Relationships. Art-affined physicians, gifted artist patients and the debate on art from a psychiatric context after 1945

Abstract

In 1945 the artist and art collector J.Dubuffet coined the term Art brut for original works by psychiatric inmates that had been created outside of traditions and art movements. In the following decades these works were at the center of negotiation processes in which not only psychiatrists but also exhibition organizers, gallery owners etc. increasingly became involved. Based on the evaluation of four exemplary pairs of psychiatrists and artist patients (H.Müller-Suur-P.Goesch; M.in der Beeck-E.Spießbach; J.Porret-Forel-A.Corbaz; L.Navratil-R.Limberger), this study explores the field of tension between art and psychiatry after 1945. The results of the subproject "Normal#Crazy Art. Works from aPsychiatric Context between Diagnostics and Aesthetics after 1945" of the German Research Foundation (DFG) research group "Normal#Crazy" (FOR 3031) are based on the evaluation of archival material, estates, interviews with contemporary witnesses and contemporary media. It is shown that different attitudes of the psychiatrists towards "their" artist patients strongly influenced their entry into the art world. In this context, impulses from beyond psychiatry were important in order to expand purely diagnostic views of the works with other approaches. The renewed interest in the individual creativity of patients after 1945 can be understood as areaction to their dehumanization under fascism and National Socialism; however, the focus on the pathologized personality of artist patients could obscure alternative perspectives on their art, just as the disposal of their works by psychiatrists could hinder their dissemination.