Drawing Papers 007: The Prinzhorn Collection

The Drawing Center Library: PleaseDo Not Remove

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The Prinzhorn Collection: Tbaces upon ttre Wund'erblock Organizedby CerHe ntxr Ps ZecHER

The Drar+'ing Center

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A SubterraneanChapter of Twentieth-CenturyArt History [Acknowledgments] Catherine de Zegher ,,No

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Man's Land": on the Modernist Receptionof the Art of the Insane HaI Foster

The Mad as Artists

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Sander L. Gilmqn Prinzhorn's Heterotopia

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Allen S. Weiss betweenSinthomeand Symptom---*-Some-Thing,Some-Eventand Some-Encounter Bracha LichtenbergEttinger

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Noteson the Authors

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Works in the Exhibition

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List of Illustrations (fold-ou

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Catherine de pgher, Director

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What is the relevanceof exhibiting the Prinzhorn Collection at this moment? This seemsthe question at stake as, in the spring of 2000, The Drawing Center undertakesthe first New York presentationof this legendaryand influential group of works. The Prinzhorn Collection: Tracesupon the Wunderblock featuresa selection of over two hundred drawings and books made by psychiatric patientsbetween 1890 and 1920.The collectionwas assembledin the early 1920sat the University of Heidelbergon the initiative of the psychiatristand art historianHans Prinzhorn(1886-1933), who intended to inauguratea museum.2Due to the rise of fascism,the brutal course of World War II, and the political unrest afterward, this goal was not realized.The museum is now finally scheduled to open in 2001, and therefore The Drawing Center's exhibition will likely mark the last major presentationof the collection outside Germany.

Astounding for their intensity and beauty,the works in the exhibition chronicle the artist-patient's painful struggleto reconcile personalinterior existencewith the demandsof externalforces. During an era of new researchinto mental illness, Dr. Prinzhorn was at the forefront of methodological changesin treatment, and also advocatedfor the aestheticlegitimacy of the works drawn by psychotic individualswho were marginalizedby society.Concurrent with Prinzhorn'sresearchwere the activitiesof many avant-gardeartists who attempted to transgressan existingformal visual language by exploringspontaneousacts of creation and the role of the unconscious.Peopleas diverseand famous as the artist Alfred Kubin and the sociologistGeorg Simmel came to visit the collection, but its works became more widely known, particularly to artists, through Prinzhorn'spublication of (Artistry of the Mentally Ill) in 1922. This book became a source of Bildnereifur Geisteskranken inspirationto numerous artists, particularly in Germany and France between World War I and II, and in the United Statesafter 1945.

By the end of the nineteenth century the art of the insane representednot only the lost world of childhood,but also the burgeoningforce of the utopia of aestheticexperimentation,which characterizesthe beginningsof the avant-garde.In fact, artists do not function to clarifu the ways of communication,rather they amplify the possibilitiesof interchangeand critical analysis.Their search focuseson new means of expressionthat do not conform to the practicesdictated by a conventionalizedacademicestablishment.Often avant-gardeartists turned to the artworks of individualswho had evadedthe usual categoriesof art history.They directed their attention to socalled primitive art and children's drawings,but also developeda fascinationfor the prototypical type of madman, the schizophrenicas "an emblem of creativeinsurrection againstrationalist repression linked to social power."tIn this sensethe Prinzhorn Collection had a particular influence on artists' perceptionof the creativeact, such as that practiced and theorizedin automatic writing and drawing by the Surrealists,and later by Jean Dubuffet and his Art Brut. Following the war, further interest in the modesof expressionfound in the Prinzhorn Collection, particularly those considereddirectly revelatoryof the unconscious,took root in the United Statesduring the Abstract Expressionist movement.Proof that works of the Prinzhorn Collection were challengingthe traditional notions of

art becamestrikinglyclear when, between 1931 and 1938, they were used by the Nazis as an exampleof "degenerateart" and juxtaposedwith those by other artists,such as Oscar Kokoschka, VasilyKandinsky,Kurt Schwitters,and the Dadaists,to discreditand reject modern art.

Referring on the one hand to the role of the unconsciousin the creative act and the imaginary process,and on the other to the concealedscopeof the PrinzhornCollection as a "subterranean" chapter of twentieth-century art history the exhibition'stitle, Tracesupon tke Wunderblock,s inspiredby Sigmund Freud'sconceptof the unconsciousand the repressed.

Accordingto Freud, the u,underblockrepresentsthe way in which the psycherecordsmaterial.He adoptsthe metaphorof the wunderblock,which is a child's toy, also known as the mystic writing pad, consisting of a thin sheet of clear plastic covering a thick waxed board. The user can write or draw on it with any pointed instrument,pressingthrough the sheetof plastic,making tracesin the coatedsurfacebelow As soon as the sheet is lifted, the imageabovedisappears, while tracesof it remain on the wax beneath.Thus, the wwnderblockalludesto the way the psychicsystemwhich, havingreceivedsense receptionfrom the outsideworld, remainsunmarkedby those impressionsthat then passthrough it to a deeperlayerwhere they are recordedas unconsciousmemory.It illuminatesthe mechanismby which the repressedbecomesthe prototypeof the unconscious.

The drawingsof the PrinzhornCollection capture the pains and strugglesof modern life glimpsed through some of its most tortured yet visionaryfigures.The works were createdby artist-patients out of inner necessity,and with no ulterior purpose.Being overwhelmedby incomprehensible eventsand utter loss,they experienceda collapseof their world-viewas defined by social consensus."ln order to masterthis life-threateningstate,defenseand adaptationmechanismstake over,gearedto immediate survival.Imagesare dismantledand ontologicallyrevalued,to createa new world-view made up of elements drawn from the earlier stagesof development activated by psychosis."* Lost to societyand lost within him/herselfthe schizophreniccreatessymbolsin the hope of openingup the old reliableworld and to have it make new sense.An urgent need to impose order on chaosis developed.The common and idyllic interpretationof the insane,who would have immediateaccessto the pure origin of art, is that s/he is circulatingin the imaginaryworld, and is not quite connectedwith the symbolicworld. But, as it appearsand this will also be clarified by the essaysin this volume, the psychoticindividual tries more than anythingelse to constantlyrestore the symbolic order.

Todaythe PrinzhornCollection testifiesto past livesof socialexclusion,psychicillness,solitude, and isolation-experiences that are common, yet too often erasedfrom collective memory.

Consistingof beautiful productionsof art that can neither be identified as residuesof psychiatric therapy,nor as scientific documentsof anthropologicresearch,nor as monumentalaesthetic achievements,the mainly small works-drawn on booklets,diaries,cardboard,and piecesof newsPaper-escapehierachiesin the cultural and artistic domainsand occupy a liminal space, hoveringbetween the center and the margins,inside and outsidethe mainstream.In regardto contemporaryart, I would like to addressthe collection'srelevanceby summarizinga recent conversationI had with RosalindKrauss.'Followingthe art historianHubert Damisch,Rosalind Krauss arguesthat "Dubuffet's interest in the Prinzhorn material arosefrom his conception of it as a corpus of radicallyanti-Duchampianpossibilities.Fascinated,hke so many other Frenchmen,by the parableof RobinsonCrusoe,that tale of the shipwreckedsailorwashedashorewith a few remnants of his culture, Damisch examinestoday'sartisticproductionand asks:'lf all else were washedaway, would any of us, pressedagainstthe very most extremesof necessity,expand any precious ounce of our remainingenergyin the pursuit of art? That is to say,this parablesetsup a model that is totally foreign to the promiscuityof the current institutionaldefinition of art: this is art becauseit is in a gallery becauseit is in a place that showsart; this is art becauseI, the artist, say so. To the contrary' Damisch goes on, 'as for the art of the insane, these works were driven by necessitv.There was no

audience.There was no public, no museum,no exhibition-only an urgent drive to draw, to paint. scribblingor whittling What interestedDubuffet, was just this little guy in his tiny room obsessively and driven by necessity.And that's what is interesting becauseDubuffet too was obsessional,driven, or wanted to be. He constructed his own necessity.He tried to discovera form of art that would be once again.That'swhy the word art preoccupiedhim so.'uThus the significanceof necessary Dubuffet'sconnectionto psychoticart comesfrom its contrastingenergywithin a situationwhere. art has no reasonfor being, since it is made out of a compulsion.The idea that it is simply there becauseof some kind of an institutionaldefinition would be wrong. It is there becausethe person who is making it, cannot not make it. Inner psychologicaldrive to make this-resulting in the artist's willingness to sit in a room, whittling away and doodling and pasting and smearingand doing whatever the person is doing-translates into the fact that the work has an absolute energy and drive behind its making; its need to exist is totally riveting."

Pertaining to a lot of contempo't.ry art, Krauss continues: "lt seemsto me that we are at a turn where we need that kind of protectionfrom the seductionsof Duchamp'sinstitutionalmodel-one that has led to the outcome that a young boy'sadolescentroom with all his clothesthrown around has becomethe presentuncontestedparadigmfor art making,which strikesme as a reallybankrupt position.The Prinzhornmaterialis as far as we can get from that model of installationart. For me that'swhat its relevanceis now. Of course,today the situationof mental patientsis very different.

Becauseof the drugs that are used to treat psychosisthis kind of art is no longerproduced.These patientsare medicatedso that their drivesare modified and no longerissueinto this outflow and outpouring of graphic energy.I supposethat the changein the treatment of psychosishas modified the possibility of this art as a contemporaryform of production. However, there are living artists such as Hanne Darboven,On Kawara,and RaymondPettibonwho in a way seem to be connectedto the Prinzhorn figures and simulate in their work that kind of compulsive drive to repeat, to continue to mark, when being confronted with reality. In contradistinction, there is a lot of contemporaryart that could have been anything, and that is not simulating, but just phony. It finds its rationale in the simple act of snugglinginto the spacesof the art institution with its totally circular logic.What Dubuffet saw was that psychotic art breaks through that logical circle in the driven compulsion of a seriesof repeatedgestures,whether it is marking,drawing,or doodling:it simply rides through the smugnessof the institutionaldefinition."

In this contextit can be arguedthat modernistand postmodernistart and thought of the twentieth century have turned inward. Instead of either reflecting an external reality, and conveyingan ethical or political message,or expressingan emotion, they have focusedon the revelationof the processes of their own existenceand internal structure.Curving back in a perpetualmove upon itself or its institutionaldefinition, art has curtailedany discoursethat doesnot concernthe expressionof its own form. While initially intended as an erodingof conventionallanguages,this celebrationof an utter self-involvementhas led to forms of hyperreflexivityand alienation, providing analogiesfor the mysterioussymptomsof schizophrenia.For what occurs,accordingto Louis Sass,is a sort of deathin-life, though not the kind so often imagined:for what dies is not the rationalso much as the desiringsoul, not the mental so much as the physicaland emotionalaspectsof one'sbeing.This entrapmentin a morbid wakefulness,identified by impenetrableobscurityand violent contradiction, entails the paradoxesof the reflexive.A careful comparisonof modernism and schizophrenic experiencemay thus be characterizedless by fusion, spontaneity,and the liberation of desire than by separation,restraint, and an exaggeratedcerebralismand propensity for introspection. In the course of Sass'sanalysis,one of the greatironiesof modern thought graduallyemerges:"the madnessof schizophrenia-so often imagined as being antithetical to the modern malaise,even as offering a potential escapefrom its dilemmas of hyperconsciousnessand self-control-may, in fact, be an extrememanifestationof what is in essencea very similar condition."'

This analysisof modernist and postmodernistart seemsto correspondto the transformation drawing underwent during the twentieth century from the more sensorygestural marking, with automatism as the procedure of its most immediate and authentic transcription, toward the conceptual compositional notation determined by the rigor of a voluntarily "self-imposed"schema or a structural matrix. By focusing on the "thetic" or static phase of language,structuralism posited languageas a homogeneousstructure and made possible the systematicdescription of the social and/or symbolic constraint within each signifying practice. With its yearningsfor "scientific" objectivity and rationale, introversion and strategyhave thus become crucial to a lot of contemporuryaft practices.The Prinzhorn Collection, which combines in a unique way aspectsof modernism and schizophrenia, can throw new light on this developmentand paradoxicallyreinform an art scene that increasingly engagesin a hyper-narcissisticactivity to valorize the personal as opposedto the public in a solipsistic move away from socio-politicalspace.What occurs then in most contemporarywork is a dual semiology of a divested languageaccompaniedby other heavily invested semiotic materials and compulsive actions. In reality, in a society of consumption, this acting-out is a manifestation of an immediately satisfied demand that happens before the mediation of languageand the other even begin. The obsessionaldissociationbetween affect representationand verbal representationoften "false results in a feeling of emptiness and artificiality constituting wounded "narcissisms"and personalities."According to Julia Kristeva,these new maladiesof the soul share one common denominator:the inability to represent,or "phantasmaticinhibition."'

