"therapy which nourishes the soul through accepting the natural forces of the psyche, will be opening up the imagination not only to beauty, but to 'sublime terror.'"
-Hillman

 

ON ART AND PSYCHOSIS

written by Megan Taylor

"A drawing's basic ingredients are strokes or marks which have a symbolic relationship with experience, not a direct overall similarity with anything real." (Rawson 1) The act of creation is an act of manifestation, bringing an idea, a thought, an image, into a tangible state. This process, and the products that result from it, are known as Art. Art gives us insight and emotion that is beyond our contextual reality, something indescribable in words, lying within higher thought processes. Artists, in order to transcend the barrier between a waking state and the unconscious remove themselves from daily life and rational thought. For this very reason artists can be considered strange, out of the ordinary, or gifted.

All people have the ability to experience this state of being; some are more prone to it than others. This estrangement is also the very first symptom of mental illness. Once one remains in such a state for an extended period of time they are diagnosed as psychotic. Psychosis is defined as "any severe mental disorder in which contact with reality is lost or highly distorted." (Dictionary.com) To use this information in reference to aesthetics we can examine the most basic process of artistic creation and the most accessible, drawing. With the perspective of an artist and the rational of a philosopher one can access a proper understanding of what madness exposes about the process of creating Art. A drawing illustrates the artist’s conception of reality. This is apparent in the class instruction of drawing. A student must learn first to recognize what they see, then use what they see to create, to draft. Learning to draw also teaches one to think in visual forms. Even without instruction, repeatedly drawing exercises this part of the mind, increases skill, and opens up visual communication.

It’s necessary to layout a groundwork by over viewing the history and theories of madness and it’s relation to Art. In psychiatric institutions it's now very common for the use of art therapy. For the institutionalized of the 18th and 19th centuries only a small fraction produce drawings or paintings. The work was soon studied, traded between institutions, and observed scientifically. Therapists and Psychologists developed their own uses of Art Therapy to diagnose and treat patients. The act of expressing through movement and physical creation fully engages the body and mind to help resolve inner conflicts. Psychologists tend to view all of these works all as communication. Acting as an official interpreter of the afflicted's desires and status disallows them free expression or self-realization. Such a rational and analytical viewpoint also falls short of understanding.

Science and philosophy share a common trait: reason. Howver, science uses analysis to break down parts of the whole, which places people as objects. An understanding of man as a general concept is unattainable with this structured logic. The philospher Michel Foucault believed madness could only be understood through art or philosophy, and that is is on object of perception produced by social practices. In Marxist terms madness is alienation. “It is not because on is ill that one is alienated, but because one is alientated, one is ill.” (Horrocks/Jeutic 28).

Foucault questions the origin of psychology’s scientific status, he presents four distinct phases of social views on madness. In medieval times madness was drama, a part of life. Madness was in the world, death was always near and by bearing witness one gained wisdom. The lat 15th century brought Renaissance Folly, belief that madness was within man and exposed the error in reason itself. Approximately 1650-1800 was the Classical age of Confinement. Madness at this time was isolated, a spectacle to be observed and avoided. Often more to do with economic downfall, imprisoned were the unemployed, estranged, and unwanted all the same. Early on these people were treated like animals, subjected to bizarre treatments intended to discipline them. A reform came in the late 18th century where moral obligations founded the treatment of the mind, rather than the body. These methods continue to restrain the mad and now subjected them to psychiatric discourse. The last stage is the 1900s and the influence of Freud who made himself to be infallible before psychoanalysts. The ideas he stirred up became a basis for much of the psychoanalytic work of today.

The study of dreams and preconscious fantasies… gives us an idea of the special character of visual thinking. We learn that what becomes conscious is as a rule only the concrete subject matter of the thought, and that the relations between these various elements of this subject matter, which is what specially characterizes thought, cannot be given visual expression. Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it approximates more closely to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it is u unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and phylogentically.” (Ulman 287)

Freud influenced the work of Hans Prinzhorn, an Art historian and Physician. This is especially apparent in the emphasis on sexual drive and the equation of dream imagery with hallucination. Prinzhorn has developed a theory of 'authentic production.' He collected works from institutions all over Europe to identify what could be learned from them about Art. Prinzhorn came to believe the mentally ill produced art that was "instinctive, non-purposive - they do not know what they are doing." (Claussen 12)

In the productions of these mad hermetically confined artists Prinzhorn find 'authenticity' and 'primordiality.' He recognizes a similar cosmic feeling in the few 'authentic' works of contemporary artists. The Expressionists, by contrast, have nourished their own decadent art, which bears a merely formal resemblance to the art of the insane, with 'makeshift intellectual constructs.' (Claussen 13) This automatic style represents a direct link to the unconscious mind, however it assumes that the mentally ill were incapable of creating anything at will.

