Eventually, though, others were permitted to buy, and now the quarter is about 50-50 artist and nonartist.

In the tradition of the painter's painter or the poet's poet, M. C. Escher is the nonartist's nonartist.

"Inherent Vice" also includes some pleasant photographs by Bill Albertini and Melissa Wolf, as well as photographs by Ted Serios, "a 76-year-old nonartist."

Roughly painted on sewn-together fabric, the greenish black field is punctuated by starlike dots: it looks like a giant sign made by a nonartist who had a close encounter of the third kind.

At Malca, a canvas measuring 10 by 36 feet and bearing a stack of white rectangles topped by a flying-saucer-like form, looks like a giant sign made by a nonartist who had a close encounter of the third kind.