integer on 8 Mar 2001 08:41:10 -0000 |
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[Nettime-bold] Re: madness and art + punish |
brian carroll >nn > where is madness in art +? >nn > + certainly must ask - where is madness in all this +? > > >bc > http://www.rawvision.com/back/madness/madness.html >bc > [requested the full article but received no response...] > > > > > >THE MADNESS OF ART and THE ART OF MADNESS >David Maclagan looks at the links between creativity and psychosis. a zm!le back. [!.m bl!nd] > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > this process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires a state of relaxation that is becoming rarer and rarer. if sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. >Art and madness have such a long history, lets read > My deteriorating mental/emotional state is hurting my > partner Susan. > I am not sure what is happening to me. > The amount that our relationship has affected myself and others > frightens me. > I feel an extremely emotional attachment to my work, music, life. My > desires lead to internal conflicts which are unresolvable. artists! puh. > No matter what I do I am hurting others. aren't we all dearezt? > Again, I must apologize for any pain or trouble I cause you. It hurts me > to do so. watje. > -Joshua =watje. >going all the way back to Plato's ideas if men + women are to lead the same lives the family must be abolished. but the sex instinct has to be satisfied + kontrolled and neu citizenz produced. plato therefore substitutes for the family a system of eugenic breeding analogous to to to to to [what +?] that used in breeding domestic animals. more on this `topik` shortly [very verdi + lovely] >about the different forms of mania (one of which would today be called >poetic inspiration), that their association seems necessary and inevitable. >Artistic creativity, since the Renaissance at least, has a long tradition of >being linked to extremes of passion and eccentricity and hence seen as >dangerously close to a madness once thought to have a passionate basis. With >modern psychiatry and the medicalisation of madness, a certain class of >art-work has emerged, tying these strands together: 'psychotic art', work of >remarkable artistic power created by patients designated as mad. > >Psychotic art satisfies several fantasies about art and madness >simultaneously. It appears as something like the (il)logical conclusion to >all that is most wayward and idiosyncratic about artistic creativity, an >image of how originality can go over the top or over the edge: at once a >warning and a challenge. But it has also been seen from the other side, as >offering a window into what would otherwise be inaccessible: its >extraordinary images seeming to give on to the private worlds of delusion, >hallucination or delirium. > >This association of 'art' and 'madness' conjures up the fantasy of >elaborations and investments in both form and content that are uncoupled >from normal constraints or inhibitions: works created out of a more 'inner' >necessity than usual exist on the tantalising edge between public and >private. Part of the fascination of psychotic art is that we can imagine >that we are eavesdropping on some solitary monologue, allowed to trespass on >someone's inner world. > >According to Deleuze and Guattari, such 'inner' worlds are seldom as private >or subjective as they are assumed to be: 'It is characteristic of the libido >to occupy the social field in unconscious forms, to rave about >civilisations, continents and races and to have an intense 'feeling' for >world futures.' (Anti-Oedipe p 117 my transl). Adolf Wolfli's work, with its >geographical, scientific and cosmic excursions, seems a perfect illustration >of this. > >Another fantasy that psychotic art encourages is that someone has lost >control of the normal devices of expression or communication, so that what >is usually subordinated to some end or purpose (decoration or ornament, for >example) seems to behave as if it has a mind of their own. What was >originally a signature in the corner of the Voyager Francais' painting >develops into a complex pattern that completely takes over his work. How can >we tell whether the obsessive, relentless character of some psychotic art is >due to some overpowering internal pressure of thought, that bends everything >to its need, or whether the process works from the outside in, prompted by >accidental marks or the hypnotic effects of their repetition? > >The actual art-work of madness, for all the obstacles it presents to >conventional modes of 'reading', is still on the edge of comprehension, >rather than beyond it (I think this is the meaning of Foucault's claim that >'where there is a work, there is no madness'). > >But the fantasy remains that madness is an extreme, even more driven, form >of the inspiration that propels most artists (one thinks of Wolfli grumbling >that he had so much work to do that it would be enough to drive him mad, if >he were not mad already). On the contrary, 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 institutionalised versions, that constitutes the real link >between art and madness. > > > >Some features of the popular idea of links between art and madness: > >We should reconsider some of these popular or habitual fantasies about art >and madness that continue to influence our thinking, images, rather than >facts or experience; but that does not diminish their power, indeed it might >be said to augment it. > >First is the idea that artists are constitutionally abnormal or exceptional: >they see, feel, think more intensely than other people (the Jackson Pollock >syndrome). Then there is a darker, more judgemental version of this: artists >are neurasthenic, hyper-sensitive, unstable or driven by a compulsion that >over-rides commonsense, decency, or usual consideration for others (the >Gilbert and George syndrome). Then there is the idea that artists live in >worlds of their own, confuse inner and outer realities, and find meaning in >obscure things (the Tate pile of bricks syndrome). Finally, there is the >notion that artists suffer, not just because of such internal or >psychological factors, but through external ones -- misunderstanding, lack >of appreciation and financial hardship (the Van Gogh syndrome). This >suffering is often thought of as a kind of stimulation for their art (the >nightingale sings more sweetly when impaled on a thorn). > >In a slightly different form many of these fantasies also apply to madness. >Like the artist, the mad person is supposed to be a prey to unusually strong >feelings: sometimes