Achnowledgments Upon my arrival at The Drawing Center, I consideredit of importance, at the beginning of a new century that the institution looks back at the art history of the twentieth century in particular at some obscured areasof the domain of drawing. The Prinzhorn Collection rePresentsone such example. I wish to take this opportunity to thank some of the individuals who participated in the realizationof The Prinzhorn Collection: Tracesupon the Wunderblock,held on the occasionof the Center's annual gala benefit. First and foremost, I acknowledgethe Prinzhorn Collection at the University of Heidelberg, and most especiallyits Curator, Dr. Inge Jddi, and Assistant Curator, Dr' Bettina Brand-Claussen.To present such an esteemedgroup of works is truly an honor, and The Drawing Center is deeply indebted to the expertiseand generosityof Dr. J6di and Dr. BrandClaussen,who greatly contributed to this project by lending the works prior to the opening of the new museum in Heidelberg. In addition, I thank the collection's exemplarystaff, particularly Gabriele Tschudi and Torsten Kappenberg.The selection for this exhibition is informed by the work of Laurent Busine, Director of Exhibitions at the Palaisdes Beaux-Arts,Charleroi, Belgium, who organizedan exhibition of the collection entitled La BeautdInsensde.Collection Prinzhorn in the winter of 1995-96. Under the title Beyond Reason,Art and Pqtchosis:Worksfrom the Prinzhorn Collection the exhibition then traveled to the Halward Gallery London, in 1996' I wish to thank Laurent for his enthusiastic contribution to the realizationof this exhibition.

In conjunction with the exhibition, The Drawing Center publishes this expandedvolume of the Drawing Papers,which marks the seventh edition in the seriesand offers the opportunity for new scholarly researchinto the collection. I wish to profoundly acknowledgeand thank the contributors to this publication: Hal Foster,Professorof Modern Art at Princeton University; Allen S. Weiss, professor of PerformanceStudies and Cinema Studies at New York University; and artist, psychoanalyst,and writer Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, all of whom generatedinnovative new texts that will contribute to the greater understandingof the works on view. In addition, Sander L. Gilman, Henry R. Luce Distinguished ServiceProfessorof the Liberal Arts in Human Biology at the University of Chicago, has generouslygranted permission to republish an illuminating essayon the collection. Containing four major essays,this volume introduces a body of drawings that, while little

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known to the general public, has been influential to the theorization and practice of the avant-gardeand Center's some of the most important art movements of the twentieth century. In addition, The Drawing clinical of the interpretiveapproachto both the exhibition and the publication includes a consideration on environmentin which the drawingswere created-where the patients'urgentneed to imposeorder to in relation on drawing Focusing chaosled to a "drive towardsexpression,"as Dr. Prinzhornstated. insanity, this number exploresthe imaginary order versus the symbolic order in visual language,as well (a as the belief in the value of art and creativityfor the cure and study of mental illness radicalidea some one hundred years ago), and the visual complexity and legitimacy of the drawings in their own right. This publication was conceived as a companion to the catalogueBqond Reason,Art and Psychosis: Wrps from the Prinzhom Collection, published by the Hayward Gallery and the University of Califomia press,which contains color reproductions of the majority of works in The Drawing Center's exhibition, as well as essayson the history of the collectionby Dr. JSdiand Dr. Brand-Claussen' Llke Drawing Papers7, the exhibition's accompanyingpublic programsaddressseveralcrucial questionsconcerning the mystifying links between madnessand creativity.Further, aspectsof these extend to the exhibi tion JamesCastle:HouseDratttit?gsconcurrently on view in The "*.hu.,g", Drawing Center's Drawing Room. Primary considerationsare the individual/artist as an outsider to the mainstream,and notions of the basic human strugglebetween interior life and thoughts and exterior assimilation in society.The public programsinclude a symposiumwith the essayistsof this edition of the Drawing Papers,a lecture by independent scholar and psychoanalystJohn M. MacGregor on machine symbolism and the dreaming mind, and the inauguration of the Center's new Line Reading series.Curated by poet and scholar Lytle Shaw,the Line Reading seriescreates an interdisciplinary dialogue between the range of historical and contemporaryexhibitions of drawingsand current innovative writing in prose and poetry.The first participants in the seriesare poets Kenward Elmslie, Bernadette Mayer, and Brian Kim Stefans.I greatly look forward to these events,and thank all the remarkable scholarsand writers for their important contributions to the programmaticaspectsof the exhibition.

Followingthe exhibition in NewYork, the Prinzhorn Collection will travel to the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.I am very pleasedthat the exhibition will be seen on both the East and the Wesr coastsof the United Statesand wish to thank Ann Philbin, Director of the UCLA Hammer Museum, for joining me in this project. This will be the secondtime that one of The Drawing Center's exhibitionshas traveledto the Hammer Museum since my arrival,and it is my belief that both institutionshave set the foundation for an ongoingcollaboration.In addition to Ann, at the Hammer I extendmy thanks to Cynthia Burlingham, Senior Curator of the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, and Carolyn Peter,AssistantCurator.

At The Drawing Center I owe a debt of gratitude to the staff memberswho contributed to this project. In particular,my assistantKatie Dyer deservesspecialmention for her tirelesswork on the publication and other crucial asPectsof the project. To the graphic designerLuc Derycke I extend my th"nk, for his adept design of yet another Drawing Papers.Beth Finch, Curator, ably assistedwith the selectionof works, the organizationof public programs,and the realizationof this publication. Allison plastridge,Registrar,did an excellentjob coordinatingthe logisticsof loans and transport. For their contribution to fundraising efforts, I thank The Drawing Center's former Assistant Director, Ellen Haddigan,and DevelopmentOfficer, Blair Winn, who skillfully steppedin to assumemany responsibilitiespertaining to the project following Ellen's departure.Once again,Anne Blair Wrinkle, Public RelationsAssociateand Special Events Coordinator,has expertlyorchestratedthe benefit dinner, and for this I am deeply grateful. Working with OperationsAssistant,Greg Petersonand the freelanceart-installeqBruce DoW Director of Operations,Linda Matalon, thoughtfully oversawthe detailsof the installation. Sheila Batiste, Director of SchoolsPrograms,has developedan insightful educationprogramfor school children that is related to the exhibition'

The Prinzhorn Collection is a challenging body of work that requires supportersthat are sensitiveto its unique merits. The exhibition and its accompanyingpublication have received generousfinancial assistancefrom The Howard Gilman Foundation. I wish especiallyto thank Pierre Apraxine at the Foundation for his immediate enthusiasm for this project. Significant support has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany,where I acknowledgeHans-Heinrich von Stachelberg, Deputy Consul General,and Henning Simon, Consul for Cultural and EconomicAffairs.

Additional funds have been received from individuals who attached great importance to the Presentationof this exhibition,including board member FrancesBeattyAdler and Allen Adler, and Sally and Howard Lepow. I also wish to expressmy deep gratitude for the Board of Directors, particularly its co-chairmen Dita Amory and George Negroponte, who have championed this project since its beginning. Finally, for working within complicity and complexity,I am most of all indebted to Beniamin Buchloh.

Nores: l. Marcel Proust, Stuann'sWay, in Remembranceof Things Past,vol.l, trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin ( N e w Y o r k ; Ra n d o m Ho u se , 1 9 8 1 ) ,9 3 .

2. For a thorough descriptionof the formation and early history of the collection see Bettina Brand-Claussen,"The Collection of Works of Art in the PsychiatricClinic, Heidelberg-from the Beginningsuntil lg45," inBeyondReason,Artandpstchosis:Works ftom the Pinzhorn Collection,exhib. cat. (London: Hayward Gallery and Berkeley:University of California press, 1996), 7-23.

3. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: CapitalismandSchizophrenid,rrans. R. Hurley, M. Seem, and H. Lane (New York: Viking. 1977\. 87 -88.

4. Inge Jadi, "Points of Mew-Perspectives-Horizons,"in Beyond Reason,30.

5. February 13, 2000. I am very grateful to Rosalind Krauss for discussingthis project with me.

6. "A conversationwith Hubert Damisch," October 85 (Summer l99g), 10.

7. Louis A. Sass,Madness and Modernism. Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1.994),10.

8. Julia Kristeva, NeruMaladiesof the Soul, trans. Ross Guberman (New York: Columbia Universiry press, 1995), 9-10.

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oF TH E A R T oF TH E IN seN s

The modernistreassessment of the art of the insanefollows that of the art of "primitives"and childrenboth in time and in logic. Long dismissedout of hand or viewed in diagnosticterms, such art was readyfor reevaluationby the late l9l0s and early 1920s.Yet modernistssaw it accordingto their own ends only-as intrinsically expressiveof a self, directly revelatoryof vision, or consciously defiant of all convention-and for the most part it was none of these things. Rather, these three readings-call them "expressionist,""visionary" and "transgressive"respectively-bespeak modernist fantasiesof a pure origin of art or an absolute alterity to culture that obscure more than reveal the symbolic import of the art of the insane, or so I will argue here.

Well before the modernists, the Romantics had also viewed the art of the insane as an epitome of creativegenius; between these two epochs, however,its status was downgradeddramatically.By the late nineteenth century this art was no longer a model of inspiration but a symptom of "degeneration."The key figure here is the Italian psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso, who, along with his Hungarianfollower, Max Nordau, spread this ideologicalnotion of degenerationto several discourses.

Lombrosounderstoodmadnessas a regressionto a primitive stageof psycho-physical development-a model that preparedthe phobic associationof insane,primitive, and child, which persistedin the twentieth century alongsidethe idyllic associationof the three as innocent (1864), a study of 107 patients,half of whom drew or visionaries.r Alreadyin Geniusand Mad.ness painted,Lombrosodetectedthis degenerationin absurd andlorobsceneforms of representationthat he deemedatavistic.'z This discourseof degenerationpassedfrom psychiatry into psychoanalysisas it emergedat the turn of the century; the diagnostic approach to the art of the insane also persisted.Like his French predecessor JeanMartin Charcot, SigmundFreud only extendedthis approachthrough reversal,as he looked for signs of pathology in the work of "sane" masterslike Leonardo da Vinci or

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Michelangelo.Only graduallywas the diagnosticapproachto the art of the insanecomplementedby other approaches,first with L'art chez lesfous (1907) by Marcel R6ja, the pseudonym of the French psychiatristPaul Meunier, who examined the art of the insane for insight into the nature of artistic (Artistry of the Mentallryll1, 1922) by activity as such, and then with Bildnerei der Geistesl<ranken the German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn, who pursued this line of inquiry in ways that influenced severalmodernistsdirectly.

This revaluationof the art of the insane, it should be added, followed a period of great nosological debateabout psychosis.In I883 the German psychiatristEmil Kraepelinproposedhis typologyof "dementiapraecox"(which included a paranoidform), while in l9l I the SwisspsychoanalystEugen Bleulerintroducedhis categoryof "schizophrenia," which he defined as a broken relationto self and world as manifest in a dissociationof thought, action, or affect-as a disruption of subjectivity markedby a disruption in representation.Meanwhile, Freud offered the term "paraphrenia"as a substitutefor "dementia praecox"and "schizophrenia"and as a complement to "paranoia"(obviously it did not catch on). Although he found schizophreniaand paranoiaoften combined (as in his l9l I analysisof JudgeSchreber),he also treatedthem as symptomaticallydistinct-in a way that is important for my argument below. In the Freudian account the schizophrenicis overwhelmedby hallucinationsthat only deepen his senseof internal and external "catastrophe,"while the paranoid is driven by projectionsthat attempt to counter both these "catastrophes"with delusions of personal grandeur(on the one hand) and ofworld order (on the other).3

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i. The Art of the Insone as "Expression" (Hans Prinzhorn) Significantly,Prinzhom studied art history at the University of Vienna before he turned first to No doubt it was this unusual training that led the Heidelberg psychiatryand then to psychoanalysis.

PsychiatricClinic to appoint him in 1919 to overseeits collection of the art of the insane.Begun when Kraepelindirected the Clinic from 1890 to 1903, the collection was soon extendedunder Prinzhorn to (roughly) 5000 works by 500 patients from various institutions throughout Europe. But he left the clinic just before the publication of the Bildnereiin 1922, perhapsan indication of his ambitions for the book, which did indeed serveas the primary accessto the Heidelbergcollection thereafter.

The Bildnerei included a "theoreticalpart," ten case-studiesof "schizophrenicmasters,"and a summary of "results and problems."With only 187 reproductions,it was very selectiveof the collection; it was also far from scientific.Although some works do show affinities with Symbolist,Expressionist,or Dadaist art, few of the patientswere trained in any way. Indeed, few were interestedin art at all before they were encouraged,institutionally,to take it up; hence the works cannot be deemed spontaneous.

Moreover,the works are far too disparatein style, material, and technique to fit any one theoretical profile. And the profile that Prinzhorndid present is often contradictoryin its own terms.

