One man's artistic wonderland, created in rental, gets protected status | Hacker News Reader

One man's artistic wonderland, created in rental, gets protected status

cnn.com

131 pointskeepamovin105 comments

Risking to sound similar to that bottom down-voted comment, I want to gently introduce a view here that contrasts the sentiment of it being a "wonderland." This seems hardly something worth preserving given the artistic quality in my opinion.

Yet, on the other hand, if it doesn't harm anyone and the trust indeed bought the apartment, then no harm in keeping this quirky place alive.

I think people like outside art because of its creation story moreso than the actual artistic artifacts

So, just like a lot of “insider” modern art then.

Just like sports. Some group of people scoring more points than another group of people isn't that interesting. But once you add the story of how this happened, how this group even came to be and why they are in this particular match and people love it.

Of course there are individual works of art or athletic performance that are significant enough to stand on their own. But those are few and far between.

No, sporting achievements are usually feats of objective supremacy of some bodily kinesthetic.

The GP was saying that if you're looking over a list of multiple sporting events (e.g. a league), they all kinda look the same: team A vs team B, one of them wins, the other doesn't. If you're not specifically following one of the teams involved (and thus know their story), there's little to draw the casual consumer to one event or another.

If you're looking at stats, it's the same. Just a long list of events and scores which are all basically the same thing.

For a lot of art, if you don't know how or why it was created, it can be hard for many people to develop an attachment or strong emotional response to the artwork. For my part, I definitely have to work for it, and most art doesn't generate much of a flutter, until I read the backstory.

Big old paintings often include some of the story in their content, but not always. Modern art and sculpture much less so.

I can quite easily marvel at the raw technique of a Caravaggio painting. But going on technique alone, why would I spend time with Caravaggio over Dali, over Turner, over Hokkaido etc. It's only when I read the title, or the backstory that I understand, the _reason_ he was driven to paint it. And then I see the lighting, the glances, the composition, the postures, the hand positions and I marvel again, and the story and the technique emerge and recombine for me.

(art's a tricky example to offer here, especially old art. I totally get how some people have strong emotional reactions to some art, without the story. )

Judging the general quality of artwork is impossible IMHO, the best you can do is to decide of its significance in a particular timeframe and you might choose to preserve it as long as you believe its significant enough.

Stuff usually makes sense within context, there's lot's of buzz for example on Twitter about how some old stuff was beautiful and the new one is ugly. They are doing this for political propaganda and money but there's a reason why people tear down the old "beautiful" stuff to build the new contemporary thing and when doing it they thought that the old stuff was bad for one reason or another. Some day in the future people will be preserving some all glass facade building for it's significance when everyone else has moved to this new thing.

The historical significance is just one thing though, sometimes people preserve stuff for any reason. Sometimes, people preserve stuff because it's amazing that someone did this even if it's not a masterpiece in any way - like the restored version of Ecce Homo :)

> there's lot's of buzz for example on Twitter about how some old stuff was beautiful and the new one is ugly. They are doing this for political propaganda and money

Some of us really do prefer the old stuff, not just for the politics and money!

Sure, its just something else when you try to push a point or stir a controversy by constantly repeating "why they don't make things like that anymore" without actually looking into why they stopped and why they don't anymore.

"because doing $contemporaryStyle is cheaper and more broadly appealing, and might even have some practical benefits. And it's cheaper not just because it's inherently more optimized or because labor is more expensive than it was back then, but because being the only one doing $oldWay means you don't have any scaling benefits and will struggle to find labor. Going with the herd is just inherently better value for money". There, free premise for a 1h youtube video. Just adapt it to architecture or cutlery or something.

The worst is when people say "Why don't they make things like X anymore", where X is one of the best examples of its type from the entire decade it was created. They didn't make things like X back then either, you dingbat!

X is a stand-out work of genius, head and shoulders above everything else it was contemporary with, at the time it was made. It was the confluence of strong artistic vision, technical excellence and innovation, and near-flawless execution, where all the parts managed to come together cohesively without any thematic friction - which rarely happens in any project. The reason X is better than 99% of stuff made today is because it was better than 99% of stuff made then, too.

Someone probably will make something as good as X this decade, but expecting most things to be as good as X is absurd. Remember Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything is crap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

Although I know what you're saying, I couldn't help thinking that X actually isn't genius, especially contrasted to how it was before the rocketman took over.

