Kaira M. Cabañas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226556284
- eISBN:
- 9780226556314
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226556314.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Throughout the history of European modernism, philosophers and artists have been fascinated by madness. Something different happened in Brazil, however, with the “art of the insane” that flourished ...
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Throughout the history of European modernism, philosophers and artists have been fascinated by madness. Something different happened in Brazil, however, with the “art of the insane” that flourished within the modernist movements there. From the 1920s to the 1960s, the direction and creation of art by the mentally ill was actively encouraged by prominent figures in both medicine and art criticism, which led to a much wider appreciation among the curators of major institutions of modern art in Brazil, where pieces are included in important exhibitions and collections. Kaira M. Cabañas shows that at the center of this advocacy stood such significant proponents as psychiatrists Osório César and Nise da Silveira, who championed treatments that included painting and drawing studios; and the art critic Mário Pedrosa, who penned Gestaltist theses on aesthetic response. Cabañas examines the lasting influence of this unique era of Brazilian modernism, and how the afterlife of this “outsider art” continues to raise important questions. How do we respect the experiences of the mad as their work is viewed through the lens of global art? Why is this art reappearing now that definitions of global contemporary art are being contested? Learning from Madness offers an invigorating series of case studies that track the parallels between psychiatric patients’ work in Western Europe and its reception by influential artists there, to an analogous but altogether distinct situation in Brazil.Less
Throughout the history of European modernism, philosophers and artists have been fascinated by madness. Something different happened in Brazil, however, with the “art of the insane” that flourished within the modernist movements there. From the 1920s to the 1960s, the direction and creation of art by the mentally ill was actively encouraged by prominent figures in both medicine and art criticism, which led to a much wider appreciation among the curators of major institutions of modern art in Brazil, where pieces are included in important exhibitions and collections. Kaira M. Cabañas shows that at the center of this advocacy stood such significant proponents as psychiatrists Osório César and Nise da Silveira, who championed treatments that included painting and drawing studios; and the art critic Mário Pedrosa, who penned Gestaltist theses on aesthetic response. Cabañas examines the lasting influence of this unique era of Brazilian modernism, and how the afterlife of this “outsider art” continues to raise important questions. How do we respect the experiences of the mad as their work is viewed through the lens of global art? Why is this art reappearing now that definitions of global contemporary art are being contested? Learning from Madness offers an invigorating series of case studies that track the parallels between psychiatric patients’ work in Western Europe and its reception by influential artists there, to an analogous but altogether distinct situation in Brazil.
Kaira M. Cabañas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226556284
- eISBN:
- 9780226556314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226556314.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The introduction offers an overview of the book and describes how it proposes a historical and theoretical account of how modern and contemporary art developed in dialogue with the creative work of ...
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The introduction offers an overview of the book and describes how it proposes a historical and theoretical account of how modern and contemporary art developed in dialogue with the creative work of psychiatric patients in Brazil. The author introduces the tensions that characterize the specific historicity of the relation between madness and modern art: between patients’ art as used for clinical diagnosis and as evidence for how to move beyond academic convention in art (chapter 1); between reports of the work’s spontaneous production and its encouragement within art therapy studios; between support for a common understanding of creativity and the legitimization of patients’ work based on style (chapters 1–2); between claims to a vital necessity for art shared by all and a universal model of aesthetic reception that is underpinned by normative subjective response (chapter 3); and between claims that the patients’ work is contemporary art and a discussion of the work’s contemporaneity in relation to psychiatric history (chapters 4–5). Finally, the introduction makes a case for a historiographic approach that insists on discontinuities rather than continuities, defamiliarization rather familiarization, in order to parse the specificities of each context and history.Less
The introduction offers an overview of the book and describes how it proposes a historical and theoretical account of how modern and contemporary art developed in dialogue with the creative work of psychiatric patients in Brazil. The author introduces the tensions that characterize the specific historicity of the relation between madness and modern art: between patients’ art as used for clinical diagnosis and as evidence for how to move beyond academic convention in art (chapter 1); between reports of the work’s spontaneous production and its encouragement within art therapy studios; between support for a common understanding of creativity and the legitimization of patients’ work based on style (chapters 1–2); between claims to a vital necessity for art shared by all and a universal model of aesthetic reception that is underpinned by normative subjective response (chapter 3); and between claims that the patients’ work is contemporary art and a discussion of the work’s contemporaneity in relation to psychiatric history (chapters 4–5). Finally, the introduction makes a case for a historiographic approach that insists on discontinuities rather than continuities, defamiliarization rather familiarization, in order to parse the specificities of each context and history.
Kaira M. Cabañas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226556284
- eISBN:
- 9780226556314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226556314.003.0005
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter turns to the creative work of Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Brazil’s most famous “outsider artist.” The author addresses what it means to respect the rights of the mad when approaching their ...
