INSPIRATION AND UNREACHABLE

PARADIGM - %'ART DES EOUS' AND SURREALISM

Thomas Roske discusses the history of Outsider Art and its relat ionship with Surrealism

'SURREALISTS PARADOXICALLY SOUGHT *T0 CREATE A PICTORIAL ART THAT ALREADY EXISTED' - IN L'ART DES FOUS'

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above Guillaume Pujolle Revolver, 1949-50 Wood, iron and plastic 5.9 x 9 4 x 2 ins 15 x 24 x 5 cm Collection de I'Art Brut, Lausanne.

opposite August Klett (a.k.a. Ktotz) Fantastic drawings based on clouds, 1912 Pencil on document paper 8.2 x 6.5 ins 20.8 x 16.5 cm Prinzhom Collection, Heidelberg.

The group around Andre Breton looked at the art made in institutions in a different way than the German Expressionists before the First World War. Beyond

national differences in the interpretation of psychiatric problems, and the knowledge that specific artists such as Andre Breton and Max Ernst had of

psychiatry, what is especially important is the experience of the madness of the First World War, which not only politicised the Surrealists but also led them to

fundamentally interrogate concepts of rationality and reason. Much more radically than the Expressionists, they took the fous as an example and posited what they understood of their thinking, actions and creativity against the traditional status

quo - of which, to them, psychiatrists were excellent representatives.

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Originalveröffentlichung in: Raw vision 69 (2010), S. 30-39

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above Max Ernst, Oedipus, 1931 Front cover of the special edition of Cahiers d'art, Paris 1937. Prinzhom Collection, Heidelberg.

Artistry of the mentally ill What, however, did the Surrealists know o f ' t h e art of the insane'? Today, it is commonplace to call Hans Prinzhorn's book Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the mentally ill) (1922) the 'Surrealist's Bible'. But what status did the book have in Paris at the start of the 1920s?

For France, it was not the first independent wri t ing on the subject. In 1907 the psychiatrist Paul Meunier, under the pseudonym of Marcel Reja, brought out his book L'Art Chez les Fous, which already emphasised the aesthetic qualities of different types of works of asylum art. It was read by art enthusiasts and

surely also by artists, but it was not notably influential. This may have been due to historical circumstances, to the presumably small print run and probably also to the insignificant appearance of this paperback edit ion with 17 black and white i l lustrations.

In contrast, the appearance of Artistry of the Mentally III revealed the fact that for the author the aesthetic rather than the medical elements were primary. With roughly 350 pages in 10 x 8.5 inch format, bound in black l inen wi th white embossed lettering, the publication was reminiscent of an art book. The quality of the paper and the 187 i l lustrations, of which 20 were in colour, made this even more apparent. Up to that

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Point, no publication had shown so many works of this kind or in such quality. Artistry of the mentally ill made this subject matter visible for the first t ime.

Its reception as an i l lustrative work was, of course, even more justif iable in foreign countries. At that t ime in Paris, only a few people could read German. Thus, for the artists around Andre Breton, the 'Bible' was arguably above all a 'Picture Bible'.

Would reading the text have softened the emphasis? The careful term 'b i ldnerei ' (artistry) in the t ' t le, and the subtit le, A contribution to the psychology and psychopathology of configuration, (1) seem at first to contradict its appearance as an art book. However,

Prinzhom was not so interested in diagnostic views. For him, what was at stake was nothing less than a new basis for looking at the art made by people who had become extreme outsiders because of their unique mental experiences, and also through their isolation in institutions. Particularly because these men and women created work that was supposedly outside all tradit ion and with no thought of an audience, it was more authentic for him and 'more real' than work by professional artists. The latter, in spite of their ' longing for inspired creativity', ultimately produced ' intellectual substitutes' in his eyes. 2)

Prinzhorn persisted in the ideology that art was

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essentially the creation of expression, and therefore only accessible through empathy. Both this view and his preference for expressive work justify calling his book a Late Expressionist Manifesto (Brand-Claussen). But at the same t ime, the author stands here at the crossroads of new interpretat ions. Because of his experiences in the War, after which he defined himself as a 'n ih i l is t ' , he shared with the Surrealists a rejection of a tradit ional view of culture dominated by Rationalism. Like them, he turned to psychoanalysis (something that was st i l l generally inconceivable for psychiatrists) and tried to connect - like

some Surrealists - the ideas of Freud and Jung. And in his fascination for the 'uncanny' in some inst i tut ional ised works, which l imit rat ional and t radi t ional aesthetic understanding, he seems to have intuit ively sensed the new qualities of 'Surrealist aesthetics'.