Please get help. Bringing up this entirely off-topic flamebait here is analogous to bringing up Donald Trump in a thread about copyright issues surrounding Donald Duck. Aka “something better reserved for reddit”.

People also tend to forget (or not know due to never having experienced that specific period themselves because young age or any other reason) that during the time when “things like X” were actually made, there was a point of oversaturation (without much evolution happening), and the public got tired of it and moved on to something more unexplored.

Examples: pop-punk in early to late 00s, photorealism in paintings in 1900s, “boomer shooter” videogames of late 90s/early 00s, etc. I don’t see photorealism in paintings having a massive comeback or a nostalgia wave right now, but pop-punk and “boomer shooter” videogames have been having pretty strong nostalgia waves recently, and they are doing quite ok.

And I 100% agree with your overall point, people remember titans like the original DOOM/Quake, but forget the flow of all the lazy unimaginative derivative slop that eventually started proportionally dominating those niches (which is what eventually spelled out the end of the mainstream hype era for those, and let us enter the “they dont make things like that anymore” fallacy stage).

I've often wondered if one reason we don't get amazing like-life paintings is because we have photos.

We do get those, search for photorealistic paintings. It's just that they are not very popular and people don't value them much. They tend to be interesting only in the context of being a painting that looks like a photo.

AFAIK with the proliferation of photography the people who used to do life-like painting of other people lost a lot of business and it seized being a profession.

I'm not literally saying we can't do them, just that as you say they're not popular.

People tear down beautiful things and replace them with crap, because what's wrong with the beautiful thing is that it wasn't made by them. They want to leave their mark, like a dog pissing on a lamp post. We see it all the time in software UI, so it doesn't surprise me that it also happens in architecture.

That's one opinion to hold if you are cynical enough or young enough not to remember stuff changing over time.

For example, if you are old enough to witness the transition you can remember how much a fresh breath of air was moving away from the clutter and pertinaciousness of post modernist interior design into the functional and comfortable minimalism then only to go the the next phase seeking some more cozy spaces once the minimalism begin feeling impersonal and cold and then the designers remember how cool and inspiring some stuff from the 60s and 70s were.

Aren't you sort of saying the same thing? The pursit of change for its own sake, rather than striving towards a (relatively) objective improvement does look a bit fruitless.

No, not at all. The styles don't change of its own sake, they change as people come up with ideas on how to address the problems of the last one. Each iteration solves something only to create its own problems that will be solved by the next iteration. Also, people revisit old ideas all the time.

Problem solving chain is only one force, there's also the desire force. As time change, people desire different things. At one point people may desire order if the world is too chaotic only to desire freedom later on when the world becomes too strict and rigid when trying to get things into order and all that reflects into the design of everything.

Another force would be economy and technology, old ideas that didn't work because the tech wasn't there yet are revisited or designs can be optimised for cost when times are tough. Tiny demons carved by hand on the facade are nice but when the demand for just getting into the plane at the cheapest cost is strong you can't make you airports to look like 1800s train stations.

> The styles don't change of its own sake, they change as people come up with ideas on how to address the problems of the last one.

I don't think this bit is true, or at least I don't believe these are "problems" being solved, when it comes to art. There are no problems, only changes. That's why being derivative is bad. It's a drive for change for its own sake.

Well, design is not something that exists on its own sake. Just like with UI design in computers, product or architectural/interior design solves problems. Aesthetics is a component of it but, function and communication is too. People want big windows, designers figure it out. People want cheap places that can be reconfigured for function, designers figure it out, people want cheap sunglasses and designers figure it out, people want watches that makes them look serious and designers figure it out, - you get the idea. They do all that within the framework of technology and materials and as the tech and materials availability change they find new solutions.

BTW, this idea of "designers just make eye candy" is something I keep seeing in the AI Hype train folks. They enter a prompt and the AI generates an image of, let's say a chair that looks cool at first glance and they think that AI is ready to take away the design jobs. They are deeply mistaken because they have no idea what the designers actually do and what it takes to design a product and no, it's not about coming up with something to sit on and looks of a particular type, out of the blue.

