Vestiges & Verse: Notes from the Newfangled Epic (AFAM, 2018) Near Fine+

Edited by curator Valérie Rousseau

Published by American Folk Art Museum, 2018

About this Item

Published in conjunction with the landmark exhibition Vestiges & Verse: Notes from the Newfangled Epic (American Folk Art Museum, January-May 2018), this richly illustrated catalogue explores the narrative, visionary, and encyclopedic impulses of self-taught and outsider artists. Edited by curator Valérie Rousseau, the volume brings together essays by leading scholars and critics examining how image, text, and obsessive documentation converge to form personal cosmologies. The book features substantial critical essays on seminal figures including Henry Darger, Aloïse Corbaz, James Edward Deeds Jr., Charles A. A. Dellschau, Jean Fick, Jerry Gretzinger, Carlo Keshishian, and Adolf Wölfli, among many others. Essays by Thomas McEvilley, Michael Bonesteel, Barbara Safarova, Elyse Benenson, and additional contributors contextualize these works within broader art-historical, literary, and philosophical frameworks, addressing themes of memory, language, repetition, and symbolic systems. Lavishly produced, the catalogue reproduces hundreds of color illustrations including manuscript pages, drawings, collages, maps, and diagrammatic works - many drawn from institutional and private collections rarely accessible to the public. Particular highlights include extensive material related to Henry Darger's Realms of the Unreal and diagrammatic world-mapping projects that blur the boundary between cartography, autobiography, and mythmaking. An essential reference for collectors, curators, and scholars of outsider art, Vestiges & Verse stands as one of the most substantial museum publications devoted to narrative self-taught art of the late 19th through 20th centuries. Valérie Rousseau is a leading curator and scholar of self-taught and outsider art and served for many years as Curator of Self-Taught Art and Art Brut at the American Folk Art Museum. Her work has been instrumental in reframing outsider art within broader contemporary and historical narratives, emphasizing intellectual rigor, narrative complexity, and cross-cultural relevance.

Seller Inventory # NF.ROU.2018.1

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Vestiges & Verse: Notes from the Newfangled Epic (AFAM, 2018) Near Fine+
• Publisher: American Folk Art Museum
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition, Limited Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Seller catalogs:
  • Art
  • Non-Fiction