This
site shows photographs from a
road trip through France in
September, 2007. It features art by untrained but dedicated artists.
This road trip was inspired by the book "Fantasy
Worlds"
by Deidi Von
Schaewen and John Maizels. It is an awesomely great book. Occasionally
on this site, I will quote from it. After reading that book, it seemed
like a pretty good road trip could be assembled from just the French
sites alone. The links above are in the order we visited them.
To plan this trip, I put up a map and marked where all the sites were.
There were way more than could be visited in a three-week road trip,
but there were clumps of them along the Western side of France. In
addition, the Palais Ideal was in Lyon, across the country, so we
had to go there too. That was close to Lausanne, home of the Art Brut
museum, which you must see if you like this sort of art. In a previous
trip, we saw La Fabuloserie South of Paris, which is almost as amazing
as the Art Brut museum. You must go there too.
More information
Here are some more sites about outsider art in France, or at least
nearby:
Included are directions for
getting to these places (some are hard to
find) and links to more information. If you want to drive, use Google
Maps to get a general idea, and then get one of those detailed French
road atlases. A Michelin map doesn't have the details.
If you are from the USA, be aware that in France there are seemingly
100 little towns per square inch. If they put them all on a map, the
map
would be solid black. More to the point, road direction signs do not
list all the towns that are coming up on the road. Instead, they might
list a few of the larger, closer ones. If you are looking for a small
town, you won't see a sign for it until you are almost there. To get
there, find a larger town, and navigate to it. To do so, you probably
have to navigate a chain of towns. For example, if you are going to
Town D from Town A, via Town B and Town C, look for Town A, then look
for Town B, and so forth. You'll catch on. Allow plenty of extra time
to find places.