> They enter a prompt and the AI generates an image of, let's say a chair that looks cool at first glance and they think that AI is ready to take away the design jobs

Well, I'd say this is wrong, but not for that reason. The advances you list are all really engineering and materials science advances. Once an engineer shows you how to design a skyscraper using a framed tubes, you can draw 100 of them. AI might be able to do the drawing, but it probably won't be doing the structural engineering / materials science in the same ways.

It works the other way around, the designers design and the engineers are figuring out how to build it. Unless of course you can shove it down the throat of the customers, then you can have engineers make you an apparatus and call it a product.

The designers usually have some understanding on what's possible and they work with the engineers to tweak their design for feasibility.

No one cares about the 100 hundred drawings of skyscrapers. The soviets did it with the commie blocks, although practical its nowhere nearly as desirable as having a neighbourhood designed by people thinking beyond structural engineering.

> people thinking beyond structural engineering

It's not "beyond". It's just a different job, and generally speaking, one with a lower bar to entry. Doesn't mean it's not useful, but I think it's silly to talk as though this sort of design is so significant. Plenty of ugly buildings exist; all designed by architects.

Well, these days you plug the numbers into the computer and can tell you how to build your design. For most purposes, the engineering is there only because of associations or organisations lobbying the government making it compulsory.

It's not an original work after all, the computations are modelled into the software and it tells you if it will meet the requirements.

> For most purposes, the engineering is there only because of associations or organisations lobbying the government making it compulsory.

Definitely not. An engineer signs off the safety etc. All the non-cosmetics. You're right that it's computerised, but that's because it's not fashion - there's an objective "better" and so that can be programmed. Fashion, not so much. Until AI.

Try living in a dodgy Victorian conversion first. I'll take almost any new build over them.

Do you believe that all beautiful things are dodgy Victorian conversions?

I think the UK overprotects "historical" stuff to the point of degrading the life of it's people, and not in a small way.

This wouldn't be a problem if we built houses in proportion to population growth (whether through birth rate or immigration) - but we have so many landlords in parliament, that we can't really do anything that would threaten to reduce the growth of house prices.

Judging the quality is possible to an extent IMHO. You can see if an artist practiced their skills and techniques and you can see if precise pieces were done with care for instance.

From the pictures it looks like there are parts that show real care but other parts that are kind of messy and maybe more half finished projects.

That's just production precision, which I appreciate but many significant art pieces don't have much of that. If you don't like it, you don't like it(I don't like it too, I value mastery) but that doesn't say much about the quality or more importantly significance of the art.

Having at least one objective characteristic somewhere, somehow, is more than zero though.

I don't know, it's like a having an essay with no grammatical errors. Does it make the essay any good? Sure, having a great essay written with lots of typos and grammatical errors can be hard to consume but on the other hand we, in the internet age, have some great stories called "copypasta" written horribly and people love those. They are culturally significant artefacts of a time period of the internet culture and their production is not so good.

We have "HODL" which is a cultural phenomenon, which itself is a typo.

We have numerous memes images of cultural significance which is made with very low production value because their original makers had a great idea but not very good image editing skills.

I don't think that "production correctness" or "precision" is a metric that art can be evaluated on.

In the case of an essay the quality can maybe be seen in correct grammar but mostly by the writer being able to convey the story well, make sentences people want read and other things.

A cultural phenomenon is not art in my opinion. I think things can be made by people and found interesting and well liked without them being art just as a natural phenomenon can be interesting and well liked.

Production precision is just one of the examples I gave. There are other things that can indicate the quality as well. In this particular case the art is painting and sculpting and those can be done with more and less quality.

Of course there is modern art where it can seem like anything can be considered art but even in those cases there is often work and talent involved. Maybe it's through the selection of which works to make public or the storytelling with the art pieces or coming up with new experiments.

But isn't it just your opinion that a quality work of art should appear to have a certain consistent high level of care throughout?

It seems possible, if not likely, these were unfinished pieces that were in-progress when the artist died. Perhaps many of these would never have been finished no matter how long the artist lived. You might look at one and see what had gotten a lot of attention and what hadn't, maybe even see what had gotten attention first and what later, and wonder about exactly why. It's pretty interesting, IMO.

