Artistry of the Mentally Ill

Originally published 70 years ago, this work remains a classic concerning the borderland between psychiatry and art, illness and self-expression. The drawings, paintings and sculptures collected and analyzed by Hans Prinzhorn are the products of artistically untrained and unpracticed persons - inmat [...]
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Originally published 70 years ago, this work remains a classic concerning the borderland between psychiatry and art, illness and self-expression. The drawings, paintings and sculptures collected and analyzed by Hans Prinzhorn are the products of artistically untrained and unpracticed persons - inmates of asylums. This book represents one of the first attempts to analyze the artistic work of the mentally ill. Completely spontaneous, they are in sharp contrast to more recent collections which are the products of occupational therapy or psychotherapy. Before Prinzhorn, works by the mentally ill were considered curiosities, never the subject of scientific or artistic analysis. However, to Prinzhorn they were "the eruptions of an universal human creative urge" counteracting the autistic tendencies toward isolation. Prinzhorn demonstrates surpising parallels between his collections and those by children, and between Ancient Greek cultures and primitive ones.