The first originals of the Heidelberg collection were to be seen at an exhibit ion of 'Artistes Malades' in the Paris gallery of Max Bine, which presented 36 loans from Heidelberg beside other works. This was surely noticed by the Surrealists; Andre Breton and Paul Eluard even bought works from this show.

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Four creative processes The Surrealists referred to I'art des fous as an inspiration for their own art only in general terms, if at all. Therefore, the 'morphological relationships' between works by asylum inmates and Surrealist artists are explored as a basis for further discussion. Four of these correspondences in creative processes are now considered.

Venture automatique - automatic writing - was a t the birth of Surrealism, and Breton repeatedly emphasised it as the most important Surrealistic

technique. Transferring the idea of creation without the control of consciousness onto drawing was obvious; Andre Masson was a pioneer in this. It offers the possibility of juxtaposing his 'automatic drawings' from 1924-26 with 'scribbles' from the Prinzhorn collection.

As has already been stated, this kind of mediumistic drawing was described as 'automatism' as early as 1900. (3) However, the Surrealists probably knew that French psychiatrists also used the term for other written and drawn productions by asylum inmates.

The second important creative process of

above Heinrich M., Untitled, undated Pencil, coloured pencil and pen with red ink on paper 8.4 x 6.7 ins 21.4 x 17 cm Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg.

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C O M M U N I C A T I O N : V i s a g e p a r a n o i a q u e . A l a s u i t e d u n e e t u d e , a u c o i n s d e l a q u e l l e m ' a v a i t o b s e d e u n a t o n g u e r e f l e x i o n s in

l e s v i s a g e s da P i c a s s o e t p a r t i c u l i e r e m e n t c e u x d e l ' e p o q u e n o i r e , )e c h e r c h e u n e a d r e s s e d a n s u n t a s de p a p i e r s e t s u i s s o u d a i n f r a p p e p a r l a r e p r o d u c t i o n d ' u n v i s a g e q u e )e croiH d e P i c a s s o , v i s a g e a b s o l u m e n t i n c o n n u .

T o u t a c o u p , ce v i s a g e s ' e f f a c e e t j e m e r e n d s c o m p t e d e 1 ' i l l u s i on (? > L ' a n a l y s e d e 1 ' i m a g e p a r a n o i a q u e e n q u e s t i o n m e v a u t d e r e t r o u v e r , p a r u n e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s y m b o l i q u e , t o u t e s wa i d e a s q u i a v a i e n t p r e c e d e l a v i s i o n d u •. i >•

A n d r e B r e t o n a v a i l i n t e r p rA t e ce v i s a g e c o m m e e t a n t c e l u i d e S a d e , ca q u i corre spond d a i t a u n e t o u t e p a r t i c u h e r e p r e o c c u p a t i o n d e B r e t o n q u a n t a S a d e .

D a n s l e s c h e v e u x d u v i s a g e en q u e s t i o n B r e t o n voyu i t u n e p e r r u q u e p o u d r e e , a l o r s q u e mo t je v o y a i s u n f r a g m e n t d e to i l a non p e i n t e , c o m m a i l e s t f r e q u e n t d a n s le s t y l e piCRssien

S a l v a d o r DAI . I

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left Salvador Dalf, Visage paranoiaque (Paranoiac face) In: l e Surrealisme au Service de la Revolution Nr. 3 December m i , S . 4 0 > m i

right Andre Masson, Automatic drawing

1925, pen and Indian ink on paper K>-i x 12.2 ins 25-9 x 3i cm Private collection, Paris.

*• Bn Beitragzur Hychologie und Kvchopathologie der vestaltung.

LH«PrinZh0rn' Artistry of 'he Mentally //,, 1922

I j»n 5 ivE r i C v o n B™ckdorff WewYbrk, NY:Springer-V e r l a6 . 1972), p. 272.

3- R.Cardinal. 'Surrealism a n d the Paradigm of the Creative Subject', Parallel Visions, exhibition dia logue, Los Angeles c °un ty Museum of Art Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, m 2 l p p . * r n 9 . For the relationship °«ween mediumism and

D « Eintritt des * d i u m s i m u s ' in Die ™nstgeschichte. Das Unerklarliche - der

\Ze?!iS'i5che * * * * * * in

oil ? e s s a ^ Kunst und °kku tismus (Art and 0«ul , ism), exhibition ^ l o g u e , Kunstmuseum ™cnum (Kbln: Walther K°n ig, 2007), pp. 17-32.

