What is the value of an insane man's ramblings and do they constitute art?

I imagine the Surrealists would have grinned slyly with a told-you-so nod and continued on their way.

Personally, I'm of the not-art camp in that it seems more product-of-insanity than product-of-artist. Does this mean that I think brilliance and insanity are necessarily disparate? No. But then, this piece fails in other aspects also.

It is likely that the piece was never intended for an audience. More like a diary entry than graffiti - maybe like a diary entry penned in blood: painstaking, significant to the author, but still a diary entry.

Art, from my perspective, is fundamentally a relational activity. That is, the piece d'art, the observer and the reaction/thought/experience make up a tripartite relationship.

Art, from my perspective, is also fundamentally intentional. It may produce unintended results, but it did have an intention.

I suppose, then, that the curator could usurp the 'artist' title in this case - but that's a different issue altogether.
 

I can't help thinking that if Jeannot was alive, had a moment of sanity, and saw the attention his work was getting, he would be quite flattered.
I think intention is important, but there isnt much intention in a found object like a urinal, which proudly sits in a museum. It really depends on what one sees as art.. art can be much bigger than just three letters.
It's pretty creepy that a pharmaceutical company that sells a drug for schizophrenia owns the work.
I would hang a panel in my home.
 

I have a hard time with calling this "Art". I agree with Loren, that art when created has an intention, or at least the creator of it intended the piece to illicit a particular response.

This doesn't in my opinion Qualify.
 

THIS ARTWORK IS BEAUTIFUL!

ART IS AN ATTEMPT TO OBJECTIFY THE WORLD AS THE PERSON SEES OR KNOWS IT.
CAVE DRAWINGS EXISTED LONG BEFORE ANY OTHER ART. EVEN ARTAUD (WHOSE WORK IS BRILLIANT) WAS CONSIDERED "MAD" AS WELL.
I BELIEVE THAT THIS WAS JEANNOT'S ATTEMPT TO OBJECTIFY HIS WORLD WHETHER WE THINK IT IS ART OR NOT. THERE IS DEFINITELY A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ART AND MADNESS.

PAUL VALERY SAID "...THE MORE ABSTRACT THE ART, THE MORE PERSONAL!

WHO SAYS YOUR OUVRE IS THE ONLY WAY TO JUDGE ARTWORK?
 

Hey its not that crazy. There are lots of people like this out there. In fact this guy that lives down the street from my house has anti-semitic and racist scrawling covering every flat surface on his front lawn. As far as I know none of his stuff has made it into a gallery in Paris. It is unlikely that it ever will. However if he kicks the bucket for whatever reason I wouldn't mind buying some of the signs for my personal collection. The insanity is what makes this sort of art interesting. A window into madness. I shouldn't need to list off all the artist who have gone mad and thus become popular. Quite a few books have been written on the subject. I don't think that there is a question of whether this constitutes art. The question would be "is this valuable and worth the fuss?" Since this question is subjective, it can only be answered by the viewer. There will be people who agree that this constitutes art, and those who don't. What is most interesting about this to me is that this guy apparently did nothing else in his life to garner a reputation as an artist. He was a farmer from what has been stated. So there is no inherent talent which is objectified. It is sheer madness which has gotten his floor in a gallery. Perhaps in this case the madness is the art. The curator has capitalized on this by creating a show out of it. Which may be considered a mad idea in and of itself. This work may not inspire great paintings but it does offer a glimpse into the relationships between madness and the human need to create.
 

I think this is art. Art is creation, nature is the first artist of our DNA etc. Madness is the subjective part of the equation here, Art is always objective, even this language is in form of objects, alphabetical, digital artifacts. For a person whom identifies with nature as part of self instead of separate from self the mad man is one who is incapable of identifying the self as part of. For a person at war with nature and in denial of nature being the higher self, it is the man that merges with nature that he fears and sees as ill. What I'm saying is the man who wants to control all of nature in all ways. The man that wants nature to completely submit to his will is the Megalomaniac. To a megalomaniac a schizophenic is mentally ill. but to the schizophrenic it is the megalomaniac that makes him most paranoid. The megalomaniac is the insane one to the paranoid schizophrenic and visa versa. The scientific megalomaniacs do wish to create the absurd mind control machines and have been known to research the subject of the mind and ways to influence the behavior through many "machines". one could say that language itself is a machine. a vehicle for us to transmigrate our thoughts to one in others minds. The TV is a machine/art with great influence. all art is madness. the only sanity left on the planet are the animals. they remain in balance while we play god with hyper-creativity/art. Is Ray Kurzweil a madman? He is obsessed with immortality. He believes technology (which is art) will make us able to regenerate our bodies soon. He is eating tons of supplements to preserve his body long enough in hopes that the technology will advance to that degree before he misses the immortality boat.