Madness, Meaning and Mind. Experiences and Expressions

Michel Foucault elaborates on how the unity which existed between image and verb begins to disentangle during the Renaissance. This creates a gap between the cosmical experience of alienation akin to its fascinating forms and the critical experience of this same folly within the scope of irony. I daresay pictorial art is conveyor of these characteristics. While Brant and Erasmus tackled insanity through the universe of discourse, Hieronymus Bosch, Brueghel the Elder, Thierry Bouts, and Albrecht Dürer (amongst others) depicted the tragic insanity of the world through their works of art. We shall examine what are the faculties affected by madnesswhether it is reason, memory or imagination -and how this is visually rendered. For this purpose, it is essential to differentiate two kinds of alienation. That is to say, one called 'mania' which refers to a dazed state of mind, and the other 'myria' which pertains to a divine creativity.

The purpose of this research paper was to develop an integrated clinical and artist framework of analysis that can be applied to the interpretation of “Schizophrenic Art,” in order to evaluate its potential implications for art historical research. The methods used include a historical analysis of schizophrenia as a concept and the conceptual elucidation of “Schizophrenic Art” through the lenses of art therapy and Outsider Art. To formulate an interdisciplinary framework and demonstrate its significance, interpretive methods and theories of art therapy and Outsider Art were combined and applied to the work of Aloïse Corbaz, a twentieth century female artist with schizophrenia. Three methods of analysis were employed namely, contextual, formal and iconographic, and clinical. The conclusion drawn from my analysis is that the formulation of an integrated framework can benefit art historical research on “Schizophrenic Art” by providing new perspectives, narratives, and insights. Keywords: schizophrenic art, schizophrenia, outsider art, art therapy, integrated clinical and artistic framework, art history

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2007

This article presents a psychological study of the “successful creative artist” and the relationship between art and mental disturbance. To elaborate, this article emphasizes what the author considers to be “natural” (i.e., self-motivated) creative self-expression in comparison to “normal” (i.e., socially approved) patterns of behavior. Although what is natural may overlap with what is considered normal in society, rarely are the two placed on equal footing. To illustrate this problem, the author introduces a new theory, “the artistic theory of psychology,” that casts a new light on the “successful” creative artist. Along the lines of Thomas Szasz and R. D. Laing, that which is referred to as “mental illness” is viewed from a nonjudgmental perspective but with the distinctive feature of suggesting that some people who are considered to be mentally ill may have significant creative artistic potential that can be highly therapeutic, both for them and for society at large.

Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Health Humanities, 2023

There is an ‘art and health’ paradox in the literature on the schizophrenic spectrum, since features of the schizophrenic spectrum have been argued to facilitate artistic creativity (e.g., by enabling novel perspectives, images or insights), suggesting that artistic creativity is or can be a product of ‘mental illness’ (Richards, 2001); yet, artistic creativity has been described as therapeutic and facilitating recovery from schizophrenia (Lynch, Holttum & Huet, 2019). The paradox that ‘mental illness’ both ‘causes’ creativity and is ‘cured’ by creativity is in part due to oversimplification of both constructs (‘artistic creativity’ and ‘schizophrenic spectrum’). For example, conflating the many contexts, forms and uses of artistic creativity, making assumptions of causality (and linear relationships), and not considering other contributing factors (e.g., protective and risk factors) (Holt, 2020; Kaufman & Sexton, 2006). In this chapter the evidence for both sides of the paradox will be considered. Firstly, to help unravel complexities, the constructs of schizophrenia and the schizophrenic spectrum will be described.

The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences, 2019

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Unported License, permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

were all well aware of their uncharitable culture. Equipped with firm feminist bents and creative visions, each of three women produced a seminal work -The Story of Avis, "The Yellow Wallpaper," and The Awakening, respectively -taking that atmosphere to task. In these stories, each of the three women produces a female protagonist who struggles for having been born simultaneously an artist and a woman. The writers pit their women's desires against the restrictive latitude of their time and show how such conditions drive women to madness, as a result of which they are forced to either escape into the blind mind of insanity or deal daily with their pain and inescapable societal condemnation. In an age where "hysteria" was a frequent hit in the vernacular, Phelps, Gilman and Chopin use art and literature as mediums to show that, indeed, there is a method behind the madness.

