Self-made worlds

by Roger Manley

The works depicted in Self-Made Worlds - some very well-known, others presented for the first time - challenge long-standing ideas about what art is and what it can be. From Le Palais Ideal, built in a small French village by the mailman Cheval, to the Hubcap Ranch by Litto Damonte of California, to Nek Chand's hundreds of human and animal sculptures made from waste and recycled materials and set in a massive landscaped rock garden in northwest India, Self-Made Worlds is an international tour of some of the most remarkable manifestations of the idiosyncratic, eccentric glory of the human imagination. Ever since the first cave dweller decorated the walls with charcoal and ocher, people have sought to elaborate on their immediate surroundings in ways that balance the relationships between themselves and the world they live in. Scattered across the globe are remarkable individuals variously termed "outsiders," "obsessive visionaries," and "folk artists," for whom the everyday conventions