On the one hand, Prinzhorn aimed not to be diagnostic;he proposedsix "drives" as dominant in psychotic representationbut as active in all other art as well. On the other hand, he did not seek to be aesthetic; he cautioned againstany direct equation of this material with art, and, even though he called his ten favorites "masters,"he used the archaic term, Bildnerei or "image-making,"in contradistinction to Kunst or "art."oNevertheless,Prinzhorn does refer in his text to van Gogh, Henri Rousseau,JamesEnsor,Erich Heckel, Oskar Kokoschka,Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein,and Alfred Kubin (the only significant artist of the time to see the collection in person). Of course, interested modernists soon made further connections of this sort, but then so did equally interested enemiesof modernism. The 1937 Nazi exhibition Entartete "Kunst" (Degenerate"Art") attacked modernists like Paul Klee precisely through this associationwith the mad, and it drew on imagesfrom the Heidelberg collection in doing so.' In this way a reversibility haunted the modernist reevaluationof the art of the insane, for if the art of the insane could be revealedas somehow modernist, the art of the modernistscould also be brandedas somehowpathological.

Intellectually, Prinzhorn was shapedby the formalist aestheticsof the art historian Konrad Fiedler, as well as by the psychologyof expressionof the philosopher Ludwig Klages.As his allusionsto artists suggest,he was also taken by Expressionism;in theBildnerei he claims for the art of the insane a "profound" affinity with the "emotional attitude of the 'latest'art," its "devaluationof outward appearance,"and its "concentrationon the self."u Together,these influences led Prinzhom to his theory of the six "drives" that govern the "image-makingof the mentally ill"-drives towards expression,play, ornamental elaboration,patterned order, obsessive copying, and s1'rnbolicsystems,the interaction of which was said to determine each image. Here again, however,he courted contradiction, for his drives toward expressionand play suggesta subject open to the world in a way that the other drives do not. On the contrary compulsive ornamenting, ordering, copying, and system-buildingsuggesta subject in rigid, even paranoid defense againstthe world, not in open, even empatheticengagementwith it. PerhapsPrinzhornsensedthis contradiction,for he did come to pose the drives of expressiveplay as correctivesto the drives of obsessiveordering; and, as we will see, his initial blindnesshere may point to an eventualinsight into the opposeddrivesat work in much of this art. And in the end he did admit this fundamentaldifferencebetweenartist and schizophrenic: The loneliest artist still remains in contact with humanity, even if only through desire and longing, and the desire for this contact speaksto us out of all pictures by "normal" people. The schizophrenic,on the other hand, is detached from humanity, and by definition is neither willing nor able to reestablishcontact with it; if he would, he would be healed.We sensein our pictures the complete autistic isolation and the gruesomesolipsism which far exceedsthe limits of psychopathic alienation, and believe that in it we have found the essenceof schizophrenicconfiguration.'

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ii, The Art of the Insone cs "Vision" (PouI Klee) ond "Transgression" Qeon Dubuffet) Prinzhorn assumedan equation between image and psyche, and it was this lack of mediation that allowed him to claim an "essentialinsight," through the art of the insane, into the "universalform" of A similar equation allowed for other projections of "essentialinsight" by the artistic expression.s modernistswho were most engagedby the art of the insane: Klee, the stylisticallysui generisSwiss artist; Max Ernst, the German Dadaist-turned-Surrealist;and Jean Dubuffet, the French founder of ArtBrut. All three knew the Bildnerei well, though not the collection as such. Klee had heard Prinzhorn lecture before his book appeared,while Dubuffet encountered the Bildernei in 1923, only a year after its publication (he was not yet active as an artist); as for Ernst, he discoveredthe art of the insane independently,during his early studies at the University of Bonn from 1911 on. Although obviouslynot the only influence on these three artists, it did prompt them to elaboratesome of its attributes not only into stylistic devicesbut into aesthetic models, or so I will claim here.

In 1920, early in his involvement with the art of the insane, Klee began his well-known "Creative Credo" with these words: "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible."'ln this making-visiblehe gives special status to the insane as well as to the primitive and the child: as inhabitants of an "in-between world" that "existsbetween the worlds our sensesperceive,"they "all still have-or have rediscovered-the power to see."'oThis power is visionary for Klee, and as early as 1912, in a review of the Blaue Reiter, he deemed it necessaryto any modernist "reform" of art."

We know from Oskar Schlemmer, his colleagueat the Bauhaus, that Klee knew of the Heidelberg And we hear from collection before Prinzhorn lectured on its holdings near Stuttgart in July 1920.t'z another Bauhaus colleague,Lothar Schreyer,that Klee identified with the Bildnerei upon its publication in 1922-and this at an institution, the Bauhaus, soon renowned for its rationalism.

"Youknow this excellent piece of work by Prinzhorn, don't you?," Schreyer has Klee remark. "This picture is a fine Klee. So is this, and this one, too. Look at these religiouspaintings.There'sa depth and power of expressionthat I never achieve in religious subjects. Really sublime art. Direct spiritualvision."''And it is true: when Klee illustrates"religioussubjects,"as in his "angels," "ghosts,"and "seers,"he does not often achieve this "power of expression."However, when he evokes"direct spiritualvision," an expressionthat "makesvisible,"he does sometimesapproachit.

One such approximation is the watercolor known as Angelus Novus (1920) [i11.3], which, with its ornamentalpatterning of wreathes and wings (one of the drives, according to Prinzhorn, in the art of the insane), does convey "direct spiritual vision," or at least it did for its onetime owner Walter Benjamin, for whom it was an allegorical angel of history-as-catastrophe.''But what exactly is this vision of which Klee speaks?Might it run the risk of a mental state that, far from innocent, is hallucinatory even horrific-a vision that comes to possessits subject? This state, too "direct," too "sublime,"is evoked in some psychotic representationsthat are akin to Angelus Notus, such as MonstranceFigureby Johann Knopf [ill. 4], one of the ten Prinzhorn "masters"whose work Klee would have known (in the Bildnerei he is given the pseudonym "Kniipfer," and his diagnosisis listedas "paranoidform of dementiapraecox").'tA "monstrance"is a "makingvisible";in the Roman Catholic Church it is an open or transparent vesselin which the Host is displayed for veneration.But this "monstrance figure" is monstrous-an image that, however obscure to us, appearstoo transparent to the "religious vision" of its paranoid maker, the intensity of which shines throughuntamed.'u A glimmer of this paranoid intensity is caught in severalKlees of the early 1920s,and in its dazzle his innocent idea of the art of the insane is burned away.In this way,just as Prinzhorn wanted to seethe art of the insane as expressive,only to discover that it is often radically inexpressive,that is, expressiveonly of schizophrenicwithdrawal, so Klee wanted to see an innocence of vision in this art, only to discoverthere an intensity that sometimesborders on paranoid tefior-an angelusnovus

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of catastropheindeed. Here, as with Prinzhorn,the initial blindnessof his model of the art of the insanemay produce an eventualinsight, wherebythe "vision"projectedonto thesepatientsis revealedas the terror that it is.

What, then, of the "transgressive" model of the art of the insaneadvancedby Dubuffet?Again, althoughhe encounteredthe Bildnereiearly,in 1923 while in military servicein French-occupied Germany,his relatedwork developedonly later,in the middle 1940s.''ln the interim, however, Dubuffet correspondedwith patientsand doctorsin variousasylums,an interestthat promptedhis initial gatheringof "irregular"art (includingprimitive, naive or folk, and insane)under the rubric Arr Brut-brut as in "raw,"in oppositionto refined or "cultural."In 1948, alongwith Andr6 Breton, Jean Paulhan,CharlesRatton, Henri-PierreRoch6,and Michel Tapi6,he formed the Compagniede I'Art Brut, and in 1949 he presentedthe first exhibitionof its holdings(roughly2000 works by 63 aritsts) at the Galerie Ren6 Drouin in Paris.The show was accompaniedby his best-knowntext on the subject,"L'Art Brut prâ&#x201A;Źfer6aux arts culturels,"in which thebrut artist is presentedas a radical versionof the Romanticgeniusfree of all convention: We understand by this term works produced by personsunscathed by artistic culture, where mimicry plays little or no part (contrary to the activities of intellectuals).These artists derive everything-subjects, choice of materials,means of transposition,rhythms, styles of writing, etc.-from their own depths, and not from thc conceptions of classicalor fashionableart. We are witness here to a completely pure artistic operation, raw, brute, and entirely reinventcd in all o[ its p h a s e ss o l e l yb y m e a n so f th e a r tist' so - n im p u lse s.' 8

This idealizationof the art of the insaneis similar to those of Prinzhornand Klee: it roo assumes notionsof essential"expression" and direct "visiori."But for Dubuffet the nature of thrs art is more transgressive than formal, as in Prinzhorn,or spiritual,as in Klee: "l believevery much in the vaiues of savagery;I mean: instinct, passion,mood, violence,madness."'"So too, like the others,this idealizationis a primitivism: it believesin a return to "depths."But, unlike the others,it defines

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thesedepthsnot as an origin o/art, which one can somehowreclaim redemptively,so much as an outsideto art, which somehowbreaksinto its cultural spacesdisruptively.And yet, like other primitivismsbeforehis, Dubuffet targetsacademicart; in this regardhis outsiderlogic is really an More important here, insidermove,a gambit designedto win a place within avant-gardelineages.'o evenas Dubuffet seeksto undo the oppositionbetweennormal and abnormalart ("this distinction betweennormal and abnormalseemsquite untenable:who, after all, is normal?"),''he reaffirmsan oppositionbetweenbrut andcwhwrelart, betweencivilizedand noncivilizedforms. In this wayhis transgression may come to supportthe very law that it purportsto contest;it may even work to reimaginethe "sacred"basisof this law. "Profanationin a world which no longerrecognizesany positivemeaningin the sacred,"Michel Foucaultwrites in his essayon GeorgesBatailleon "ls this not more or lesswhat we may call transgression...a way of recomposingits transgression. emptyform, its absence,through which it becomesail the more scintillating?""

Yetright here,like Prinzhornand Klee beforehim, Dubuffet may point to an insight into the art of the insanein the very blindnessof his anti-culturalconceptionof it-a twofold insight into its subjectiveand symbolicordersalike.As for the first insight, far from "unscathed,"the psychoticis scarredby trauma, and this psychicdisturbancemay be registeredin the bodily distortionsthat are often evidentin the art of the insane.In this art parts of the body,especiallyeyesand mouths, are often grosslyenlarged,and sometimesdisruptivelyplungedinto other parts of the body,so that eyesbecomebreasts,say,or mouths doubleas vaginas.Klee experimentedwith thesederangementsof the body-image,but Dubuffet did so moreextremely, and occasionally(as in Grand nu charbomneu.x, 1944 till. 5]) in waysthat correspondto (the imagesin the Bildnerei resemblanceto certain drawingsby Hermann Beehle,known as Beil [i11.6], is uncannily-or is it consciously?-close).Through thesedevicesDubuffet evokesa schizophrenic senseof literal self-dislocation, which is far from the "completelypure artistic operation"that he wished to seein the art of the insane.

14

The second insight is more implicit; it involvesthe status of the symbolic order as imagined in the art of the insane. The bodily derangementsin this art appear more desperate,even debilitated, than empowered, and this is sometimestrue in Dubuffet as well. In this way both oeuvressuggesta parallel to the act of transgressionas conceivednot according to the avant-gardistlogic of Dubuffet but by Bataille and Foucault. To put it as simply as possible:rather than attack artistic convention and symbolic order, the art of the insane appearsmore concerned to find this law again, perhaps to found it again, at the very least to "recomposeits empty form, its absence."For to its horror this is what this art seemsto see-not a symbolic order that is too stable and solid, that it wishes to attack as such (again, as posited by avant-gardistlogic), but rather a symbolic order that is not stable and solid at all, that is in crisis, even in corruption. Far from anti-civilizational,then, as Dubuffet wanted to imagine them, these artists are desperateto construct a surrogatecivilization of their own, a stopgap symbolic order in default of the given one."

Thus far I have sketched three creative misreadingsof the art of the insane: the Prinzhorn model of expression,the Klee model of vision, and the Dubuffet model of transgression.All three are modernist projections that use the art of the insane to proposea metaphysicalessenceof art.

Although each model locates the artist differently, they all presupposean ego that is intact enough, indeed present enough, to be expressive,visionary or transgressivein the first place. Even more oddly, they imagine this ego in radical discontent with artistic convention and symbolic order alike.'o In this way they project a symbolic order againstwhich this radical discontent is posed-one that is stable and solid. And none of this seemstrue of the art of insane at aII; instead it is in conformity with avant-gardistideologiesof immediacy and rupture. Far from self-present,the psychotic artist is profoundly dislocated,often literally lost in space.And far from avant-gardistin its revolt against artistic convention and symbolic order, psychotic representationattests to a mad desire to reinstate convention, to reinvent order, which the psychotic feels to be broken and so in desperateneed of repair or replacement. In short, the obsessiveelaborationsof this art are not made to break the symbolic order; on the contrary they are made in its breach'" iii. The Art of the Insone as "Regression" (Max Ernst) Ernst had few illusions about the innocence of the art of the insane-expressive, visionary or otherwise.On the contrary as he statesinBeyondPainting (1948), he soughtto transgressive, exploit its disturbancesin order "to escapethe principle of identity" in art and self alike.'uAgain, his encounterwith the art of the insanecame early,in his studiesat the Universityof Bonn in 1911.He began to read Freud in 1911 too, the year of the Schrebercase-studyof paranoia,and he may have first looked ar the KraepelinTbxtbookofPsychiatry(18S3)at this time as well (someof its representationsof shock treatment and physical restraint seem to have influenced some of his early collages)."At one point Ernst even planned a book on the art of the insane. "They profoundly moved the young man," he tells us in BeyondPainting. "Only later, however,was he to discover certain'procedures'thathelped him penetrateinto this'no man'sland"'-procedures "beyond painting" like collage,"frottage" (an image produced through rubbing), "gtattage"(an image produced through scraping),and so on."

