Brief

This is the Palais Idéal, near Lyon in France. It was designed and built by a postman who fell over an oddly shaped stone one day towards the end of the last century. He took it home and pondered. Then single-handedly, over a period of 33 years, Ferdinand Cheval gathered stones and rocks and with chicken wire, cement and lime, constructed what he termed ‘the queen of the world’. Cheval is just one of those outsiders who has been driven to artistic creation without understanding why. Cheval, his work and that of many other ‘artists’ who were marginalised from mainstream art feature in a new book published by Phaidon. Raw Creation: Outsider Art and Beyond costs 45 and is thoroughly entertaining.