4- A. Breton, Xadavre " l u i s ' , in Dictionnaire ™rege du Surrealisme

2'* G a ' e r i e ^ u x - A r t s , '938), p. 6

In'?? ?a t e r n<fcr i l . Bildnerei Pr J,Ch'20phrenen- Zur "oblematik der BMehungsseuung Wn

Dri,tlTdKU"Srme^" 2 6 1 des ™ lahrhunderts <H desheim: Georg Dims v ^ a g , 2005), pp. 53. 68 ana 91,

«• lohn M. MacGregor, The Discovery of the Art of the '"sane (Princeton, Nl-Pnnce t o n University Press,

p. 291.

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Surrealism also goes back to ecriture automatique. For Andre Breton and Ph i l i ppe Soupau l t , the appea l o f au tomat i c texts lay in the poet ic power of unexpected w o r d ar rangemen ts . As a p r o t o t y p i c a l example , the c o m p a r i s o n of a y o u n g man 's beauty w i t h the ' unexpec ted meet ing between a sew ing machine and an umbre l la on a d issec t ing t ab le ' in the Comte de L a u t r e a m o n t ' s Chants de Maldoror (1869) was repeated ly c i ted.

The Surrealists developed different processes to generate amazing analogous visual images. One was the Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse), a 'game wi th fo lded paper in which a sentence or a drawing is constructed by several people, without each knowing the cont r ibu t ion of the previous player.' (4) Max Ernst developed the combinat ion of unrelated picture elements as a technique from Dadaistic collages and brought it to a point of high vir tuosi ty, probably with a prior knowledge of drawings f rom psychiatr ic inst i tu t ions. There are also several examples of this way of work ing in the Heidelberg collection. Recently, there has been a suspic ion that th is accumulat ion corresponds to a widespread prejudice among psychiatr ists of the t ime about what 'mad art ' looked l ike, resul t ing in a pre­selection of work in their donat ions to Heidelberg. (5)

A Surrealistic process which refers explicit ly to insanity is the 'paranoiac­crit ical method ' developed by Salvador Dalf from 1929. For his visual double meanings, which work l ike picture puzzles, he refers to changes of perception in specific forms of mental crises.

Corresponding ambigui t ies can be found in pictures in the Prinzhorn col lect ion, for example in drawings by Carl Lange who copied images that were revealed to him in the sweat stains of his shoe soles.

A four th Surrealist ic picture process was excessively used by Hans Bellmen the amalgamat ion of f igures and their components , somet imes readable as growing or sprout ing out of each other. This technique also al lowed him to depict a condens ing of sexual imaginat ion. Like an anagram, eroticised body parts are freely fused and mult ip l ied.

Similar approaches define some pictures in the Heidelberg collection. The most prominent examples are by August Klett (named Klotz by Prinzhorn).

True Surrealism Finally, the Surrealist's perception of the art of asylum inmates incorporates their col lect ing and including it in their group exhibit ions. Thus, Breton acquired two objets d'alienes as early as 1929 at the 'Art istes Malades' exhibi t ion in Paris. These are examples of a specific type of Surrealist object, beside the objets naturels, objets trouves, objets onirique, and so on.

For John M. MacGregor, the Surrealists paradoxically sought ' to create a pictorial art that already existed' ­ in I'art des fous. (6) Even more than the pictures or sculptures made by 'madmen' , this surely accounts for the fascination of objets d'alienes. For the Surrealists, they were not only a model but, as ' f inds ' from the realm beyond reason, examples of a true Surrealism ­ inasmuch as acts of maniacs that would not be carried out by the psychically healthy could be seen as truly Surrealist acts.

This is why, for Breton, the memory never faded of the soldier he met in the sickbay of Saint­Dizier, who believed the First World War was a simulat ion and who 'conducted' the hail of shell­fire on the batt lef ield. And is not his book Nadja (1928) a report on a genuinely Surrealist l ife, which was coherent in a way never possible for the psychically stable members of the group?

These considerat ions shed a special l ight on the revolver of Guillaume Pujolle that Breton included in the exhibi t ion 'Le Surrealisme', at the Maeght Gallery in Paris, 1947­ CO This ' famous object ' (Bellmer) wi l l inevi tably have recalled the posi t ion described in the second Surrealist Manifesto (1930) that has generated so much discussion: 'The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and f i r ing blindly, as fast as you can pul l the tr igger, into the crowd. ' (8) Al though a lot of Surrealists may have admit ted to dream of this, it would have taken a madman to actually do it.

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