The art of visionaries, folk creators, spiritualists, recluses, the ‘mad’ and the socially marginalized, once scorned, is now recognized as speaking with great immediacy and power. Among the earliest to value and collect such work was the French artist Jean Dubuffet, who coined the term Art Brut, literally ‘raw art’ – raw because it was ‘uncooked’ by culture, because it came directly from the psyche, touched by a raw nerve. Some fifty years later, a wave of enthusiasm for contemporary folk art has gripped countries as far apart as India and the United States. John Maizels ties these disparate strands together, providing a guide to the self-taught art of the twentieth century. Following a brief history of the recognition and study of this art, he examines the different theories and definitions that have grown up around the subject. Providing detailed expositions of the work of numerous individual artists, he offers a fascinating account of human creativity.