Probably one good way to value art is its impact on the viewer. So that's obviously very subjective. But surely a variety is good. Or put it this way... the skillfully and richly crafted masterworks that you view in a museum are certainly worthy works of art. But if skillfully and richly crafted masterworks that you view in a museum are one of only a small set of forms of worthy works of art, you're putting art in a small, confining pen. That would really limit the impact it can have. Which, I think, means that's just a far too limiting a view of art.

Just to make a counter point - you're suggesting a completely modernist tabula rasa view of aesthetics, which doesn't seem to gel with observed human aesthetic preferences, whether in fine art or architecture. Our reactions to aesthetics are obviously culturally mediated, but that doesn't mean that they are exclusively culturally derived (culture too of course springing from shared evolution). Cross culturally to pick an uncontroversial example, we show a high expressed preference for windows, higher ceilings, less cramped rooms etc. This extends also to proportionality, symmetry, ornamentation etc. The very recent historic move away from aesthetically pleasing buildings has much more to do with economics and the priorities of industrial and post industrial society, than the choices of the citizens who have to live in frequently grim and alienating environments.

Andries Kerpestien has a good series on some universal expressed aesthetic preferences in relation to architecture - https://casualrealism.substack.com/p/architecture-and-evolut...

I agree with you completely about aesthetics, it's just that not all art or design has to serve the function of pleasing people. In some cases people want to induce fear, disgusts, sadness, sense of control, of greatness, of smallness, of oppression etc.

I might humbly suggest that architects and architecture should rarely if ever be employed to induce fear, disgusts, sadness, loss of control, smallness, oppression etc. That fact that it all too frequently does so, especially in public housing and industrial architecture is my point exactly.

I think the value in art like this is that it isn’t a matter of skill but of dedication. Should art be something that only the 1% most skilled and well trained artists can ever hope to be celebrated for?

It is objectively bad. Absolutely.

Compare it to the TikTok house that was amazing and was going to be painted over before TikTok saved it https://www.tiktok.com/@samcooperrealtor/video/7200527242441...

Nothing in the house has substance. Like a tunnel or a building or if it was mosaics. These last 'forever' so you can move past beauty and see the creation of a thing.

A lot seems to be papier-mâché, even around the fireplaces. The fireplaces themselves might be clay. It comes down to who he was for the greater value. You go there to hear his story. But it's not a "wonderland", a type of performance art perhaps.

End of the day it is their money along with the crowd funders, in 50 years time it'll be historic simple because it is by definition.

As they say, one man's wonderland is another man's trash

Another comment that is dead (i clicked vouch fwiw) linked to this as comparison, another house of art that was to be painted over but was apparently saved:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLyE3L8d/

My jaw literally dropped open that someone would want to paint over it. I did not get that feeling looking at the pics in the article.

People are constantly slathering paint all over shit. Blows me away. Not only that, they will pile on layer after layer so as to build a crust that has no hope of being aesthetic ever again.

Sometimes people with an IQ come along and remove the paint and everyone is flabbergasted at the beauty that was underneath.

Sorry, I get triggered by naive paint slinging.

Art is inherently subjective, and it gets protected status exactly because a lot of folks think like you.

In a similar, but much more impressive vein for outside art: https://www.autour-du-palais-ideal.com/discover/ideal-palace...

Wow, that is amazing! Thanks for sharing. Never heard of that one. Huh, I wouldn't necessarily it's more impressive -- it could be hard to compare -- but they look quite similar in terms of technical aptitude, despite the differences in materials. Have you visited? I would love to visit! Haha! :)

I haven't had the chance to visit, sadly; I only learned about it from watching "The Ideal Palace" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7248884/) which helps understand the scale of the Palace.

I thought this was gonna be about Darger, but no, it's about another eccentric, formally untrained artist with a secret hoard of self-created outsider art.

Good. The world is a better place for having had more such people in it.

1000%

>>The world is a better place for having had more such people in it.

I don't know how to phrase it without it coming across as rude, but like......why? The dude was a hoarder who created a bunch of really mediocre if not downright ugly art in his own apartment. Which part of it exactly is making the world better?

Because he had a vision he was committed to. Even if he didn't execute it with the highest of skill, even if he had other shit going on that he didn't know how to handle... that's not something everybody has. Most of us just go along to get along. Having the courage to find your own purpose and commit to that come what may is rare enough to be celebrated on its own. There's a reason why figures like Wesley Willis and Terry Davis are so beloved.