Prinzhorn's ideas opened the work of the insane up to the avant garde and soon the symbolist, expressionist, and surrealist movements each found grounds to identify with the work of the insane. For the surrealists, the ability to access the unconscious was the key to Art. The Symbolists felt "insanity allowed an approach to the essence of art due to its lack of awareness of academic commonplaces, making works the translation of a soul." (qtd in Lombardi III) Expressionism viewed madness as institution "a vision of the human being." (Lombardi III) In 1945 Dubuffet, inspired by the work of the insane, defined Art Brut as Art created by those with no proper schooling, no previous history of classical art and it's methods. "With respect to the theses of Dubuffet, a work of art brut is then a radically individual production, savage and strange to any model. It is a product of pure necessity, the only influence to which it is subjected is an imperious inner voice."(ABCD) Even Dubuffet's definition has loose grounds that may easily be shaken up and twisted to include non-Psychotic Art, and to exclude other Psychotic Art. Children's drawings are continuously included and compared to drawings from the institutionalized mad. The two sources differ in both skill and intent. The highly regarded artists, or technical draughtsman can fall victim to psychosis. A dominant example would be the work of Van Gogh, or Louis Wain. With both of these well-known and respected artists, the aesthetic style was said to have changed in their work as their illnesses progressed. The psychotic can be taught the formal chemistry of art. Adolph Wolfli was a mental patient who developed his skills and became highly regarded as an artist in higher circles, more than of a schizophrenic. (Lombardi)

Then we must establish a way to understand this work and assess it's meaning to us, if any. For one to access anything from another's work there has to be a commonly accepted set of rules or assumptions that can be recognized. Interpretation of these works must be cautious, the customary meaning has often been transformed by the psychosis. Even so, the language of graphic images can be learned more easily then verbal language. Verbal forms have moved past the ancient practice of having a direct resemblance to what they mean. Aesthetic forms utilize symbols that must resemble what they directly express. As a statement a drawing implies and illustrates the artist's conception of reality. "A language of form or structure creates it's own reality" (Rawson 7). This is important to keep in mind when observing or interpreting any work of art, they may not make sense in regards to anything else but true art has an "internal logical coherence all it's own."(Martin)
"[Art's] motive power comes from within the personality; it is a way of bringing order out of chaos - chaotic feelings and impulses within, the bewildering mass of impressions from without. It is a means to discover both the self and the world, and to establish a relation between the two. In the complete creative process, inner and outer realities are fused into a new entity."(Ulman 13)

With the help of meditation, drugs, extreme pain or near death experience one can achieve a heightened sensitivity to what we usually don't see, think, or feel. Such euphoric moments have been compared to madness. They share symptoms of mania, delusions or hallucinations, religious revelations, anxiety and a feeling of illness. Unnamed and esoteric this state is difficult to understand without experiencing it firsthand. In order to communicate through art the true essence of humanity, existence, realms and thought forms above and beyond social structures and language, there must be a detachment from how we are raised to think. When we speak of aesthetics in art there is more to witness than beauty. This is one of the most fundamental concepts that can be discovered through Psychotic Art. Emotions come in a wide variety, and each can be stimulated visually. Liberation of the mind can expose these polarities. Hillman stated, "therapy which nourishes the soul through accepting the natural forces of the psyche, will be opening up the imagination not only to beauty, but to 'sublime terror'." Art is useful because it enlightens us, those suffering dementia have a way of exposing what the rest of us are unable to see. David Maclagan stated "deep inside many 'ordinary' experiences of art making there are forms of 'madness', not necessarily pathological, but involving the temporary dissolution of many of the normal boundaries between inside and outside, real and imaginary, that in a more permanent form are characteristic of psychosis. This secret, invisible core of madness, affects any spectator open to it, rather than its more spectacular institutionalized versions, that constitutes the real link between art and madness."(Raw Vision)

Removing oneself from mathematical reasoning and the acquired acceptance of ‘the way things are’ engages a flexible world view adequate for creative exploration. Madness is one version of this detachment, usually an extreme one, the psychosis opens up an uninhibited view of things not easily comprehended. Observing the aesthetics of images created in this state with the eye of an artist and rationalizing them philosophically, not scientifically, allows one to truly connect to the meaning behind them. The artistic process is not limited to the insane, but the way they create art can show us how it functions and possibly better ways to access and utilize this form of thought.

 

Works Cited

Art Brut. http://www.abcd_artbut.org/english.html
Claussen/Jadi/Douglas. Beyond Reason: Art and Psychosis, works from the Prinzhorn Collection. University of California Press, London, 1996.
Dictionary.com http://www.dictionary.com
Lombardi, Sarah. http://www.sai.gc.ca/expo/fr/texte.html
Maclagan, David. “The madness of Art and the Art of Madness.” Raw Vision
http://www.rawvision.com/back/madness/madness.html
Martin, Bob. English Composition Lecture, 2005
Hogan, Susan Feminist Approaches to Art Therapy. Routledge, London. 1997.
Rawson, Philip. Drawing. New York: Oxford United Press, 1969
Review of Faucoult’s Madness and Civilization. Cambride Up, 1989
http://www.artisci_1su.edu/fai/Faculty/Proffesors/Proteui/Foucault/MC.html
Ulman, Elinor. Art Therapy in Theory and Practic. Schocken Books, New York, 1975