In large part, however,Ernst elaboratedthese proceduresfrom the art of the insane, and they soon became crucial to the definition of the Surrealistimage (this suggeststhat this art was an intermediary between Dada and Surrealism).As Breton wrote of their first showing in Paris in 1921, the early Ernst collages"introduced an entirely original scheme of visual structure, yet at the same time correspondedexactly to the intentions of Lautr6amont and Rimbaud in poetry."2'Thatis, like "the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissectingtable," the famous line of Lautr6amont adopted as the Surrealist motto, these collagesperformed "the coupling of two realities, irreconcilable in appearaRce,upon a plane which apparentlydoes not suit them" that came

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Kev here is the connectiondrawn by Ernst betweendisruptionsin to define Surrealistaesthetics.r0 representation and in subjectivity,and it is difficult to imaginethis aestheticsof disruptionwithout the modei of the art of the insane.When Ernst moved to Parisin 1922 to join the Surrealists-to-be, he brought the Bildnereias a ritual gift for Paul Eluard, who, as it happens,collaboratedwith Breton on a poetic simulationof madnesstitled ImmacwlateConceptionin the sameyear-an inauguraltext of S ur r eali sw t ri ti n g .

Ernst connectsdisruptionsof imageand self explicitlyin BeyondPainting.The book openswith a "visionof half-sleep"dated "from 5 to 7 years,"in which little N{axwatcheshis roguishfather make "joyouslyobscene"marks on a panel-a first encounterwith painting cast in terms of a "primal scene,"n'hich Freud defined as a fantasyof parentalintercoursethough which a child teasesout the riddle of origins.t'Ernst usesthe trope of the primal scenein the origin storiesof all his procedures "beyondpainting."In effect, through collageand the rest, he soughtto desublimateart, to open the drivesand disturbances;and, again,his model of hallucinatoryvision is aestheticup to psychosexual underwrittenby the art of the insane."l was surprised,"Ernst writes of theseexperiments,"by the suddenintensificationof my visionarycapacitiesand by the hallucinatorysuccessionof contradictoryimagessuperimposed,one upon the other,with the persistenceand rapidity characteristicof amorousmemories."t' More is involvedhere than a disruptivedevice,however,for Ernst developsthis notion of traumatic fantasyinto a model of aestheticpractice."lt is as a spectatorthat the author assists...at the birth of

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his work," he arguesin BeyondPainting. "The role of the painter is to... project that wlxich seesitself inhirn.".rAgain, perhapswith the primal scenein mind, Ernst positionsthe artist as both a participantinside and a voyeuroutsidethe sceneof his art, as both an activecreatorof his fantasy and a passivereceiverof its images.Indeed,the visual fascinationsand sexualconfusionsof the primal scene seem to govern not only his definition of collage ("the coupling of two realities but also of its purpose(to disturb "the principle of identity").This irreconcilablein appearance") ( aesrheticis alreadyexemplified in the early collage tirled The Master'sBedroom I920) [ill. l3], an overpainting of a page from a German school-bookof an array of different animals and objects to drar' or ta trace. Here both the anirrral occupant-sand tJre -slewed space of the room seem to gaze back at the artist-viewerin threat, as if a traumaticfantasysuch as a primal scene,long repressed, had suddenlyreturned to threatenits "master,"even to "unmaster"him. Although the title alone may allude to a primal scene,it is in the formal dis/connectionof the image-its anxiousperspective, contradictoryscale,and mad juxtaposition(table,bed, cabinet,tree, whale, sheep,bear,fish, snake)-that traumatic fantasy is evoked,paranoid affect produced. Such are the "procedures"that helped Ernst penetratethe "no man'sland" of psychoticrepresentation,and to Passfrom the world of Dada to that of Surrealism.

Often in his firsr collages(again,made in Colognebeforethe publicationof the Bildnerei)Ernst not only assumeda quasi-autisticpersona,"Dadamax,"but also imagedthe body in a quasischizophrenicguiseas a dysfunctionalmachine.Basedon found printer-proofdiagramsof obscure mechanisms,these collagesare more estrangedthan the ironic mechanomorphicportraitsof other Dadaists like Duchamp and Picabia.With titles like T'l'reRoaringof FerociousSoldiers[ill. 7], these disjunct schemasseem to point to the narcissisticdamageproducedby World War I (in which Ernst was slightly wounded). For example,in Self-ConstructedSmaII Machine ( I 9 I 9) [ill. B] the body is evokedas a broken apparatus;more, it is subsumedby this bizarreprosthesis,as though it had taken on life of its own. On the left is a drum figure with numbered slots; on the right is a tripod personage,suggesrlveof both a camera and a gun, as if the subject of military-industrial modernity had developed(or is it regressed?)into two functions alone-recording machine and killing machine. Below this literally split (schizo)figure runs a confused account of its armored "anatomy," in German and in French, which conflates sex and scatology,preciselyas a schizophrenicmight.

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And indeed this "self-constructedsmall machine" is reminiscent of a particular genre of schizophrenicrepresentationsof machinic substitutes for damagedegos-substitutes that, however, only debilitate these damagedegosfurther3'[ill. 9]. In this alienated self-portrait, then, Ernst seems to figure the dewlopment of the military-industrial subject as a regressiorto broken functions and disordereddrives. In so doing he also seemsto intuit, through the art of the insane, that this disorderis social as well as subjective;it is this insight that allows him to adapt this art, to "historicize"it in effect, into an indirect critique of the symbolic order of his time.

To recap: in his Dadaist collagesErnst evokesa damagedego through the machinic substitutesthat it strugglesto deviseas a last-ditch life-support, in the manner of some schizophrenic representations.Later he dgvelopsa Surrealistaestheticbasedon a "hallucinatory successionof contradictoryimages,"in the manner of some paranoid representations(this aestheticwas made programmatic,often banally so, in the "critical paranoia"of SalvadorDali). In this way Ernst not only elaboratesthe art of the insane stylistically;it is as if he understoodit diagnostically-understood the sy;nqtomatologl of its representations, as it were. And this understanding makes his use of the art of the insanequite different from the avant-gardistaccounts of Klee and Dubuffet. Unlike these others, Emst doesnot position this art as a redemptive origin of art or as a radical outside to civilizationfor, again,that is to project a symbolic order that is intact, even solid. Rather,he draws the more radicalinsight from this art that the s)rynbolicorder may alreadybe cracked, and that this crack is crisisfor the subject as well. In so doing Ernst suggestsanother way to view not only the art of the insanebut the relevantwork of Klee and Dubuffet, which I want to reprise briefly now.

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iv. The Art of the lnsane cs a Crisis in the Symbolic Order As noted, both Klee and Dubuffet often derangedthe image of the body, as if in keeping with the schizophrenicsenseof ego-damageor self-dislocation,and, like Ernst, they sometimesfigured the body as dysfunctionally mechanistic as well.35These distortions of the body-imageare pronouncedin the art of the insane too, and they point to a paradoxicaltreatment of boundaries,of figure-ground relationships,that is also evident there, as it is in the related work of our three modernists.

Sometimesboundariesare effaced "schizophrenically,"or exaggerated"paranoically,"or exaggerated to the point where they are effaced again-as if, in the very attempt to underscorethe lines between self and world necessaryto a senseof independence,an image of autonomy,these same lines were blurred, this desired distinction undone. Some imagesin the Heidelberg collection are paranoid projections of grandiosefantasies(world systems,miraculous events,hostile machinations) that are elaboratedto the point where the very order of these projections tips into its opposite-utter chaos.

Others are obsessiveinscriptions of the pictorial field-here the desire for the law is often pronounced in repeatednumbering or lettering-that are elaboratedto the point where all senseof figure and ground, all senseof difference, is lost (the most poignant example is a work by Emma Hauck, SweetheartCome (Letter to Husband) (1909) [ill. l0], an image darkened into illegibility with the repeatedplea to "come").

Klee evokesthis collapsingof figure and ground, this mergingof subject and space,in the eerie tpith Inhabitants( I 92 I ) [ill. I I ]. Here perspectiveis made hyperbolic,its watercolorRoomPerspective More precisely,its humanist reconciliationof subject and object-which made irrational. rationality epitome of perspective,as its great cultural Erwin Panofslcyonce defined, in the Renaissance achievement-is pushed to the point of inhuman reversal,for here subject and object are not reconciled as equal terms so much as they aie dissolvedas indistinct entities,as the ghostlyinhabitantsof the room mergeinto its foreshortenedfloor and walls.'uPerhapsthe best glosson the horrific spatialityof Room Perspectireis this account of schizophreniaby the Surrealist associateRoger Caillois: To these dispossessedsouls, space seems to be a devouring force. Space pursues them, encircles them, digeststhem in a gigantic phagocytosis[consumption of bacteria]. It ends by replacing them. Then the body separatesitself from thought, the individual breaks the boundary of his skin and occupies the other side of his senses.He tries to look at himself from any point whatever in space. He feels himself becoming space,dark space where things cannot be put. He is similar, not similar to something, but just similar.And he invents spacesof which he is "the convulsivepossession."

This awful condition of mere similarity and convulsivepossessioncaptures the "schizophrenic" apprehensionof collapsedboundariesand invasivespatiality,which, again,is often evokedin the art of the insane [ill. l2]. What is of special interest in this art is that sometimesthis apprehension seemsto prompt a "paranoid"counter that has its own pathologicaleffects-a defensiveprojection of spaceas too distinct and distant, of the world as now estrangedand so hostile in this estrangement.

Here it is Ernst who evokesthis "paranoid"alienation in a collagelike The Master'sBedroom[ill. 13], where the viewer becomesthe viewed and where storybookanimals and bedtime things appearas enemies.If we can juxtaposethe two "rooms" of Klee and Ernst for a moment, Room Perspectiteuith Inhabitantssuggestsa "schizophrenic"dissolutionof the subject into space,while The Master's Bedroomprojects a "paranoid"alienation of the subjectby space-as if the "schizophrenic"of the first room sought to be recentered,made "master"again,by the "paranoid"projection of spacein the secondroom, in its hallucinated opposition of self and other. In this account, then, paranoiawould be the last refuge-the last asylum, as it were-of a subject threatenedby schizophrenicself-loss:"1" am still an "1" as long as there is an other in space,or even as space,out there (to get me); this other keepsme centered by its very alterity, in its very threat.3'Yet,obviously,this "paranoid"projection of spaceis no more guaranteeof the subject than the "schizophrenic"construction of ego-prostheses discussedabove.Both are attempts at self-rescuethat only underscoreself-loss.Such is the understandingthat an Ernstian readingof the art of the insane allows.t'

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v. The Symbolic Order os "OId Lecher" ["o]

I want to conclude with a work by Ernst that turns an evocationof a failed subject into a critique of a failed symbolic order. It is a work known (to me at least) only through a photograph that shows (his wife Ernsr with Luise (his wife at the time) huddled in his Cologne studio with Eluard and Gala at the time) in 1920. It is a simple snapshotthat commemoratesa new friendship:they pose together for the camera. But they do so under a strangeassemblagethat resemblesa threedimensionalversion of the "self-constructedmachines" of his Dadaist collages.It is a stick figure (in any case apparentlymade up of found wood and metal, topped with a hat and possessedof a gun and of fashion items of these out a later collage with the same title is constructed or deconstructed the war). The figure thus recalls not only the crazy diagrammaticmachines of the collagesbut also causrichuman commoditiesof the well-known collageThe Hat Makesthe Man (1920) [ill. l4]' Ernst gives the assemblagea titular caption in the quasi-schizophrenic"word salad"in German and French that is common in his contemporaneouscollages:"Old Lecher with Rifle Protects the Museum'sSpringApparelfrom DadaisticInterventions[L'6tat c'est MOI!] [Monumental Sculpture]."This is near nonsense,to be sure,but it is pointed nonsense,perhapsallegorical "old lecher" nonsense.In this moment of military defeat and social chaos the state is figured as an whose only authority is sheer force, "the rifle." And yet it still wants to protect the cultural patrimony, "the museums," from the attack of "dadaistic interventions." But the performative magic of state power ("1'6tatc'est MOI!") no longer functions; it is ridiculous, and the foursome lie here casually,almost insolently, indifferent to this police force. Moreover, the cultural patrimony that it wishes to protect is alreadydegraded:it is little more than fashion, "spring apparel,"the new commodities (which might include the avant-garde)of each new season.The old lecher is a "monumental sculpture," but it is a monument to the failure of symbolic monumentality, a monument to the collapseof social authority. It is this critical lesson-that the art of the insane might point not to pure expression,originary vision, or vanguardtransgressionso much as to a given crisis in the svmbolic order-that Ernst discoveredin "the no-man'sland" of its representations'

21

Norrs: l. Today this particular trio of exotics must strike us as very odd, but at the time they were seen as necessaryguides in the modernist search for "primal beginnings in art" (Paul Klee). Straightaway,then, we face this old modernist paradox-that artistic primacy and expressiveimmediacy would be pursued through the mediation of representationsas complex as psychotic images, tribal objects, and the drawings of children.