Because not everybody thinks it's mediocre or downright ugly. You ain't the whole world, your personal judgements are not absolute truths that determine reality. So it's getting better for the people who enjoy it. Your negativity about it notwithstanding.

To be precise: the part you're seemingly unable to appreciate is what's making the world better. I guess that's why you're on the grumpy side? Hahahaha! :)

Is it really negativity to call this ugly?

https://ibb.co/pfJSdxn

Yeah, I think it is. Whether it's ugly or not is subjective, that's surely a negative judgement.

But the point is the overall comment in the bad comments ones is vastly negative. It's just such a negative ugly attitude. You don't want to be around that: it's like being around an abusive person, a bully, someone who puts you down, mocks you, belittles you, diminishes you.

Don't you see that kind of thing as something wrong, and to be avoided? That's what I'm against here. When I see that attitude in comments: I just think it's gratuitous negativity, there's no need for it.

Not that it matters (as it should be obvious morally/ethically from a human point of view) but it's against the guidelines for Show too: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is, but don't be gratuitously negative.

>>that's surely a negative judgement.

And like..........maybe I'm being weird, but........what's wrong with that?

>>Don't you see that kind of thing as something wrong, and to be avoided?

No, I always saw HN as a community where you can freely(but politely) express your views and discuss them. It would never occur to me that calling some wall art ugly could be compared to being around an abusive person.

>>When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is, but don't be gratuitously negative.

Calling a painting ugly is hardly "gratuiously negative". Maybe it's a bit too direct, but it's not a "show HN" post, I'm not taking anyone down, we're discussing art left by someone who left this in their apartment and passed away - I don't think it should bother anyone any more than calling Picasso or Rembrant's art "ugly". We disagree of course, but again, the comparison to being near an abusive person seems uncalled for.

>>But the point is the overall comment in the bad comments ones is vastly negative.

The overall point was - how is being a hoarder, making a bunch of art in your apartment that they don't even show anyone ever, "making the world a batter place" - someone else said it's inspirational, I don't really see how either but at least I now know there is a different point of view.

It's like too negative. It's like abusive. You when you have something positive and celebratory and happy, and you have all these people come trying to hate on that. That's what I'm seeing there, that's what I don't like. Gratuitous, abusive negativity that is jealous of happiness and ends up even derailing good discussion. Hahaah! :)

So, how does a “Minotaur head” differ from just being a bull?

If it was attached to a minotaur body before it was decapitated, it's a minotaur head.

Can't argue with that.

In that particular case the eyes and the teeth look more human than bovine to me. I don’t know if that’s a general rule for Minotaurs though.

Most of this looks like falling apart trash to me. The lion is pretty good though.

Totally clickbait title though. Is that allowed here?

How is it a clickbait title? It's a totally accurate one. Is this comment allowed? Hahaha! :)

It strongly implies that the work was protected while it was a rental, which would be pretty outrageous and is also not true.

Hahaha! :) It doesn't imply that at all. That would be: gets protected status in rental Hahaha! :)

Your misinterpreted implication is your responsibility. You can't blame other people for what you read into there that's not there! That behavior is confusion about personal responsibility and interpersonal boundaries. Hahaha! :)

Also reminded me of William Ricketts near Melbourne

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ricketts

I think the tittle is clickbait. The “rental” part while technically true (as in the art was made while it was a rental) isn’t true for the protection- it only got it after it was bought.

I don’t get why anyone not involved would care. However if someone would tell me that “hey, one of your tenants went a bit crazy and ruined your apartment, but also it is now protected and you can’t fix it” I would think I was living in a clown world.

However if the passed tenants family picked up the rent after the artist passing and then bought the property from me, I wouldn’t care

The title was shortened to fit the limit. Rental was the way to get the same meaning. You don't expect them to fit the entire situation in the title, do you? That ain't clickbait, that's just brevity. Hahaha! :)

It's definitely deliberate clickbait. It was written to imply that it's still a rental. A non-clickbait title could have been "One man's artistic wonderland, created in secret, given protected status."