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This chapter turns to the creative work of Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Brazil’s most famous “outsider artist.” The author addresses what it means to respect the rights of the mad when approaching their work through the lens of contemporary art. Unlike the other Brazilian patients considered in this study, Bispo’s work was legitimated as art after his death. The chapter engages Frederico Morais’s publication Arthur Bispo do Rosário: Arte além da loucura (Arthur Bispo do Rosário: Art beyond madness, 2013) as well as this curator’s key role in Bispo’s canonization into contemporary art. The author probes whether an insistence on Bispo’s work as contemporary art in the end abandons one type of epistemic control (psychiatry) to inscribe the work within another: a timeless aesthetic formalism to which the patient never laid claim.Less
This chapter turns to the creative work of Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Brazil’s most famous “outsider artist.” The author addresses what it means to respect the rights of the mad when approaching their work through the lens of contemporary art. Unlike the other Brazilian patients considered in this study, Bispo’s work was legitimated as art after his death. The chapter engages Frederico Morais’s publication Arthur Bispo do Rosário: Arte além da loucura (Arthur Bispo do Rosário: Art beyond madness, 2013) as well as this curator’s key role in Bispo’s canonization into contemporary art. The author probes whether an insistence on Bispo’s work as contemporary art in the end abandons one type of epistemic control (psychiatry) to inscribe the work within another: a timeless aesthetic formalism to which the patient never laid claim.
Michael F. Leruth
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036498
- eISBN:
- 9780262339926
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036498.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
The Introduction establishes Forest’s artistic identity as a trickster and troublemaker through some of his most famous publicity stunts and subversive public interventions. Works discussed in the ...
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The Introduction establishes Forest’s artistic identity as a trickster and troublemaker through some of his most famous publicity stunts and subversive public interventions. Works discussed in the Introduction include 150 cm2 of Newspaper (1972), The City Invaded by Blank Space (1973), The Artistic Square Meter (1977), The Golden Mean and the Force Field of 14,000 Hertz (1987), Fred Forest for President of Bulgarian National Television (1991), and Forest’s unauthorized protest performance at the Centre Pompidou’s Vidéo Vintage exhibition (2012). The Introduction also discusses Forest’s contributions as a theorist and educator, his ties to leading intellectuals and critics like Vilém Flusser and Pierre Restany, and his tense relations with French art institutions, including his epic legal battle with the Centre Pompidou (1994-97).Less
The Introduction establishes Forest’s artistic identity as a trickster and troublemaker through some of his most famous publicity stunts and subversive public interventions. Works discussed in the Introduction include 150 cm2 of Newspaper (1972), The City Invaded by Blank Space (1973), The Artistic Square Meter (1977), The Golden Mean and the Force Field of 14,000 Hertz (1987), Fred Forest for President of Bulgarian National Television (1991), and Forest’s unauthorized protest performance at the Centre Pompidou’s Vidéo Vintage exhibition (2012). The Introduction also discusses Forest’s contributions as a theorist and educator, his ties to leading intellectuals and critics like Vilém Flusser and Pierre Restany, and his tense relations with French art institutions, including his epic legal battle with the Centre Pompidou (1994-97).
Alphonso Lingis
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226556765
- eISBN:
- 9780226557090
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226557090.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
The trip across the Altiplano in the Bolivian Andes was a crossing into isolation and solitude. Today we little understand people who sought solitude. The writings of the third century CE Desert ...
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The trip across the Altiplano in the Bolivian Andes was a crossing into isolation and solitude. Today we little understand people who sought solitude. The writings of the third century CE Desert Fathers and the 18th romantics provide two different experiences of solitude. In the silver city of Potosi, noblewomen withdrew into solitude and silence in a convent of Discalced Carmelite nuns. In an abandoned village, one man stays behind, keeping a museum of the remains of the village and creating a rock garden that makes him an “outsider artist.”Less
The trip across the Altiplano in the Bolivian Andes was a crossing into isolation and solitude. Today we little understand people who sought solitude. The writings of the third century CE Desert Fathers and the 18th romantics provide two different experiences of solitude. In the silver city of Potosi, noblewomen withdrew into solitude and silence in a convent of Discalced Carmelite nuns. In an abandoned village, one man stays behind, keeping a museum of the remains of the village and creating a rock garden that makes him an “outsider artist.”
Saitō Tamaki
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816654505
- eISBN:
- 9781452946108
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816654505.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
The term outsider artist refers to artists who have no formal education in art and do not belong to the art world. Outsider art is known as art brut in Europe and “raw art” in the U.S. This chapter ...
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The term outsider artist refers to artists who have no formal education in art and do not belong to the art world. Outsider art is known as art brut in Europe and “raw art” in the U.S. This chapter studies the life and works of the outsider artist Henry Darger. His work often features seven heroines, called “Vivian Girls,” who arm themselves with guns and fight determinedly to liberate child slaves from the control of evil adults. The most striking characteristic of Darger’s paintings is their strange naïveté and self-authorizing innocence. Some reject his work as the product of perversion, while others are riveted by it as a mirror of their own desire.Less
The term outsider artist refers to artists who have no formal education in art and do not belong to the art world. Outsider art is known as art brut in Europe and “raw art” in the U.S. This chapter studies the life and works of the outsider artist Henry Darger. His work often features seven heroines, called “Vivian Girls,” who arm themselves with guns and fight determinedly to liberate child slaves from the control of evil adults. The most striking characteristic of Darger’s paintings is their strange naïveté and self-authorizing innocence. Some reject his work as the product of perversion, while others are riveted by it as a mirror of their own desire.