2. See Cesare Lombroso, Genio e Folio (Milan, 1864); translated into French in 1889, Enghsh in 1891, and German in 1894.

Sexuality, On the historical reception of the art of the insane, see Sander L. Gilman, Differenceand Pathology:Stereotypes'of Race,and Madness(lthaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), esp., 217-38; and John M. MacGregor, The DlscoueryoJ the Art of the lnsane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

3. Again, the crucial text here is the 191I case-studyofJudge Schreber,"PsychonanalyticNotes upon an AutobiographicalAccount of a Case of Paranoia(Dementia Paranoides)."The best general reference for these nosologicaldebatesis Jean Laplanche and J. B. trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (NewYork: W.W Norton, 1973).

Pontalis,The Inngmge of Ps-ychoaralysis, 4. On the first page Prinzhorn writes: "We emphasizethat no artistic value judgments are implied when we call objects produced by blldendeKunst (creative art), Bild.nerei"(Artistry of the Menally lll, trans. Eric von Brockdorff [NewYork Springer-Verlag,]9721, l).

5. As early as l92l a Hamburg professornamed Wilhelm Weygrandt used a condemnatoryjuxaposition of insane and modernist art, a device extended by Paul Schultze-Naumburgin Kunst und Rassein I 93 5 and then, of course, in Entartete "Kunst" in 1937. In 1933 the Nazis installed Carl Schneider as director of the Heidelberg clinic; it was he who provided materialsfor the 1937 exhibition. Schneider later became scientific director of the Nazi extermination program of mental patients. See Bettina Brand-Claussen,"The Collection of Works of Art in the Psychiatric Clinic, Heidelberg-from the Worksfrom the Prinzhorn Collection Beginningsuntil I 94 5," in Brand-Claussenet al., ed., Beyond.Reason,Art and Psychosis: (London: Hapvard Gallery 1996).

6. See "Summary" in Prinzhorn, Artistry of the Mentally lll.

7.lbid.,266.

8. Ibid. This equation between image and psyche was also assumedin the anti-modernistreadingsof modernist art as mad. So too, it must be admitted, it is sometimesassumedin psychoanalyticaccounts of art-including, perhaps,my own below.

9. Felix Klee, Paul Klee: His Life andWork in Docutnents(New York: George Braziller, 1962), 153.

10.Ibid., 184. , o .9 0 5 ( Stu ttgart:V erl agGerd H atj e, 1988),320-22. l l . P a u l K l e e , T a g e r b a ch e1r 8 9 8 - 1 9 1 8 n 12. Klee might also have seen a selection of the collection in January 1921 atZinglers Kabinett in Frankfurt where he would show a year later.

13. Paul Klee, 183; quoted from Lothar Schreyer,Erinnerungenan Sturm und Bauhaus (Munich: Langen and Muller, 1956).

How much we can trust this memory of a conversationis obviously open to dispute.

14. See Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophyof History" (1940), in llluminations, ed. HannahArendt (NewYork: S c h o c k e nB o o k s, 1 9 6 9 ) ,2 5 7 - 5 8 .

15. This particular work is not inthe Bildnerei, but a few related images are included.

(New York: W.W Norton, 198I ) JacquesLacan suggests(or so I read | 6. ln The Four Fundamental Conceptsof Psychoanalysis him) that a very important part of the symbolic order is "the image-screen"where all our social codes of visual recognitionart history pop-cultural images,movies, etc.-are filed, as it were. Beyond this image-screenis the horrific gazeof the world, the real, and it is the function of this screen to screen this real, to tame its gaze(to the familiar device of trompe-l'oeil,Lacan adds this purpose of the picture as a"dompte-regard,"atamingof the gazeof the world). Now, just as languagemay be disorderedfor the psychotic, so this image-screenmay appear pierced or torn. If so, might schizophrenichallucinatrons and/or paranoid projections be attempts to fill in this "hole," to (over)compensatefor this damage,in the image-screen?Very suggestivehere is this passagefrom the Bildnerei where August Natterer (a.k.a. Neter), one of the ten "masters,"discusses the "apparition" that he depicted again and again [ill. 26):"At first I saw a white spot in the cloud, very near by-the clouds the white spot withdrew and remained in the sky the whole time, like a board. On this board or screen or stagepictures followed one another like lightning, maybe 10,000 in half an hour, so that I could absorb the most important only with the greatestattention. The Lord himself appeared,the witch who created the world-in between there were all stood still-then

worldly scenes:war pictures, parts of the earth, monuments, battle scenesfrom the Wars of Liberation, palaces,maruelous palaces,in short the beauties of the whole world-but all of these in supraearthlypictures. They were at least 20 meters high.. . it was like a movie. . .The pictures were manifestationsof the last judgment, Christ could not complete the redemption becausethe Jews crucified him too soon. Christ said at the Mount of Olives that he had shiveredunder the pictures which appearedthere. These are pictures, in other words, like those of which Christ spoke. They are revealedto me by God for the completion of the redemption" (Artistry, 159-60).

17. Some historians argue that Dubuffet actually traveled to Heidelberg in 1923 to view the collection in person.

18. Jean Dubuffet, "Art Brut in Preferenceto the Cultural Arts" (1949), trans. Paul Foss and Allen S. Weiss, Art 6 Tbxt 27 ( D e c e m b e r - F e br u a r1y9 8 8 ) : 3 3 .

19. Jean Dubuffet, Jean Dubuffet (New York, 1960),2.

20. By his own later admission:"l quite agree that no art form exists that is not in some way dependent on cultural givens" (Dubuffet, L'Homme du commun d I'ouvrage[Paris: Gallimard.,19731,439). On such gambits, see Griselda Pollock, AuantG a r d eG a m b i t s18 8 8 - 1 8 9 3( L o n d o n :T h a m e s & Hu d son, 1992).

22

21. Dubuffet, "Art Brut in Preference,"33.

22. Michel Foucault, "A Preface to Transgression,"in Language,Counter-Memory,Practice,ed. Donald F. Bouchard (lthaca: Cornell University Press, 1977),30. The essayfirst appearedin "Hommage i GeorgesBataille," Critique 195-96 (1963).

23. See note 16. My line of thought here is indebted to the provocative text of Eric Santner, My Oum Private Cerman: Daniel Paul Schreber'sSecretHistory of Modernity (Princeton; Princeton University Press, 1996). "The social and political stability of a society as well as the psychological'health'of its members," Santner writes, "would appear to be correlated to the efficacy of individuals 'become who they are,' these symbolic operations-to what we might call their perfornative mgic-whereby assume the social essenceassignedto them by way of names, titles, degrees,posts, honors, and the like. We cross the threshold of modernity when the attenuation of these performativelyeffectuated social bonds becomes chronic, when they are no longer capable of seizing the subject in his or her self-understanding.The surprise offered by the analysisof paranoia...is that an 'investiture crisis' has the potential to generatenot only feelings of extreme alienation, anomie, and profound emptiness, anxietiesassociatedwith absence;one of the central theoretical lessonsof the Schreber case is precisely that a generalizedattenuation of symbolic power and authority can be experiencedas the collapse of social space and the rites of institution into the more intimate core of one's being. The feelings generatedthereby are, as we shall see, anxieties not of absenceand loss but of overproximity,loss of distance to some obsceneand malevolent presence that appearsto have a direct hold on one's inner parts" (xii).

24. For Bettina Brand-Claussenthis goes back to Prinzhorn at least: "The whole avant-gardeconcept of willfully violating pictorial convention-a practice that emerged unscathed from any amount of hostile comparisonswith the art of the l156nsfinds its ultimate expressionin Prinzhorn'smodel, according to which the autistic, mad artist makes visible, in the 'unio mystica with the whole world,'what it is that marks out the genuine artist" (BeyondReason,14).

25. Seenotes 16 and 23.

26. Max Ernst, BeyondPainting (New York: Wittenborn and Schultz, 1948), 13. This extraordinaryart treatise is written as a self-analysisin which the development of his art is narrated as the story of his psychic life. It consistsof severaltexts, some of which were first published in Surrealistjournals from the late 1920s through the middle 1930s.The phrase "to escapethe principle of identity" is a quotation from a review by Andr6 Breton of a l92l show of early Ernst collages; seeBeyond Painting, 177.

27. See Elizabeth M. Legge,Max Ernst: The PsychoanalyticSources(Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1989), 152-55.

28. Ernst, BeyondPainting, 13.

29. Andr6 Breton, "Artistic Genesis and Perspectiveof Surrealism" ( 194I ), in Surrealismand.Painting (New York, 1972), 64.

30. Ernst, BeyondPainting, 13.

31. Ibid., 3. The classictext on the primal sceneis, of course,the Wolf Man case study,"From the History of an Infantile Neurosis" (1913/18). For more on the primal scene in Ernst, see my CompulsiueBeauty(Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press,1993).

3 2 . I b i d . , l 4 ; co m p a r eth e a cco u n to f Ne te r in n o te 16.

33. Ibid., 8.

3 4 . l n T h e E mp tyF o r tr e ss:In fa n tile Au tism a n d th e Bi rthol theS ef (N ew Y ork:TheFreeP ress, 1967)thepsychotherapi st discussesthe now-famous case of a boy named Joey who felt that he was "run by machines."These machines, which Joey both constructed and represented,not only drove him but protected him, as a "defensivearmoring," against anxiety-against dangersthat he perceived as within within and without. They maintained his body-egoimage-maintained it as debilitated. I mean to suggestthat Ernst intuits this idea of a crazyprosthesisin these early works. For more on this connection see my "Armor Fou," October 56 (Spring l99l).

35. Dubuffet favored the animalistic over the mechanistic, while Klee sometimes combined the two, as in his well-known Twittering M achine (1922). as SymbolicForm (1924-25), trans. Christopher Wood (New York: Zone Books, l99l).

36. See Erwin Panofsky,Perspective 37. Freud liked to associatethe system-buildingof philosophy with paranoia (from which he, then, would not be immunethis might be the point of his playful analogy),and there is a paranoid dimension in recent French theory as well-the alienation of the gazein Sartre and Lacan, the power of surveillancein Foucault, and so on. As suggestedabove, in the very critique of the subject in such theory there might be a secret mission of rescue.As Leo Bersani comments: "ln paranoia,the primary function of the enemy is to provide a definition of the real that makes paranoia necessaryWe must therefore begin to suspect the paranoid structure itself as a device by which consciousnessmaintains the polarity of self and nonself, thus 25 [Winter 19S9], 109). preservingthe concept of identity" ("Pynchon, Paranoia,and Literature," in Representations 38. This understandingis foreshadowedin a 1936 essayby the Viennese psychoanalystand art historian Ernst Kris; who was critical of the Prinzhorn idealization of the art of the insane. Kris (who actually visited the Heidelberg collection) read it instead as a failed project of "restitution." See "The Art of the Insane," in PsTchoanalyticExplorations iz Arr (New York: Shocken Books, 1964).

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The Psychopath as Artist [rS]

Are crazypeople more creative than others?R.D. Laing, the British psychiatric guru of the 1960s, affirmed this more forcefullythan most.'He saw (and sees)madnessas a creativeresponseto an untenable world: the family (or perhaps even society) is destructivelymad; those whom society labels as insane are only respondingto the crazinessthat surrounds them by creativelyreworking it.

The diseasedworld (or family) Iabels this responsean "illness," and this view determines how the individual is perceived and, more important, treated. Society denies this creative responseof the mentally ill even though it presents the roots for any true understandingof the nature of insanity.To use Michel Foucault'sformulation, the mad are denied their own voice.2They are forced to speak through either those institutions that causedtheir madness,such as the family, or those that deny them insight, such as medicine.

In the 1960s Laing undertook an experimentto show that the insanecould be treated and restoredif they were, in a sense,reprogrammed.Laing'screationwas KingsleyHall, a community of patients and therapistswhich attempted to return "ill" individualsto that stagein life at which they were exposedto the perniciousinfluence of the sick world about them. They were encouragedto return to infancy and relive their early life in a new caring, protective,"healthy"world, the world of KingsleyHall.

