Coromo In New York, parts 1647 - 1650

1647. A still life of a dead cat in an ornate vase might do just fine. One asks, “Why a dead cat,” and since there is no ready answer, the work is acceptable. If the artist says something like, “I paint the dead cat because one can never trust gardeners who water plants in the dark,” then all the better.

1648. The collector is searching for contradictions, inexplicable juxtapositions and outright insanity coupled with crudity of application and the lack of all technical skills. 

1649. Let us consider a classic case to illustrate the point: Adolph Wolfli. Wolfli was an inmate of an insane asylum is Switzerland at the beginning of the 20^th century. What brought him to the asylum? He was convicted of abusing children, and when he arrived at the asylum, being a violent person, he was held in solitary confinement, staying in solitary for many years.

 1650. He spent his entire life in the asylum, dying in 1930. As an outsider artist he had many great advantages, first how could he fail to succeed with a name like Adolph, which marks him, to modern sensibilities, as a man utterly cut off from the rest of the world. Then there was the question of his crime, the sort that, more than any other, excludes the perpetrator from the human community.