Art brut has the talent to put us in an awkward position. This is because it is founded on unbalance. Combining two criteria of different nature in its definition, art brut is like a pair of scales, whose pans have to be constantly counterbalanced, which subjects us to perpetual oscillation. When one of the loads weighs more heavily than the other one, we leave immediately the domain of art brut. Too often we undermine the notion of art brut by stressing only one of the criteria that constitute it. Most frequently we tend to forget (or pretend to) that a work can be without aesthetic interest even though its author is not a professional artist. Not all builders are Simon Rodia and can build Watts Towers. This kind of reasoning, which favours the sociological criterion over the aesthetic one, when it is not simply based on cheap populism, is the consequence of our own laziness. The social origin of a creator, his cultural identity and his lack of artistic education are among the things that are more easily verifiable than the degree of invention in the artist’s work. In the second case we lack tangible proof and our judgement depends on our capacity of tolerance as to the disturbing strangeness of the work. This also has to do with what we call taste or sensibility, although it cannot be reduced to it. This is why it is wrong to believe that the aesthetic criterion is only a subjective matter. 
In the definition of art brut, which succeeds in placing side by side the restrictive criterion, the sociological one and the liberating criterion, the aesthetic one, it is the latter that constitutes the weak link. Dubuffet’s theory is not sufficiently advanced on this point. abcd, since its creation, attempts to direct its research in this direction. 
A work of art brut is, to us, as a bottle floating in the sea. It can be recognized as such in that it does not attempt to enter the social exchange. The fact that its message does not seem to have any addressee only reinforces its appeal. To begin with, a work of art brut is not made for us. As soon as we try to possess it in one way or the other, we modify it, making it enter more or less the field of culture. We salute all those who are not afraid to be caught between two stools.