Kingsley Hall had a favorite patient, Mary Barnes.Togetherwith her therapist, the American psychiatristJoe Berke,she wrote an account"of a journey through madness."tNow most psychiatristsor mental healerswho see themselvesas establishinga new order have "pet" patients who serve them as the ideal example of the efficacy of their method. From Philippe Pinel, the father of modern psychiatry to Jean Martin Charcot, Freud's teacher,from Anton Mesmer, who first used hypnotism in creating psychologicaldisorders,to Laing, the exemplarypatient seemsa standard feature of all psychiatric systemsthat style themselvesas innovative.These patients illustrate the "creative"responsethat the new system enablesthem to make to their own madness.This is clearly the case with Mary Barnes. Barnesvalidates Laing's treatment by literally becoming a creative artist, a painter. She shows that she has recoveredby painting her vision of the world rather than internalizingit in her psychoticfantasies.

Joe Berke conceived of art as the key to unlocking Mary Barnes'smadness.He saw in her regression to childhood a "creative"pattern: "Mary smearedshit with the skill of a Zen calligrapher.She Iiberated more energiesin one of her many natural, spontaneousand unself-consciousstrokesthan most artists expressin a lifetime of work. I marvelled at the eleganceand eloquenceof her imagery while others saw only her smells" (1949). Mary Barnes is a real artist since she is unfettered by the limitations of the very world that drove her into madness;she is the romantic artist par excellence, following her own inner senseof the creative, and Joe Berke is the true critic, able to perceive the truth in art, while all others in the philistine mob see only shit. But this is only part of the model for the artist which Berke has internalized and which Barnes accepts and carries out in her desire to pleaseher therapist. Berke continues this description of the role which art can play in communicating with patients (and having patients communicate with the world) by telling an anecdote about another psychotherapist,John Thompson, and an unnamed patient who had withdrawn totally into his world of madness.Thompson presentedhim with pen and paper and "the man graspedhold of the pen tightly and, in a few minutes, fashioned a technically proficient,

i l l . 17

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Giacometti-likedrawingof a thin, tortured individual."This mode of communicationcontinued, Berke informs us, since "the man had found his mode of expression.Later he becamea well known painter."Thus the artist for Berke not only is the true prophet of inner feelingbut also is rewarded for this ability to articulatethis insight with successand status.Mary Barneswas given crayonsand paperin November 1965. Her first productswere given to her therapistas a gift and he encouraged her through his praiseto continue to produce.By February1969 Barneshad moved from crayonsto other media, had sold some of her paintings,and was preparinga "one-womanexhibition."Its successwas overwhelming.Articles appearedin such British intellectualjournals as Ner.uSociety which were clearly in sympathy with Laing's views, and the show was coveredby newspapersand television.All of this Barnesrecordsin her autobiographicrecollectionswith greatpleasure.At the preopeningparty "Joecame,gloriousin a huge robe of golf dragons.The big bear who had causedall the Painting.'lt's reallywonderful,what you have done for Mary' Mrs. Nix, an old friend, was saying.Joe replied,'Oh, Mary teachesme'." WhateverMary can teach us about madness,it is not the lessonthat Joe Berke drew. For Joe was pleasedwith Mary'ssuccessas an artist within the approvedinstitutionalframeworkin which art (evenart producedby the romantic artist) is judged.

Mary has simply acceptedBerke'spresuppositionsand lived them out. Her successas an artist must be measuredagainsther statusas the "pet" patient of KingsleyHall and the climate in which this answerto the treatmentof mental illnesswas seenas the most sociallyacceptableone.

The Mod Artist through the Nineteenth Century The caseof Mary Barnesraisesone of the centralquestionsabout the myth linking madnessand linked?Aristotlebelieved artisticproduction(or creativity).Are madnessand creativitynecessarily

,n

they were. lnhis Problemataheasked,"Why are men of genius melancholics?"'Melancholia, the dominance of one of the humors, black bile, was seen as the root of most mental illnessesfrom the time of the ancient Greeks through the Renaissance.Aristotle saw mythologicalfigures such as Heraclesas possessinga melancholic constitution but also saw "most of the poets" as being "clearly melancholics."Creative minds are diseasedor, at least accordingthe ancients,are housed in a body dominated by black bile, the source of madness.Creative individuals set themselvesapart from the normal not only by their actions but also by the sourceof these actions.Their uniquenessis perceivedas the result of some greater,overwhelmingforce, such as madness.This view was acceptedin the West for over two thousandyears,and it attained the status of a truism in the nineteenth century.With the reform of the asylumsin the early nineteenth century and the parallel literary glorification of the mad as the only ones possessingtrue insight (in the writings of Romantics such as E.T.A. Hoffmann), attention is thrown for the first time on the artistic production of the insane. For if the creative are mad, must it not also be true that the mad are creative?

Philippe Pinel, credited with "freeing the mad from their chains" (and replacing them with more "humane" treatment such as the newly developed"English straight waistcoat," (the strait jacket), in his textbookof psychiatry(1801) mentionsin passingthe artistic productionof some hospitalized patients.5Benjamin Rush, one of signersof the American Declaration of Independence,who had the most original mind in the history of American psychiatry reported in l8l2 that his patients at the Philadelphia Hospital showed uncommon capacity for poetry music, and art.uIndeed, as a result of Rush'sinterest, there are preservedthe poetry and watercolorsof one of his patients, Richard Nisbett, which reflect this derangedindividual'sinterestin drawingdetailedmaps. But Nisbett'suse of maps as a way of presenting his vision of the world was no more unusual than his physician'suse of t hem odelo f g o v e rn m e n ti n p re s e n ti n g hi smodel ofthemi ndi nhi s 179I l ecturesonthe institutes of medicine, "The passionsare the deputies of the supreme executive,and carry into effect all the good and evil which are fabricated by the legislativepowers."' Both maps and governmentswere powerful imagesin post-RevolutionaryAmerica and permeated the way in which all, mad and sane, saw the world. Rush must have seen Nisbett's art as providing some type of opening into the nature of madness,or else he would not have preservedit. But what Rush saw we do not know, for he never commented on this case.

In 1845 Pliny Earle, one of the foundersof the organizationthat becametheAmerican Psychiatric Association,published an essayon the artistic production of the insane in which he presentedfor the first time the theoretical presuppositionsmedicine had developedto deal with the aesthetic products of the mad. He censured society'squarantine of the insane as brutal and brought as proof of their innate humanity the fact that they too produce works which can be seen as "elevated."He seesin these works by the mentally ill the truths of some prelapsarianstate of humanity: It has been asserted,by one who was laboring under mental derangement,that the only difference between the sane and the insane,is, that the former conceal their thoughts, while the latter give them utterance.This distinction is far less erroneous than might be supposed, and is not destitute of analogy to the remark of Talleyrand, that "language was invented for the purpose of concealingthought." The contrast between lunatics and personsretaining the use of reason,is not so broad and striking as would appearto such as are but little acquaintedwith the former. It seemsto me that one of the most prominent points of difference, having the general character in view, is that with the insane, "the shadow has receded upon the dial-plate of time," and they are, truly, "but children of a largergrowth." In their attachmentsand antipathies,their sourcesof pleasure and of pain, their feelings,motives,all their secret springsof action, they appearto have returned again into childhood. But childhood and early life are emphaticallythe poetical age of man, when hope is unclouded and care is but a name, when affection is disinterested,the heart unsullied, and imaginationuntrammeled by the seriousduties of a working world.8

Earle seesmad-poetsas child-poetsunable to repressthe inner truths they have seen.But this poet as child also seesmore intensely than do the sane: "lt is well known that insanity not infrequently develops,or gives greater activity to powers and faculties of the mind, which, prior to its invasion, had remained either dormant or but slightly manifested. No other power is more frequently thus

28

renderedprominent than that of poeticalcomposition."The mad poet seesmore deeplyand is able to articulate this perception. Earle'sexampleshowever,are quite contradictory.For while he can (and does)quote from poetswho becameinsane(such as the "melancholic"William Cowper),the poetry he cites from his patientshe labelsas either confusedor banal.

Shortly after the publication of Pliny Earle'sessay,the British "alienist" (the terms "psychiatrist"as well as "psychiatry"were coined in the 1830sand took a while to catch on) ForbesWinslow continued the argument in a paper "on the insanity of men of genius"in which he noted resemblancesamong paintings by the mentally ill which he collectedfrom various British asylumsover a period of twenty years.tLikewise, CesareLombroso,in his first major work on the subject, Geniusand Madness(1864), drew analogiesbetween geniuses,whom he saw in an Aristotelian manner as mad, and the work by the insane which he had seen in his work in the Turin clinic.'oLombroso'sbook, and his subsequentfame as the best-knownmedical champion of the concept of "degeneracy"as the central explanationof deviancy(from sociopathicand psychopathicto creativeacts), moved this question into the center of the concernsof contemporarypsychiatry.It is only following Lombroso that the two questionsare clearly separated:one line leadsto the examinationof the "great"in order to find the psychopathologicalorigin of their greatness(as in Paul Mobius's "psychographs"or Freud's "psychobiographies"); the other to the examinationof the aestheticproducts of the mentally ill to establishthe creativityof the mad (and discovertheir greatnessin their illness).

Lombroso'sGenius and Madnessexamines 107 mentally ill patients, of whom about half sPontaneously painted.The author seesin thesepaintingsproof of his basic tenet, which is that sociopathic and psychopathic acts reflect a throwback to a more primitive stageof human development. In the art of his patients he seesan atavistic form of representationwhich he parallels with the "art" of the "primitive": both exhibit a fixation on the obsceneand a stresson the absurd.

He also sees,however,that his patients'art fulfills no function either in the world of the asylum or in the greaterworld. It seemsto be merely the reflectionof the madnessof the patient and has therefore only overt meaning, without any deeper significance.What Lombroso is interested in, however,is the seeminglyspontaneousact of painting, which he seesas parallel to the seemingly spontaneousact of painting among"savages."

The act of creationrather than the product of creation is central to Lombroso'sconcern.

There is anothershift when the late nineteenth-centurymedical establishmentturns to the aesthetic productions of the insane. While most discussionsof the creativity of the mad in the early part of the nineteenth century revolvedaround the poetry of the insane (Pliny Earle's title), the late nineteenth century beginning with ForbesWinslow, became fascinatedby the visual art produced by the insane.ln 1872AmbroseTardieupublishedhis "medico-legalsrudy of madness,"in which he commentedthat "althoughour attention to the presenthas been concentratedon the writings of the mad, I do not shy away from sayingthat I am interested in examining the drawings and paintings produced by the insane. What one can associatein ideas, what one perceivesin one's fantasy,the most impossible things, the most bizarre images,which one would not have even in one's own delirium, are drawn by the mad. These creationscontain nightmaresand causeone'shead to swim."" Tardieu'sconclusionis that the art of the insane,which he also describesas somehowor other different from the art of the sane, gives greater insight into the nature of the insane's perception of the world.

Why does the emphasisshift from poetry to art? The shift, as we can see in Tardieu'sobservation,is one of which the "scientific" investigatorsare quite aware. It can on one level be understood as a direct reflex of the role experimentationplays in impinging various modes of aesthetic communicationon the popular consciousness.

Romanticpoetrywas the face of Romanticismas far as the popular understandingof the revolutionin perceptionwas concerned.,,For the 1860sand

29

early 1870s,especiallyin Paris,it was art in which the most visible and controversial experimentationwas taking place. Art became the appropriatevehicle for experimentation,just as poetry had been some four decadesprior. It is not that experimentationin art had not taken place during the early nineteenth century (as for example in the work of Th6odore G6ricault or Caspar David Friedrich), or that experimentationin poetry was lacking in the late nineteenth century (think of Baudelaireand Mallarm6), or that the popular view of where experimentationwas present had shifted. Thus the central question asked concerning the creativity of the insane both preselected that medium in which experimentationwas then taking place and imposed upon the products of the insane the ideology of the avant-garde.By the end of the nineteenth century the art of the insane representednot only the lost world of childhood but also the utopia (or distopia) of aesthetic experimentation.

Only four years after Tardieu published his first halting speculationson the art of the insane, Max Simon used the art of the mentallyill as the basisfor a set of diagnosticcategories.''Simon discoveredspecific, formal qualities in the art of the insane correspondingto six of the categoriesof late-nineteenth-centurypsychiatric diagnosis(melancholia,chronic mania, megalomania,general paralysisof the insane,dementia,and imbecility).Thus paintingsby the "demented"are childish or foolish while those by "chronically manic" patients are incoherent and disregardfulof reality in their use of color. Simon was also struck, as was Lombroso, by some of the "bizarre" content of these works, specifically their sexualimagery.His intent was to use paintings and drawings by the mentally ill as diagnostictools. His attempt was bound to fail since his categoriesof illnesswere as much a reflex of his time as was his formalist methodology.Simon was working with the critical tools of his age. He approachedthe work of art in the asylum much as his eye had been trained to see the work of art in the museum. Robbedof all contextexceptone that is self-consciously neutral,the work of art in the museum demandedto be seenas a closedstructurereferringonly to itself. Embeddedness was either excludedor consciouslyrepressed.Simon'sview was rigidly formalist.He commentedon compositionand to a much lesserdegree(becausethey point toward the contextof the work) on the themes of the works of art. However, as the medical director of the asylum at Bron, Simon had set the limits for the examination of art by the insane in his application of contemporaryaesthetic standardstaken from the fine arts to objects that he labeled as aesthetic objects. Thus the artistic production by the insane was given the status of "ART." In 1882 Emmanuel Regispublished a detailedreflection on the art of the insanein which he carried Simon'sargumentyet further.'oHe focusedon the orthographiccomponentpresentin much of the "art" of the insane.As early as Lombroso'swork, it was evident that the clear line between the "writing" and the "art" of the insane was an artifact of the beholder. Pliny Earle himself discussedthe first published clinical study of an "influencing machine,"describedby John Haslam in 1810, and is fascinatedas much by Haslam'sreproductionof his patient'ssketch of the machine as he is by the vocabularythe patient used to describeit. Regis,reflectingto no little degreethe late nineteenth-centuryfascinationwith graphology,concentratedon the formal aspects of embellishmentand structure rather than on the broadercontext of the relationshipbetween words and image. Indeed, he tended to see the shapeof the words as more important than their meaning.As a reaction to this attempt (no matter how superficial)at a new synthesisof word and image,Marcel R6ja published the first comprehensiveoveryiewof the "art of the mad: drawing, prose,poetry" (1901), in which he arguedthat there can be no direct, overwhelmingrelationship between mental illness and the total aestheticproduction of the insane." It is only in the world of words, in literature,that this influence can be judged. R6ja'swork is clearly an attempt to "save"art as a haven from the synthesizingattempts of writers such as Regis and the American psychiatrist Ale{ Hrdliika, whose little-known essay"Art and Literature in the MentallyAbnormal" had appear edin l 8 9 9 .ru

ill. r 8

A New Madness [So]

In psychiatriccircles during the closing decadesof the nineteenth century there was a great deal of interest in the artistic production of the insane.Part of this interest was rooted in an overall shift in the definition of mental illness. By the definition of mental illness, I do not merely mean what is consideredto be crazy,but what aspectsof being cyazyareseen as standingin the center of a "scientific" considerationof madness.What diagnosticcriteria are emblematic for madness?

It is clear that for the greaterpart of the late nineteenth century,the "disease"that defined madnesswas "generalparalysisof the insane."Madnesswas perceivedas an alterationof mind rather than of emotions and thus fitted very nicely into the model of mental illness which dominated late nineteenth-centurypsychiatry.Seen as some type of a reflex of a diseaseof the braln (indeed it was shown, shortly after the beginning of this century,to be the final stageof syphilitic infection), it fulfilled the aperEuof Wilhelm Griesinger,dean of nineteenth-century biologicalpsychiatrist,that "mind illness is brain illness."But by the closing decadesof the nineteenth century the basic definition of mental illness beganto change.Psychiatristssuch as Jean Martin Charcot in Parisand Sigmund Freud in Vienna turned to the study of the emotions.

The new illness which begins to take center stagein 1890sis dementia praecox,a term coined by the French psychiatristsBdn6dict-AugustinMorel in 1856. In Emil Kraepelin'srevitalizationof this diagnosticcategoryin 1896, modern psychiatryfound that "disease"which best defined its c ent er of m e n ta l i l l n e s s .' tl n l 9 l I th e S w i sspsychi atri stE ugen B l eul errestructuredw hat for Kraepelinhad been a static concept (dementiapraecox),a diseasehaving an inevitably negative outcome, into a more dynamic category(schizophrenia),a categorythat has been the focus of twentieth-centurypsychopathology.

Twentieth-centurypsychiatryhad been greatlyinrerestedin the implications of the artistic and poetic products of the schizophrenic.Bleuler'smajor contribution was to separatewhat he consideredthe basic structure of schizophreniadisassociationof thought, loss of appropriateeffect, ambivalence,autism-from the accessory symPtomssuch as hallucinations,alternationsof personality,and changesin languageand

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handwr it inga s w e l l a s th e s e e m i n g l yu n i q u e arti sti cproducti onsof the schi zophreni c.B l eul eral so countered Kraepelin'sview that schizophrenianecessarilyended in total idiocy; he saw the potential for a return of the schizophrenicpatient to society.

Interestin the artistic productionof the insanewas not lackingin the decadesprecedingKraepelin's and Bleuler'sworks, but was greatlyheightenedwith the popularizationof the concept "schizophrenia."

JosephRoguesde Fursac's1905 monograph,Writing and Drawing in Mental and l'JervousIIIness,presented the idea that the work of art produced by the mentally ill servedas a "translation"of the illnessinto concreteform.'' Such views servedas a bridge to Bleuler'stheory of the accessibilityof the underlyingstructuresof schizophreniathrough its peripheralproducts.This is a far cry from Emil Kraepelin'sstatementthat theseproducts,which he called"word or picture salad,"were meaningfulonly as a grosssign of the dementia,much as a rash signifiesthe presence of measles.For such thinkersas Roguesde Fursacand Friedrich Mohr (in essayspublishedbetween I906 and 1909),the iilnesscould be interpretedthrough the work of art itself.'n The shiFtin perspectivehad implicationsnot only for the understandingof schizophrenia,but also for treatment.Followingin Freud'sfootsteps,Bleuler listenedto, observed,and attemptedto analyze his schizophrenicpatientswhile seeingthem as sufferingnot from some type of physicalalteration of brain structure (a diseaseof the mind) but from a severedisorderof the psyche.As such, the artistic productsof the schizophrenicassumeda greaterand greaterrole in both diagnosisand treatment.Schizophrenics were perceivedas sufferingfrom some type of alterationin their relation to their senseof self.Accordingto the new theories,this relationshipcould be extrapolatedfrom the nature of their art.

The idea of a dynamic psychopathology as evolvedby Bleuler influenced a new generationof psychiatrists,who beganto concentrateon the products of the schizophrenicas a meansof examiningand eventuallytreating the illness.The center of interest moved from Bleuler'.s hospital, the Burghrilzlioutside of Zurich, to the universityclinics at Heidelberg.These had been run by

32

Emil Kraepelin until the end of World War I. Following the war they were headed

by Karl Wilmanns, later the editor of the comprehensivehandbookon schizophreniaproduced by the Heidelberggroup in 1932. During the 1920sHeidelbergbecamerhe center for the study of products of schizophreniaas meansof accessto the central problemsof mental illness. ln 1922 Hans Prinzhornpublished his study of the "art of the insane"basedon rhe Heidelberg collection, which he helped found; in 1924Wilhelm Mayer-Gross,who would become the founder of British dynamic psychopathology, publishedhis study of the "autobiographies of the mentally ill."r0These endeavorsstood under the influence of Wilmanns as well as the most original mind of the Heidelbergschool, Karl Jaspers,whose systematichandbook,GeneralPsychopathology (1913), both summarizedthe existingliterature and indicated the paths that should be taken by future students of psychopathology'" Jaspers'sexistentialphenomenologyas well as that of the philosopherLudwig Klages,Prinzhorn'smain influence, saw the peripheralproducts of the mentattf ltt as a tool to explorethe alienationof humans from their essentialself. In a sense, Jaspersand Klageswere reactingagainstwhat they perceivedas the biologicalbasisof Freud'sthought.

They wished to replaceFreud'sbiologicalmodel with a purely psychologicalexplanationfo, psychopathology.

Prinzhornand Mayer-Grosspicked up the challengeto examinethe artistic and literary products of the mentally ill in the light of this new manner of understandingthe insane.

Hans Prinzhornhad initially approachedthe art of the insanein an essaypublished in l9l9.r, This essaywas superficiallylittle more than a summaryof the literature,but like great work of Jaspers's six yearsearlier,it used a surveyof the literature as a devicefor defining the direction the investigationmust take' Prinzhornperceivedfour stagesin the "scientific" treatment of the art of the insane:first, the awarenessthat the insanedo produce works of art (Thrdieu); second,that these works of art could have value in diagnosis(Simon); third, that the approach appropriatero the study of this materialwas an intrinsic one (Mohr); fourth, that the question of the relationship of this art to "real" art should be part of the investigation(R6ja) The program outlined in l9l9 was carried out in his 1922 volume, Artistry of the Mentally llt.- In undertaking a formalistic analysisof some 5000 works by 450 individuals,Prinzhornstressedthe inner structure of the works of art as the key to meaning.FollowingBleuler,he assumedthat theseworks had a hidden meanrng inasmuch as they related to the inner world of the schizophrenic.He outlined six major formal criteria of the art of the schizophrenicwhich point directly to the nature of the psychological disruption in the illness:the compulsiveneed to expressinner feelings,playfulness in expressrng them, the need to ornament (the horror felt at leavingany corner of the paper undecorated),the need for order,the drive to copy or imitate, and finally,the self-conscious developmentof complex systemsof visual and literary symbolsor icons. In spite of his development of these categories (which he understoodas the reflection of the basisof schizophrenia as a disorderof the character), he warned at the conclusionof his work againstusing them simply as a means of labelinga given work of art as the product of the mentally ill. Prinzhorn'sseemingcontradiction is in reaction to a seriesof monographsbeginningwith Paul Schilder'sstudy of madnessand knowledge( l g l g), which drew parallelsbetween the art of his patient "G.H." and the avant-garde, specificallythe works of Kandinsky''z* Prinzhorn was quite aware that he could all too easily fall lnto the type of fallacy that characterizedsome earlier studies.They took a group of patients labeledas rnsane, examinedtheir products (as medievaldoctorshad examinedthe urine of fever patients),and determinedthat the patientswere insane.Prinzhornbelievedthat the art of the schizophrenic shows some certain qualities,but that without the patient (or a diagnosis) before or,", o.r" cannot determinewhether the work reflects a diseaseprocessor not. This break with the rigid equation between artistic production and diagnosisdoes not evolve from Prinzhorn's formalistic analysisof his patients'painting.It must be understoodin the context of specific concept of the mythopoesis of mental illnesswhich dominatedthe German intellectualscenein the openingdecadesof the t went iet hc e n tu ry .

33

The Artist as Psychopcth During the opening decadesof the twentieth century German expressionismreveledin the exotic.

The "discoveries"of African art by Carl Einstein very much paralleled the "discovery"of the insane by such diversewriters and poets as Ernst Stadler,Georg Trakl, Alfred Ddblin, and the dadaist Richard Huelsenbeck." This discoverywas precipitated by the need to define the avant-gardeas the antithesis of the establishedorder.Artifacts imported from the Wilhelminian Empire's colonial empire in Africa during the 1880s had been embedded in the "anthropologicalmuseum," where they gavethe German middle class proof of its inherent superiority over the primitive. Einstein simply reversedthings, seeingthe isolated works of African art as proof of the superiority of the primitive vision over that of technological society.The Wilhelminian Empire created a massivesystem of state asylums,centeringabout the huge hospitalat Bielefield(foundedin 1867)which housedupward of 5000 patients. [f the state found it necessaryto isolate the insane, the avant-gardewould integrate them, or at least integrate the myth of insanity into their image of an ideal world. Hugo Ball, the dadaistand expressionist, in a sonnetentitled "Schizophrenia," placedhimself in the positionof a patient,a patient given a new identity as "the schizophrenic": A victim of dismemberment, completely possessed I am-what

do you call it-schizophrenic.

You want me to vanish from the scene, In order that you may forget your own appearance.

I will press your words Into the sonnett'sdark measure My acid arsenic Has measured the blood in you to the heart.

From the days'hght and custom's permanence P r o l e c ty o u r s e l ve swith a se cu r ewa ll F r o m m y m a d n essa n d ja r r in g cr a zin e ss.

But suddenly sadnesswill overcomeyou.

A subterraneanshudder will seizeyou A n d y o u w i l l b e d e str o ye din th e swin g in go f m y fla g .26

Ball, who is not mad even though the bourgeoisielabels the avant-gardeas"crazy,"and "ill," uses the identity of the mad poet to comment on the true nature of society.The schizophrenicbecomesa device,used in much the sameway as other exoticshave been traditionallyused to presenta critique of society.Wieland Herzfelde, a publisher and the brother of the inventor of the modern photomontage,John Heartfield,statesthis positionquite boldly in an essaypublishedduring t9t4 in the leading expressionistperiodical Action: We call people mentally ill who do not understandus or whom we do not understand.I shall speakabout the latter.

Normally one does not make this distinction. The patients in an asylum are crazy.That's enough. ... One is sorry about these poor unfortunates,one laughs at them and is horrified by their fate. ...

The mentally ill are artisticallygifted. Their works show a more or less unexplained,but honest sensefor the beautiful and the appropriate.But since their sensibilitydiffers from ours, the forms, colors and relationshipsof their works appear to us as strange,bizarre and grotesque:crazy.Neverthelessthe fact remains that the possessedcan work creativelyand with devotion.Thus they remain protected from boredom, the most apparent reasonto be unhappy,even though there is little tradition or influence on them. They only integrateinto themselvesthat which is in harmony with their psychological changes,nothing else.They keep their own language;it is the statement of their psyche,and yet orthography,punctuation, even words and turns of phrase,which do not reflect their feelings,they avoid. Not out of forgetfulnessbut out of unwillingness.The mad are not forgetful. What has impresseditself on their psyche,remains forever in their memory For everythingwhich impressesthem, they have a better memory than do we, but they have no memory for unimportant things.

