Mental illness, developmental disability, andtheir relationship to the creation of art.

Examples of what we’re talking about:

Mental illness: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD,clinical depression (ie, depression as a disorder)

Developmental disability: autism, Down syndrome,retardation

What we’re not talking about.(For this week.)

• There are many, many artists who have had their talentattributed to mental illness. For this week, we’re only speakingof artists who have been conclusively proven to suffer from anillness, not those that we can just speculate about.

There are two distinct categories of artists we’llbe talking about this week.

• Trained, “insider” artists who also happenedto have a disability or illness

• Untrained, “outsider” artists, who have/had adisability or illness.

This becomes a very tricky point. Trained artists have inherited a whole historyof art and a vocabulary of creating that may or may not clash with their owninstincts as informed by their illness or disorder. Untrained artists, whiletechnically unschooled in art (perhaps in anything) have more than likely hadinput from well-meaning doctors and social workers who have encouraged theirwork in one way or another.

Nobody creates anything in a vacuum.

Treatment of mental disorders,late 1700s, early 1800s.

• Primarily left to the family and church to care for them• People who had disorders were seen any of the following:

EvilA burden

An object of dread or fearPossessedDiseased

Sub-humanAn eternal childA holy innocent

While treatment of persons with these disorders has certainly improved,the above list still informs contemporary opinion and treatment.

A brief history of the treatment of mental disorders

Rise of institutions and asylums.

• In the mid to late 1800s, Western Europe and the USstarted to move to a system of institutions andasylums for housing people with mental illnessesand disorders. Children who showed symptoms weregenerally separated from their families (with theirfamily’s consent and approval) and sent to live instructured school environments, often alongsidechildren suffering from physical illnesses anddisabilities (ie, blindness, etc).

• Many of these institutions were rather progressive,kind, and humane - at this point.

The Athens Mental Health Center,aka, the Athens Lunatic Asylum

Hans Prinzhorn• Psychiatrist and art historian, 1886-1933

We can see his interest in the institutionalized as an example of humane and respectfultreatment.

Example from Prinzhorn collection.

• Paul Goesch: Horus Dismembered, nd

The Prinzhorn Collectionof the Psychiatric University Hospital in Heidelberg

• Gathered between 1919-1922, this collection has ~ 5,000 pieces of art in it.

Adolf Wolfli

• “Discovered” by Dr. Walter Morgenthaler at the Waldau Hospital, who went on to publish a volume ofhis work.

Adolf Wolfli: The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, 1917From "Books with Songs and Dances"

“primitive” art

Pablo PicassoThe Three Musicians, 1921

Art Brut - Jean Dubuffet

• A search for “authentic art” - both primitive (inc. children’s drawings) andpsychotic.

Eugenics movement(which also coincided with largest immigration to the US at that time)

Degenerate art show

• 1937, Nazi Germany: cast modern art as the result of “degenerate”minds. At the time, artists were very interested in the work of thosewith mental illness, but this show cast a chilling effect on that.

Shift in treatment ofinstitutionalized people.

(1930s - 1940s)

• What was once seen as a long-term but temporary sentencenow became permanent, with those with more severe forms ofdisabilities essentially being locked up and abandoned.

• The Depression and the World Wars complicated matters,draining money and resources away from the care of the ill andtowards other causes.

It wasn’t until the 1960s and1970s that major changeswere made to help those in

institutions.Pharmaceuticals were phased in as inhumane treatments such as

lobotomy and ECT were phased out.

Today, art programs to workwith patients in both in-patient

and out-patient treatmentcenters are quite common.

For instance, Creative Growth in Oakland, CA, whichruns a gallery for participants to show their work in. Thefield of “outsider art” has grown to the point wheregalleries aggressively comb such programs looking fornew talent.

• Martin Ramirez: Untitled, nd (1950s)

Martin Ramirez

• Super Chief, 1954

Judith Scott

• Blue Bird Pod, nd

Judith Scott

• Untitled, 1991-3

Judith Scott

What are some of thereoccurring images we see in

the work of untrained,mentally ill/disabled artists?

Obsessiveness

• Hiroyuki Doi: untitled drawing

• Eugene Andolsek: untitled, 1950-2003

The “horror vacui” - the “need to fill the page”

• Eugene Andolsek: untitled, 1950-2003

• Wesley Willis: Downtown Cityscapes, 1984

Distortion

• Lee Godle: A Head, nd

Conduit between God and the earth.

• PM Wentworth: Imagination Mars, c. 1940

Conduit between God and the earth.

• PM Wentworth: White Wall of Jerusalem, nd

Communication of a message, often via an invented language.

• Dwight Mackintosh: Untitled, nd.

• Dwight Mackintosh, Untitled, nd.

• Sam Gant: Untitled, nd

Insistent, almost nonsensical use of text.

• Wesley Willis: The Dust Brothers

These are of course traits that trained, not-ill artists often seek to add totheir work.

Picasso: Weeping Woman, 1937Distortion

Joseph Beuys: How to Explain Pictures to a Dead HareConduit between heaven and earth

In fact, much of modern and contemporary art appears to bear the marksof artists who are mimicking the insane.

Compare this…

Photograph of a bed of a man who was brought to be institutionalized

…to this.

Robert Rauschenberg: Bed, 1955

Or this…

• Liza Lou: The Kitchen, 1991-5

…to this.

• Adolf Wolfli: Musical Score, 1915

Regardless of its implications, there remainsthe notion of the “artistic temperament”

• Being moody, depressed, withdrawn or high-strung are all traitswe associate with an “artistic disposition.”

• It bears noting that no more than 2% of the population ofcommitted people ever create what can be considered art, evenby a very open definition.

• How does knowing that an artist suffered from mental illnessaffect your interpretation of their work?

Depression, of course, ended the lives of a number of well-known artists.

• Diane Arbus: Identical Twins, 1967

* Trained artists

Mark Rothko

• Mark Rothko: Red, brown, white, 1957• Knowing what how an artist died - specifically if he took his own life -

can often add a layer of interpretation to their life’s work that may ormay not be appropriate.

* Trained artists

This is a painting painted by Van Gogh in 1890.

This is the last painting Van Gogh created before hekilled himself.

Francesca Woodman

• On Being an Angel, 1977

Francesca Woodman

Ironically, during the timewhen institutionalization wasat its worst, psychotherapy

would become faddish for thegeneral public, all while

treatment of thoseinstitutionalized got worse

and worse.

Especially among artists, writers, and the “intellectual class,” it was quitecommon to at least experiment with psychotherapy and remains so today.

Lynn Hershman Leeson: Roberta in therapy, 1978

For some artists, mental illness is simply something to live with.Afflictions such as bi-polar disorder and OCD are fairly common.

• Dale Chihuly

The same can be said of some artists with physicaldisabilities.

• Chuck Close

The experience of having had or currently suffering from an illness canadd extra information for the viewer.

• Vanessa Beecroft: Piano Americano Beige, 1996

John Brewster, Jr.(untitled), 1805

For others, the experience of being mentally ill completely pervades the interpretation of their work.

• Yayoi Kusama: Self-Obliteration by Dots, 1968

• Yayoi Kusama: Mirror Room, 1991

• Yayoi Kusama: Accumulation of Stamps, 1963

John Grigely: Nine Green Conversations, 2001

For some, a career becomes split into “before” and “after.”

• Willem de Kooning: Woman, 1949-50

“Late” De Kooning

• Willem De Kooning: Untitled, 1987

“Late” De Kooning

• Willem De Kooning: Untitled, 1985