Arthur Bispo do Rosario rarely slept. He worked all day to replicate every object in space, made from common materials such as cardboard and thread. And at night, when he closed his eyes, he was visited by angels who told him what to do next.

Bispo do Rosario was no ordinary man. Although the American Society classifies him as an artist – exhibiting the objects he made in vivid new exhibition – From an early age, Bispo was sure that Jesus was Christ. On Christmas Eve 1938, he presented himself at a Benedictine monastery in Rio de Janeiro, explaining that he had come to judge the living and the dead.

Instead, he was arrested and declared clinically insane. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and without financial resources, Bispo was confined to mental institutions for the remaining fifty years of his life.

He treated these institutions as improvised workshops, tirelessly pursuing the mission entrusted to him by the angels. He embroidered old sheets with thread salvaged from the uniforms of ex-prisoners, embellishing the stained fabric with everything he knew about human anatomy and the outlines of every ship he had seen as a signalman in the Brazilian navy. Other items were made in a circle by wrapping thread around cleaned metal or wood: bow and arrow, paint roller, shoe horn, cattle brand. Everything was easy to recognize, if not by the shape, then by the neatly embroidered label.

Most spectacular of all was the mantle he made for himself, which he intended to wear at the Annunciation. The heavy clothing was emblazoned with his embroidery of everything from a piano to a ping-pong table, as well as the entire alphabet of naval signal flags.

Bispo wore this outfit late in life when journalists appeared who took an interest in his work (which filled eleven solitary cells in the asylum where he was confined). None of the reporters were there to announce the Second Coming. Instead, their articles proclaim his artistic genius—the supernatural giftedness of a madman—establishing the pattern for a posthumous reputation recently confirmed in American Society.

The artistry of Bishop’s work is undeniable. An American Society exhibit would be equally at home at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or MoMA. And there are countless ways his work can be positioned culturally, whether by calling it outsider art or comparing it to Arte Povera.

But does it really matter if Bishop’s work is comparable in quality to Bill Traylor or Alighiero Boetti? Is there any value in interpreting his objects art-historically, recapitulating the self-congratulatory postmodern parlor game of scolding the parochialism of previous generations? Or is the urge to domesticate Bishop’s work degrading? Is it another form of closure?

Whatever the monks and the medical establishment thought of Bishop, and whatever curators and critics think today, he was remarkably clear about his calling. And whether he was the Messiah or not, his calling was important.

As Bispo explained to a social worker in a 1988 interview, he sought to “represent the existence of the Earth.” The mission he believed the angels had given him was to create a simulacrum of the cosmos that he could arrange in preparation for the final judgment.

The elements of this encyclopedic simulacrum were recalled from memory, found in his surroundings and conjured up in his extraordinary imagination. They were organized in a space that he could command, in free cells that made his confinement even more lonely, and his lonely calling deeper. Bispo worked independently and uniquely on designing human existence so that the human condition could be evaluated as a whole.

Bispo do Rosario did not need to be Jesus Christ – let alone an artist – to deliver this judgment to the living and the dead. His good work is here for us all to see and reckon with. Bow and arrow, paint roller, shoe horn, cattle stamp: what are we going to do with them, and what to do next?