Hahahaha! :) Sure, I get some vagaries of English can be hard to grasp, but you need to remember: I wrote it, I know what it was written to imply, it was definitely not written to be clickbait, you don't know what it was written to imply, and it doesn't imply what you say. Hahahahaha! :)

The meaning of One man's artistic wonderland, created in rental, gets protected status is that it was created in a rental, not that it still is. Hahahaha! :)

Would you prefer the other one? One man's artistic wonderland gets protected status in rental

BTW how does it matter to you if it's a rental or not? I think you must have rentals on your mind, right? Hahaha! :)

This reminds me of Gunter Sachs‘ apartment in St Moritz which Roy Lichtenstein decorated, and Cesar Manriques lava bubble house on Lanzarote, and Salvador Dalis beach house in Portlligat. I think living in art is amazing and livable art worth preserving. If you have a chance, you can visit them, unfortunately not Gunter Sachs‘ apartment.

Don't know the others but we visited Cesar Manriques' place 2 weeks ago and we all enjoyed it very much, including small kids (not in theme park way just to be clear).

Yeah its not visit of classics in Louvre but that guy sure knew how to build artistically pleasing gardens and surroundings, the design just 'clicked' with all of us immediately.

I wonder if the artist renting the apartment can get their decoration acknowledged as an 'improvement' to the apartment in which case they could require the next tenant (or property owner) to pay the artist some amount when signing the rental contract (in some EU countries at least.)

That's not a thing in the UK. The bulk of tenancies here are ASTs, which make most sense over a period of a few years (rather than decades). Our society is predicated on buying your own home while you're young, so a culture of tenancies where the tenant owns the fixtures and fittings doesn't really make sense here.

Also the artist is dead, his heirs were far more interested in preserving it than extracting money from it, the art is of the type a landlord is more likely to cover with white gloss paint than market as an enhancement, and an apartment in Birkenhead now apparently destined to be a community creative studio probably had very little value both before and after the outsider art was added.

Is it a freehold, a leasehold, or a share of freehold? Couldn't find that info in the article.

I wonder if the landlord was compensated. The costs associated with owning a listed building are much higher than if it's unlisted.

Reminds me of a mini City Museum a bit, in St Louis.

Gawd so many neghead anti art comments here on this thread. Lighten up people! Or just stop and have a bit of humility...it's okay to not like or get something, but you don't have to pretend yours is the only possible view, nor that it's shit/awful/terrible and ruining everything.

Just express it like a personal opinion. And it's far more interesting if you talk about why you reacted the way you did: what did you like? What did you dislike? Why? Why do you think it looks shit? How do you feel when you see it?

That shit is gold interesting stuff!

These overly neghead takes are not just boring, and often abusive in their presumption of absoluteness or open denigration of other's opinions -- they are not intellectually curious -- what this place is meant to be about.

It's perfectly okay to have a negative reaction, but be more interesting and curious in your investigation of why you feel that way and clear in your expression of that. Or just don't say anything at all because you just bring this awful, dirty negativity. And it makes you look really bad. And I'm sure a lot of you are not like that.

I want to know your negative take. But I want to know why beyond you expletives, pompous sweeping proclamations and abusive language against art/artists and other's opinions. Capiche?

Absolutely amazing. Also reminds me a bit of James Hampton.

https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/throne-third-heaven-natio...

I had the exact same thought! I just saw this portion in DC earlier this year. You can get quite close to it.

The crowdfunded trust bought the building - wonder if it was sold at a premium (to reflect the value of the art) or a discount (to reflect the Grade II listing limitations).

Using the phrase 'Outsider Art' to be more inclusive, classic...

That's literally what it's called and has nothing to do with being "inclusive". It refers to someone "outside of the established art scene" and if you study anything related to art, you'll usually encounter it in the form of works created by people in mental asylums: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art

E.g. when studying digital archival this was mentioned in the context of digitizing text because there were examples of "outsider poetry" that were written in highly irregular places all over the page and included layers of annotations. That creates interesting problems when trying to serialize and index the text.

https://elephant.art/class-visual-arts-barriers-need-broken/

In the linked wiki it makes no reference to your claimed origin, 'The term outsider art was coined in 1972 as the title of a book by art critic Roger Cardina' so my point stands, people inside the art world, a closely guarded circuit, decided that the way to define those natural artists who did not have formal training as 'Outsiders', which to me, is not a very pleasant way to describe a people that don't conform to existing paradigms, I don't accept the division, you are of course free to call it what you like.

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