With artist Imam Sucahyo, Indonesia.
According to Dr. Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933), art created by people with psychiatric illness and art by the masters are both “valid expressions of the psyche.” But what relationship is there between valid expressions of the psyche and art? This brings us to such questions as what is art, and how is art different from “non art”? These are questions that always have, and always will fascinate us. A further distinction in this line of questioning is what is “good” art? Is there such a thing, or is there only art and non art? Is “bad” or “low” art simply non art?
Art historians and scholars sometimes agree that there is a universal communication of truth in great art that surpasses cultural and temporal barriers. Aesthetics, sometimes viewed as a stepchild of philosophy, is perhaps one of its most important areas of study. What is truthful; Beautiful; Powerful; Compelling; Subtle; Moving? Are any of these words adequate to describe the sensation one has standing in front of the Pyramids, Michelangelo’s Pieta, a Masquerade of the Dogon, an Ancient Chinese landscape painting, or the stained glass at Chartres?
What factors go into our appreciation, acceptance, and even tolerance of what is considered art in a particular culture? The history of art by individuals with psychiatric illness goes back, probably, as far as Paleolithic man. We don’t know why the cave paintings were made, or the small clay icons found in Europe that date back to 25,000 BCE. Some of the major building projects initiated in the Ancient world may have been the product of grandiose rulers who had what we now call “Manic Episodes” or delusions. Medieval artists include visionaries such as Hilda of Bingen (1098 – 1179), and often religious experiences mirror what are now labeled “hallucinations”. More recent examples, like Salvatore Dali, and Vincent Van Gogh are well known and popular. Was Van Gogh an “Outsider Artist”? Both he and Dali worked well within the bounds of their affiliations; Van Gogh with Post Impressionism (though it wasn’t called that at the time – and Van Gogh had little support or group affiliation other than his brother and a brief encounter with Gaugin) and Dali as a major figure in the surrealist movement.
Between the World Wars in the first half of the 20th Century, artists in Europe experienced an existential crisis that ultimately manifested itself in Dada, or as Duchamp called it “the absence of taste, either good or bad”. While many critics at the time thought Duchamp was “crazy”, Dada is quite different from Outsider art. Art by people with psychiatric disabilities is often very personal, even when it has a universal reach. It is rarely about politics per se, or about art itself; the artists are not questioning the boundaries of what is and is not art, they are simply outside the margins of what their contemporaries consider professionalism among artists. But the role of the artist in society changes on an ongoing basis and so do standards of legitimacy. In the Renaissance and during the Counter Reformation the Catholic Church commissioned, and controlled the subject and often the style of the painting, sculpture, and architecture produced. In Protestant Holland, secular art was more common and accepted than religious art, accompanied by a growing middle class. The Enlightenment art of the Neo Classical period (David and Angelica Kaufman) was a reaction to the earlier Rococo period, with its frills and surface ornamentation, (Fragonard and Watteau for example)
Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985), one of the proponents of Art Brut, as defined by Dr. Prinzhorn, was not known to be a person with a psychiatric illness. In some ways, Art Brut, like Dada may be considered a political movement insofar as it questions the contemporary party line on what is an isn’t legitimate art. Questions such as the permanence of the work, materials, and the nature of the subject matter, the skill and technique all were in flux. Aptly named, the banner was taken up again in the 20th century by the Fluxus movement.
People with disabilities – psychiatric, physical, and emotional, comprise a highly diverse group of individuals. As with any other sector of the population, it is questionable whether to generalize about them is meaningful. It seems that art by people with psychiatric illness is often more personal, almost always genuine, and comes directly from an intuitive place in the psyche that is not contaminated by interpersonal politics or technique. But again, these are generalizations and must be regarded as such.
Title: Nightmares. 150 x 200 cm (about 50 x 78 inches) acrylic, marker on canvas. 2008. Imam Sucahyo, Indonesia
This intimacy of the subject in Imam’s painting defies its own scale. We are swept into a fluid world where color, texture, and space merge to create a series of visual riddles. The feel of landscape, death and burial, a floating figure, red sky, horizontal figure at the top, and the encasement of the form in high contrast linear definition, all work together to engage us in a feeling of earthy, somatic spirituality. Color temperature evokes literal associations (earth, sky, blood) within an alternating visual tension and relief as we meander across the canvas in a lateral back and forth motion. The artist’s process is so organic and natural, that it seems to defy formal analysis. The intuitive decisions about composition seem to be as much about discovery as invention…as if the image had always been there, just between consciousness and sleep.
Carol Heft is a New York City based artist and educator. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and her work has been exhibited internationally. She teaches Drawing, Painting, and Art History at several colleges in New York and Pennsylvania, and is represented by the Blue Mountain Gallery in New York City.
The painting you chose as an example of art brut is fascinating, Carol. When I first looked I saw the floating figure as male attached to the earth by the thread that ties his brain to the spotted dog-creature, and the buried one as female, maybe a wife, maybe an as yet uncreated (or unearthed) Eve. But body and soul also come to mind. But the story remains mysterious. I like the fact that the “sky” has star-marked casters sunk into or rolling on the earth. The sky thus becomes a kind of rolling cart, or coffin, or bed.