joy, but usually rage, despair or terror. These feelings >are excessive and imaginary, and may be aggravated by the fact that the mad >person seems to have lost contact with (external) reality and does not see >the world as we do: behaviour or language is abnormal, leading us to >conclude that they suffer from distortions of perception of thinking, or >have delusions and hallucinations. Their world of delusion is not only >symbolised by their actual confinement in a psychiatric institution, it may >indeed be aggravated by it. > >Artists are imagined heroically as being fuelled by a compulsion to create, >or more tragically, as preys to inspiration: driven in one way or another to >make art for reasons they can barely explain. Psychoanalysis often gives a >special twist to these peculiarities, suggesting that the unconscious motive >behind artistic creation is some trauma or deficit in early life, whose >effect can be detected in certain irregularities or repetitions in the >resulting imagery. > >If psychosis is imagined to involve the overwhelming of ego-control by >unconscious forces, then it is no surprise that psychotic art is imagined as >being even more compulsive, driven by some instinctual or automatic process, >independent of conscious control. > >In many ways the image of the psychotic artist is a mirror-image of the >artistic genius: someone who creates in a spontaneous, uninhibited way, but >who often appears tormented or crucified. So it is hardly surprising that in >the first half of this century psychiatry seized on psychotic art as >providing direct evidence of the typical processes of mental illness. Yet >even among officially designated psychotics, those who created art were >already a minority (in Prinzhorn's time (c.1920) he estimated perhaps 2 per >cent). Whether creators such as Wolfli or Aloise were or were not psychotic, >to some extent their art-work could be subject to the same diagnosis. > >There are a number of ways these links between art-works and mad mental >states may be thought of. First, they may be looked at from a symptomatic >perspective. In psychoanalytic readings of art the symptoms are usually >neurotic: they make themselves felt through interference with a work's >intentional aspects, rather than in an unadulterated form. But in psychotic >art stylistic features, such as distortion, overcrowding, sexual symbolism >or impenetrable obscurity are more directly aligned with the psychiatric >symptoms of mental illness. Prinzhorn, in his pioneer work 'Artistry of the >Mentally Ill' (1922), elaborated the most sophisticated version of this, >although in the latter part of his book he effectively undermines its >clinical reliability. Other psychiatrists were less subtle: a number of >books from the same period in which features of early Modernist art >(Cezanne, Kandinsky) are bluntly diagnosed in psychiatric terms (e.g. >schizoid tendencies). > >Significantly, the stumbling-block for both modern art and psychotic art, >according to Prinzhorn, was the attempt to depict a world of 'pure psychic >qualities' without recourse to any existing conventions. If such features of >the 'inner world' cannot be immediately expressed, then what tends to take >their place are 'instinctual mechanisms', such as rhythmic repetition, >physiognomic perception, or stylistic formalism. > >Nevertheless, both expressive art and psychotic art still tend to be seen as >direct imprints of the artist's 'inner world': all the more so when madness >involves those spectacular contaminations of outer-world perception labelled >hallucination or delirium. At its most naive, this 'window on the mind' >model assumes a facsimile identity between the art imagery (presumably, but >not necessarily, figurative) and the artist's dream, vision or >hallucination. Less dramatic versions concentrate on the inflection of >component features such as line, colour or composition, seen as involuntary >and expressive signatures of the artist's self. > >Trained artists are supposed to have the skills to convey whatever mental >state they experience (hence their use in mescalin experiments such as those >carried out by Guttmann and Maclay in the 1930s), therefore they might be >expected to give the most vivid 'picture' of madness. A celebrated example >of this is William Kurelek's 'The Maze'; yet the more one looks at the >carefully staged vignettes inside the artist's head, the more contrived they >appear, and the more manipulative their effect feels > >An art-work can also be seen as an exaggerated or distorted expression, in >terms of its departure from some kind of norm or expectation. Such >distortions may be accidental, or involuntary and thus symptomatic; or they >may be more deliberate, and thus ambiguous or ironic. Without background or >context it is difficult to decide on the balance between these. The >psychiatric use of art-works as diagnostic indicators seems to depend on the >dubious assumption that representations of the human figure by patients >without any art training will normally have regular shape and proportions, >and that any departure from these can be directly related to disturbance or >disorder. > >Even if we shift the emphasis from examples predicated on deficit or failure >(for example Navratil's early diagnosis of Johann Hauser as suffering from >'innate constructive apraxia' (1978)) to ones that involve exaggeration or >excess, we are still left with the question, whether the sorts of >disturbance at issue here are only to be comprehended within psychiatry's >framework of psychopathology. In their different ways, Foucault, Deleuze and >Hillman have each challenged any straightforward identification of 'madness' >in its creative manifestations with mental disorder or psychopathology. > > > >What kind of 'Madness'? > >The 'madness' these features connect with is a much broader and more diverse >phenomenon than that categorised in modern psychopathology. Plato's >varieties of 'mania' are forms of divine visitation or enthusiasm, connected >with love, atonement, divination and poetry. True, they are dangerous and >may be both effect and cause of some injury to the liaison between body and >soul; but they are associated with excess, possession and with something >beyond the norm, whereas other forms of 'anoia' (un-reason) stem from >ignorance or deficiency. > > > >YOU CAN SEE THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE IN RAW VISION #27 > > > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ >RAW VISION >http://rawvision.com/ >All enquiries to: rawvision@btinternet.com _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold