, to carry out market exchanges (Dubuisson-Quellier & François 2011). On the art market, except for “classified works” (Moulin 1992), the uncertainty surrounding the status and quality of works is generally high and different actors intervene to classify, appraise, and raise the value of works: gallery owners, curators, critics, collectors, etc. The first market exchanges of art brut in the 1940s, but also those of the 1970s were made possible by the activity and prestige of Dubuffet and his supporters between 1945 and 1976: they were the first to legitimize art brut and their work of classification and valuation, although they had no commercial aim, constituted the institutional basis for market exchanges of art brut. This institutional work was first essentially carried out by Dubuffet and those close to him, and it was then divided up among the different actors and institutions in this segment of the artistic space in the 1970s and 1980s, and the following decades.

32It should be noted that the formation of an art brut market and the processes that underpinned it did not eliminate the other social logics in the category. Rather, there was a tangle of non-market and market logics and forms of transfer, and a progressive connection between them. Such a tangle was apparent, for instance, in the words of Philippe, an art brut collector, when he described how he had acquired certain works at the start of his career and his relationship with Madeleine Lommel:

After seeing the Cordier donation in 1989 [which featured art brut], I made inquiries, I looked into the museums, and I became friends with Madeleine Lommel, who was assembling the L’Aracine collection. And she’d sell me pieces, now and then. Why was she selling them to me? To tell you the truth, when she’d buy ten pieces, she’d sell me two of them, and the two I paid for practically paid for the rest. So everyone was very happy and I became a collector.

33In this relationship, Madeleine Lommel seemed interested in the possible financial gain from selling the pieces. However, this search for exchange value, which is specific to market logic, does not have a purely commercial dimension. It can only be understood in relation to the cultural logic of the L’Aracine organization: developing a collection of art brut in France and, to this end, finding financial resources. The interest that led Madeleine Lommel to enter into the exchange was therefore both economic and cultural. In the same way, market exchange did not eliminate other forms of transfer of art brut. These different forms coexisted and were sometimes intertwined. The situation mentioned by Pierre, an art brut gallery owner, clearly shows this. After contacting the Collection de l’Art Brut, suggesting that it include the works of an artist that he had recently discovered, Pierre was led to sell some of the pieces to the institution, but also to donate others:

Pierre: The curator came and chose some pieces. So obviously, museums like that, well you sell ten pieces and then you give away another ten. It’s normal, right, I was really happy they were included—

Author: Yes, it promotes the work.

Peter: Exactly. And what’s interesting is that they’re included in the Art Brut Collection. So I still worked hard you see, I’m pretty self-satisfied! This way, I can write to people to say that it’s in the Collection de l’Art Brut. And the people who’d bought some pieces, well they’re happy.

34The two parties thus engaged in a transfer that inextricably mixed market exchange and donation. These two forms supported each other. In this case, the donation would facilitate future market exchanges, since the symbolic value of the works donated to the museum was both stabilized and increased by being added to a prestigious institution. Conversely, the market exchange, by supporting Pierre’s activity as a gallery owner, allowed him to donate part of the works, and thus facilitated the expansion of the Lausanne institution’s collections.

2. 3. Two Factors Supporting the Stabilization of the Market: the Relative Value of Art Brut and the Differentiation of the Market Offering

35The stabilization of the art brut market since the 1990s has been due to two factors. The first concerns the value of art brut relative to other artistic categories. In terms of economic value, to this day, art brut has been less valued than other artistic categories (Verley 2020). This state of the relative value of art brut has contributed to the stabilization of the market by supporting the demand and supply of art brut. On the demand side, some collectors have turned to art brut as the works they initially collected became financially inaccessible and art brut gained visibility. Philippe’s career as a collector illustrates this process. He was initially a collector of works associated with narrative figuration, and eventually started taking an interest in art brut and collecting it after seeing an exhibition, while the prices of narrative figuration were increasing:

I discovered narrative figuration when I was twenty, I met all the artists; no one was interested. And at one point, I saw the Cordier donation in 1989. I discovered works there that really left an impression on me. I was also at a turning point because in my narrative figuration collection, at first, I was buying pieces that no one wanted, but then after five, six years there was a craze, and the pieces I was missing were hard [to find] or the artists were asking for prices I couldn’t afford. That was one thing. But I discovered this Cordier donation, and I saw works by artists totally unknown to me, and I found it very, very, striking. I wrote down the names, I made some inquiries, I asked a friend who was a museum curator, he said: “Are you interested in art brut?”

36On the supply side, the relative value of art brut has favoured the positioning of certain galleries in this segment of the art market because the financial entry costs were relatively lower than in other segments, for example that of contemporary art. Thus, Pierre, who positioned himself in the contemporary art segment when he opened his gallery in the 1980s, then repositioned himself in the art brut market. The cost of contemporary art fairs and works contributed to this repositioning:

When I opened my gallery, I showed contemporary art. I did fairs like Art Paris, but the problem was we got kicked out after three, four years, because there were other galleries on the scene, right? Then, you know, at first, a booth would cost 100, then afterwards you’d end up paying 500, 800, I couldn’t do it anymore. So that’s what happened at Paris Photo, Art Paris, the FIAC. So the past three or four years, I figured I’d start doing art brut. Contemporary art bugged me a little. I found that there wasn’t much happening anymore and that we’d reached a point where the guys who’d studied at the Beaux-Arts, they thought they were hot stuff, they charged crazy high prices, they already thought they were stars. So, frankly, I was a little fed up with it. So I really became passionate about art brut.

Claude: In the early years, I mainly worked with two thirds of collectors who were in the know, who either already collected art brut, or who knew what it was about, and the last third was made up of contemporary art collectors that I’d met at art fairs. And there was a tipping point, a few years ago, when contemporary art collectors became the majority.

Author: Was this when you moved?

Claude: Yes, at a given moment there’s also something linked to—it goes beyond location, it borders on the symbolic. I’m now in a place associated with contemporary art. And so it tells a different story, and people look at you differently even though you’re presenting the same thing. And maybe you’re considered differently too and so one thing leads to the next. And I got a lot of press in those years, and that got more and more people interested. And now the ratio is more like 25/75 in terms of pure art brut collectors and contemporary art collectors.

39At the scale of a gallery, the change of “identity,” which is correlated to a position change in the market, causes a shift in the client base. At the scale of the art brut market, the clientele has expanded and diversified as galleries have entered this market, built an “identity,” and made art brut known to a new client base.

40These factors have contributed to the stabilization of the market since the 1990s. The market relationships established around art brut, which were initially occasional, have been repeated and linked over time, now forming a common space between the actors involved in them. In the words of Weber, these relationships form a “market community,” that is to say in the case of art brut, a set of actors and institutions sustainably involved in competitive relationships to access the exchange of art brut. Pierre, a gallery owner, referred to this “community,” which he called a “network,” in which works circulated through market exchange:

Author: How did you manage to find works during these four years?

Pierre: So I didn’t have any new artists, apart from Sylvie. So I worked with a fellow gallery owner, we found works here and there. We bought from collectors; there were all the pieces we were able to find at public sales, collections that were being sold off. And then there were people who’d bought things a long time ago, from their neighbour or—and then one day they figured that art brut was worth something, and well they put it on sale. No, I do believe there’s a network that works, there’s some back-and-forth. As soon as there’s a small market value or the need for recognition too, you know, it gets things rolling—there’s a lot going on!

Conclusion

41The construction of the art brut market shows that the paradox of such a market, introduced at the beginning of this article, is only very relative. Indeed, art brut is based on a principle of rupture with the established order in art, while it is valued as art within the artistic space precisely because rupture and originality are criteria of quality in the avant-garde field. The “cultural art” category, which is central in Dubuffet’s discourse, highly homogenizes actors, institutions, processes, and types of works which are in reality very diverse from a sociological and aesthetic point of view. However, this category made it possible to value art brut by comparison: by constructing a clear separation between art brut and “cultural art,” Dubuffet and his supporters favoured the correspondence between art brut and the belief in a “pure,” “free” art that was independent from cultural phenomena, thus responding to the implicit expectations of certain actors in the artistic space. The latter then took an interest in such work and participated in its valuation. Furthermore, the classification and promotion of art brut were based on conventional mechanisms in the artistic space: the conservation and exhibition of works, publications, and mechanisms for transferring legitimacy, in particular from Dubuffet towards art brut. These mechanisms, which were initially used from a non-market perspective, formed the basis for the art brut market.

42An unprecedented structure is also apparent in the genesis of this market. Social science studies on art markets show that the processes of classification as art and of marketing are largely intertwined and support each other. At the scale of an artist’s career, for example, works being put on sale at galleries contributes to their classification as art, just as an exhibition at a museum helps strengthen their market value. A singular configuration can be observed in the history of the art brut market because the classification as art of the category initially took place outside the commercial phenomenon, before the two processes became intertwined. These two successive periods can be explained in particular by the distance maintained between art brut and trade for almost thirty years, from 1945 to the mid-1970s.

43Furthermore, due to the close link between non-market and market exchanges in the construction of the market, this study is in keeping with Viviana Zelizer’s economic sociology. In an article (1992: 10) where she presents her conception of “multiple markets,” the sociologist asks: “How, based on concrete empirical examples, can it be shown that different types of social relations and cultural values play an active role in the formation of markets […]?” The study of the genesis of the art brut market helps address such an issue. The market relations established around art brut gradually stemmed from the specifically cultural work of Dubuffet and his supporters, aiming to criticize the established workings of the artistic space, including its market logic, and to promote other art forms. When it comes to art brut, competition and market exchange intersected from their very beginnings with cultural logics, for example the logic that calls for constituting a “complete” collection. Conversely, to varying degrees and in different forms, cultural logics also gradually intersected market logics once the latter were established and reinforced. This case study has thus shown how market relations, far from emerging and stabilizing alongside other types of social relations, are permeated from their very beginnings by these relations, and how, in return, they become intertwined with them. There is no art brut market that is autonomous from other social relations, but a set of market and non-market social relations, whose links form relational configurations in which the market logic is more or less important and at the centre of which lies art brut.

44In the end, this leads to a remark about the economy of symbolic goods. Bourdieu (1994: 175–211) identifies the structural features of this type of economy by opposing it to what he terms “economic economy”: the former is characterized by the logic of gift for gift, the forbidden explanation of the exchange rate or the price, and the refusal of calculation, profit, and predictability, while the latter is based on the principle of give-and-take, the explanation of the price, and the logic of profit, calculation, and predictability. Although Bourdieu generally associates the economies of cultural goods with the former, the art brut market is rather a structure composed of features belonging both and simultaneously to the economy of symbolic goods and to the economic economy. Market exchanges, for example, respond to the logic of give-and-take, while often being shaped, partly denied, and sometimes linked to other exchanges which, themselves, are related to the gift for gift. Insisting on this coexistence is one of the reasons why the “multiple markets” model is interesting (Zelizer 1992). Such a positioning indeed encourages investigating the singular and variable way in which each market connects features referring respectively to the economy of symbolic goods and the economic economy. This positioning also calls for paying attention to the tensions that this coexistence causes and to the social forces which disrupt the way in which these features are connected in a market, and modify the balance of power between the logics specific to each of these economies.