Outsider Art (spontaneous outcomes) by COLIN RHODESChapter 2 – Art by the Insane

Insane art has been used, not for artistic merit sometimes, but to illustrate different forms of insanity. There were landmark exhibitions of ‘Psychotic art’ at Bethlem Royal in Beckenham, 1900 and 1913.There was the appropriation of the idea of insane art by Expressionists and Dadaists (Zurich). In Heidelberg there was the study of the products of schizophrenics as a means of understanding mental illness. There were memories of days of health. Prinzhorn believed that drawings of those in extreme states of schizophrenia provided access into that psyche. Prinzhorn claimed to be aesthetically neutral. A featured artist who was depressive detailed visual hallucinations. One patient believed he could understand the language of birds. Genzel was an insane artist who was a petty criminal who had a leg amputated. He was given wood to make carvings by his doctors. He said the wood had hypnosis. Freiherr von Wieser kept his eyes closed for a day. Woelfli wrote ‘From The Cradle To The Grave’ (1908-1912). Woefli went into his own universe which was for him more authentic than the real world. For the modern artist, ‘alienation occurs because of painful self-analysis.’ (p 82). Cf The alienation of the schizophrenic involves submission to delusions. Surrealists headed towards creation of a state of madness. ‘Madness, in Surrealist terms, was a metaphor for absolute freedom.’...The insane refuse to be cured. The prison is outside the asylum, liberty is to be found inside. Psychosis was brought into the Surrealist camp with the mental collapse of poet and playwright Antonin Artaud. Degenerate Art: Entartete Kunst...Lombroso’s claim that genius is moral insanity and artists are therefore degenerate types. In insane

art Lombroso saw proof that actions of the insane, like savage people, were atavistic returns to earlier human development:- savage and mental patient have a fixation on absurd. Nordau: degenerates are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists and lunatics, they are often authors and artists. They can have a corrupting influence over a whole generation. There was a touring exhibition of degenerate art from 1937 in Germany, and many artist-patients who Prinzhorn and others encouraged were disappeared, maybe murdered. In Mauclair’s anti-Semitic book there was juxtaposition of modern art work and that of mental patients.Art as therapy: Perhaps new medications stifled creativity of earlier MH times. Patient art became banal. Notion that art must go with suffering, art can be an expression not a technique. In the early C20 physicians left patients alone and were happy to provide space for patients to spend the day, and maybe to flourish. Navratil’s Artists’ House where there is no order or timetable but artists can thrive through their creative efforts, which are produced because of their deviation from the norm. One resident liked to be praised and produced his best work when kind words were said. One man painted his house with figures, text and symbols (eg hammer and sickle and swastika) before he was institutionalised. One man interested in languages gets dictionaries of unknown languages (to him) and incorporates foreign words in his artwork. There were artists from Guggling. One patient did physiognomic studies during episodes of paranoid schizophrenia. One patient experimented with hallucinatory drugs and did pictures of mocking faces. This was a merging of creativity and lived experience.