Art and Mental Illness: Myths, Stereotypes and Realities, 2007

Alongside these developments are changes in consumer group attitudes to the display of art produced by people who experience mental illness. Consumer groups have reached the conclusion that such displays must respect the whole person and not focus exclusively on the relationship between the artwork and the mental illness of the creator. Consumers and consumer representatives have begun to argue that art should not be discussed through the use of diagnostic categories as such discussions have the potential to demean the creator by reducing them to a function of their illness.To take a prominent but little-known example, the widow of Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner sued her late husband's analyst in 1977 for exhibiting drawings produced by Pollock during therapy under the heading 'Psychoanalytic Drawings'. As she argued at the time:

Ever since at least Plato a connection between the artist and madness has been made. However, in recent centuries this has focused especially on psychological disorders. While such studies are not unimportant, overemphasis on this can lead to a one-sided, rather dark view of a self-absorbed artistic “genius.” Ultimately this distracts from the real subject of art, which is the diverse beauty of the world around us. This paper will argue that a better way to think of the artist is not in terms of madness but in terms of foolishness. The artist’s closest analog is not the mad person but the fool. In fact, the artist is not merely like a fool but the artist is a fool. The paper is divided in three parts. First, three different thinkers who all discuss the artist as mad are considered, Jacques Maritain, Plato, and Schopenhauer. For all three, the association of creativity with literal madness is only an analogy and the two have no direct connection, rather the artist participates in what Plato calls “divine madness.” The second part proposes that there is a general form of madness in modern society, which is the opposite of this divine madness, the result of the subjective turn toward the self in philosophy and psychology that leads to an obsession with the self. The third part considers how viewing the artist as a fool provides a response to this particular madness, a response that goes beyond simply returning to Plato’s divine madness as a dialectical alternative.

2021

As my teacher and mentor, Professor Davis has accepted my curiosity and has allowed me to exercise my imagination beyond limits. She has also taught me about writing discipline, a skill set that has been very difficult for me. I'm surprised that I have welcomed the limits. I also want to thank Professors Stamos Metzadikis, Allen Schwab, and Willow Mullins for their support and encouragement in my studies, as well as my classmate Bob Wells, who has been my intellectual companion, advisor, and teacher. Steve Ehrlich, PhD demanded that I enroll in the DLA Program. I hope I have been worthy of his faith. Fran, my wife and best friend, has always had more faith in me than I have. She has witnessed my kicking and screaming through this whole process and has always provided safe space for my rants. She has truly been my faith healer. I want to thank my Aunt Shirley, whom I visited as a child at Manteno State Hospital in Illinois, and the unresponsive gentleman I spoke to on a mental ward in Chicago during a fourteen week high-school project. As I was leaving for the last time, he looked at me and thanked me for my interest in talking to him. I learned that he had not spoken in twelve years. Finally, Hilary Sandel, MD, a British psychiatrist at St. Louis State Hospital, taught me the only proper diagnosis for mental patients: adjustment reaction to life.

Proceedings of the 5th Annual International Conference on Social Science and Contemporary Humanity Development (SSCHD 2019), 2019

Mental illness, creativity, and visual art are often influenced by each other. Medical science proved that highly creative people are suffering from a different kind of mental illness or disorder. Mental illness and creativity is a comprehensive process and influenced by internal and external factor. The purpose of this research was to analyze the influences of the mental illness on creativity in visual art such as schizophrenia disorder, mood disorder, alcoholism, bipolar disorder, hereditary psychosis, manic depression, etc. The study investigated the mental illnesses impact on the perception of the artist and their artwork. This paper argues that what and how mental disorder are positively associated with creativity and evolutionary perspective in between madness behavior and creativity through visual art. The study aim was to bring up the latest literature as well as the epidemiologic and hypothetical argument of this subject matter.