A similar gift has caused the artist to be consideredas a dreamer who avoidsreality and lives without any structure.2T

Herzfelde seesthe mad as model artists. The German expressionistsaw in the image of the insane the reification of their own definition of the artist in consciousopposition to the structures of society.

In 1927 Walter Morgenthaler had presentedthe work of the schizophrenicartist Adolf Wolfli within the format of the "art historical monograph."" Wrilfli was presentednot as a clinical case,masked

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behind a pseudonym (Breuer's"Anna O." or Freud's"Dora") or initials (Schilder's"G.R "), but as an artist whose work merited seriousattention as art. It is againstthis tendency that Prinzhorn reacted by arguing that the mad may produce art but are not artists per se. He was concernedabout the extensionof the self-consciousconfusion between artist and patient which is embodied in the metaphoric languageof the expressionists.He saw the patients as not creating"works of art" as part of free creation but as a direct result of the processof illness. But this aspectof the creativity of the mentally ill could not be measuredby a formalistic analysisof their products. Indeed through the confluence of similar sources(naiVeand votive art among them) and the growth of interest in the productions of the insane (and their increasedaccessibilitythrough works on this topic for the lay public), the line between the works of the mentally ill and the artistic avant-gardewas blurred. But this was true only if the context of the work was ignored.Thus Prinzhorn found himself in a dilemma.

He saw the limitations of his approach,but did not see a resolution of the problem.

Prinzhorn'ssearch for the essenceof the art of the schizophrenicwas doomed. But his presentation articulated many problems concerning the nature of artistic production and the role of the artistpatient as the outsider. Unlike the patient, of course, artists must create for themselvesthe persona of the outsider,which they don like a helmet to do battle with society.Prinzhorn was quite aware of this attitude and of how it compromisedthe understandingof the diseaseprocess.

Pinzhorn's

Potients

The material in the Heidelberg collection was preselected in a very specific manner. ln the letter that Karl Wilmanns, and his then assistantHans Prinzhorn, circulated to all of the major asylumsin Germany,Austria, and Switzerland in 1920, the intent of the project was made very clear. They wished to collect "drawings,paintings and sculpturesby the mentally ill, which are not merely copies or memories of better days, but rather an expressionof their own experienceof illness." They

35

were specificallyinterestedin "l. exceptionalaccomplishments, 2. representations which clearly arosefrom the influence of psychopathology,so-calledcatatonic drawing, 3. every type of sketch, even the most primitive, which may have no value in itself, but which can have comparativevalue."

Thus Wilmanns and Prinzhorn solicited only interesting and "crazy"material from their sources.

They excluded the repetitive, the boring, the ordinary.The fascinating nature of their material is the result not only of the psychopathologyof the patients but also of the preselectionby the institutions that suppliedit. The Heidelbergproject was interestedin the insaneas artist, with all of the ideologicalimplications which that term had for the educated bourgeoisie.

Prinzhorn'spatients were ill. They were not shamansspeakingan unknown tongue, nor were they Romantic artists expressingthrough their art consciousdisapprovalof modern society.These patientswere ill, and their artistic productionsreflectedthe pain and anguishcausedby that illness.

This fact was often overlookedby earlier commentatorson the art of the mentally ill as well as by those writers who used the personaof the mad as their alter ego. We can see this anguish in the casenotes to the work of that artist whom Prinzhorn calls "August Klotz." The alteration of his name from "August Klett" to "Klotz" is of interest, since "Klotz" is a perjorativeterm for an idiot. During Klotz'shospitalization,as reflected in the original case notes rather than in Prinzhorn'sselective interpretation of them, the patient's constant pain is stressed.Since Klotz was not Prinzhorn's patient, but was at the asylum in Goppingen, Prinzhorn'sviews were based on the case material rather than on a firsthand knowledge of the patient. We can reread the material, preservedin the Heidelberg archives,and see what caught Prinzhorn'seye when he wrote his analysis.

The casenotes begin on 4 June 1903,when Klotz was thirty-nineyearsold, and describethe patient'sexcitement,his hallucinations,and fear of imminent death. He had tremorsin his hands, headaches,nightmares. He was fearful, informing his doctors of his supposed"syphilitic" infection.

(Syphilophobiawas among the most vivid terrors of the nineteenth century.) He showed no physical sign of infection, however.He attemptedsuicideon 12 June by slashinghis abdomen.Ir was only at the end ofAugust that anythingthat could be perceivedas "artistic"was recordedin the casenotes: ,'mhru r'marnrc exaifafrinn firc lmrfrbnf 'serafclres rhe wairb. " rh Joly' igC4 Kttofz 6egan fo fra'tltucrrrafe about the pattern of his wallpaper. (Here the "real" and the "literary" world approach one another, for this motif is central to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's tale of madness,"The Yellow Wallpaper" ([1892].) In Septemberhe beganto smearfiguresand secretsignsin greaseon the walls of the asylum.From that point, Klotz produced "artistic" works, detailed letters, highly complex symbolic systems,ornate drawings, and sketches.But all of these were achievedin the context of the turmoil of his illness. The pain Klotz experiencedin the asylum, the pain that defined his illness, made any formalistic analysisof his work meaningless.Klotz's case notes (one of the two sets of case nores preservedin the Prinzhorncollectionin Heidelberg)describehis "illness."Only in the absenceof such information could the work be interpreted on strictly formalistic grounds; Prinzhorn, who had much of this material, saw the constraints built into his critical model. For missing from it is the personal,individuated illness of each patient, the patient's responseto the illness, and the unbridgeableanguish.These dimensions are equally missing from the imagesof the insane entertainedby the German avant-garde.

Roce, Modness, cnd Politics The avant-garde'suse of the outsider as a mask was a commonplaceby the 1920s. In Germany, however,there was a parallel developmentin the creation of a mask for the quintessentialoutsider in that society,the Jew.As has been discussed,the theories of degenerationadvancedby the French psychiatristB6n6dict-Augustin Morel, honed on Darwin's view of the development of species,led to the labeling of many somatic pathologiesand psychopathologiesas "degenerate."They were explainedby the "decline" of the group afflicted becauseof its inability to compete successfullyin

36

society.This was, of course, a means of labeling perceived differencesin outsider groups as both pathological and immutable. Thus the idea of inherent differencesamong races is slowly replaced in the nineteenth century by the idea that it is somatic characteristicsthat differentiate these groups.

In other words: "We are healthy; they are sick." As we have seen, many different diseaseswere ascribed to the Jews, but the label that most effectively summarizedthe perception of the Jews in Germany was"crazy."Belief that the Jew was generallypredisposedto mental illness became a commonplace throughout the early twentieth century. This myth, unlike the self-constructedmyth of the artist as mad, had a very specific set of consequencesin the real world. First, the Jews themselvesbecame convinced of the slur's validity becauseit was embedded ln a scientific (and therefore reliable) dogma. Second, there was now a plausible rationale for isolating Jews from society.The ghetto was no more, but the asylum could serveas a surrogateghetto in which to put these "crazy"Jews. Here the myth had a pragmatic consequencein associatingtwo outsiders,the insane and the Jew. Such views are not on the fringe of late-nineteenth-and early-twentieth-centurymedicine. They stand at the center of "liberal" German science. Krafft-Ebing, after all, representedthe left-liberal political tradition within German and American medicine. But the associationof Jews and madness became so powerful that it defined the perception of the Jew within yet another context: the role that the Jew was seen to play in the world of the arts. For many complicated reasons,German Jews were perceived as dominating the artistic and literary avant-gardein Germany from the close of the nineteenth century.2n Part of the reasonfor this was indeed the presenceof highly visible German(or labeledby the anti-Semiticpressas Jewish)such as the impressionistMax artists artists Jewish Liebermann. There were, howeveq equally well-known non-Jewishimpressionistsuch as Wilhelm von Uhde, and it is clear that the perception of the avant-gardeas predominantly 'Jewish" was partially owing to the cultural outsider status shared by the Jew and the avant-garde.The irony of course is that many Jews, for example the conductor Hermann Levi, played a major role in the conservativeaesthetic tradition of Wilhelminian Germany,yet conservatismwas never perceived as "Jewish."When the expressionistsbegan to adopt their role as "mad," the associationof the Jew, the artist, and the mad was complete. What was initially a pose or theory became part of the political programof German anti-Semitism.

In 1924, in the Landsbergprison in Bavaria,the leader of a failed coup d'6tat againstthe young Weimar Republic dictated his political philosophy.Adolf Hitler added Bolshevismto the equation of Jews, artists, and the mad since the revolution in Russiawas seen by the German right wing as the most recent successof the internationalJewishconspiracy: Even before the turn of the century an element began to intrude into our art which up to that time could be regardedas entirely foreign and unknown. To be sure, even in earlier times there were occasionalaberrationsof taste, but such cases were rather artistic derailments, to which posterity could attribute at least a certain historical value, than products no longer of an artistic degeneration,but of a spiritual degenerationthat had reached the point of destroyingthe spirit. In them the political collapse,which later became more visible, was culturally indicated.

Art Bolshevismis the only possible cultural form and spiritual expressionof Bolshevismas a whole.

Anyone to whom this seems strangeneed only subject the art of the happily Bolshevizedstates to an examination,and, to his horror, he will be confronted by the morbid excrescencesof insane and degeneratemen, with which, since the turn of the century we have become familiar under the collective concepts of cubism and dadaism, as the official and recognized art of those states. Even in the short period of the Bavarian Republic of Councils, this phenomenon appeared.Even here it could be seen that all the official posters,propagandistdrawings in the newspapers,etc., bore the imprint, not only of political but of cultural decay.

No more than a political collapse of the present magnitude would have been conceivablesixty years ago was a cultural collapse such as began to manifest itself in futurist and cubist works since 1900 thinkable. Sixty years ago an exhibition of so-calleddadaistic "experiences"would have seemed simply impossible and its organizerswould have ended up in the madhouse,while today they even preside over art associations.This plague could not appear at that time, becauseneither would public opinion have tolerated it nor the state calmly look on. For it is the businessof the state, in other words, of its leaders,to prevent a people from being driven into the arms of spiritual madness.And this is where such a development

would some day inevitably end. For on the day when this type of art really correspondedto the generalview of things, one of the gravesttransformationsof humanity would have occurred: the regressivedevelopment of the human mind would have begun and the end would be scarcelyconceivable.

Once we pass the development of our cultural life in the last twenty-five years in review from this standpoint,we shall be horrified to see how far we are alreadyengagedin this regression.Everywherewe encounter seedswhich rePresentthe beginnings of parasitic growths which must sooneror later be the ruin of our culture. In them, too, we can recognizethe symptoms of decay of a slowly rotting world. Woe to the peopleswho can no longer master this diseasel'o.

Hitler thus enters and shapesthe dialogue concerning the artist as outsider. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Hitler, the failed Austrian watercolorist,saw the glorification of patients such as Wdlfli or indeed the entire interest in the art of the insane as proof of the "crazy"direction the avant-gardehad taken. While there is no direct evidencethat Hitler read Prinzhorn'swork, he would have been exposedto its central thesis through reviews and polemics published in a wide range of sources,including the newspapersof the far right. Hans Prinzhorn'swork, published two years before Hitler completed his own, could well have servedas a catalystfor these views. The irony is that Prinzhorn'sbook reflects the political conservatismassociatedwith his mentors, Ludwig Klages, the philosopher,and the conservativeMunich art historian Conrad Fielder. Both stressedthe "intuitive" nature of creativity and perception; both tied their theories to the politics of the day' For example, Prinzhorn stressesthe "tribal" identity of each of his patients. August Klotz, for examPle,is described as having the tlpical personaof the Swabian.Like many conservatives,Prinzhorn flirted with the Nazis. Indeed,becauseof his death inJune of 1933, it is quite impossibleto judge what his long-rangeresponseto them would have been. Prinzhorn'ssupport of the Nazi state, like that of many of the intellectual conservativeswho, at first, rejoiced at its "stability," might well not have been welcomedby the Nazis in the long run.

Had Mein Kampf remainedmerely the political platform of a group of cranks, the interest that Hitler showed in the state of German art would have become an unimportant footnote to any reading of the historical context of Prinzhorn'swork. But on 30 January 1933 Hitler was asked to form a new government,and by the end of that spring he had turned Germany into a Nazi state. In the mid-1930s there was a purge of Jews from all state and academic functions, including the few Jewish museum directors and teachersat the various universitiesand art academies.Gallery directors began to arrangeshows that contrastedthe "degenerate"art of the "Jewish"avant-garde with the "healthy" art of German conservatism.In Nuremberg the director of the city art museum arrangeda show he called the "horror chamber of art."3'In Chemnitz, where the director of the museum was fired by the Nazis, Dr. Wilhelm Rudiger arrangeda similar show under the title: "Art

. .i

I I

Which Does Not Speak to Our Soul." But these regional shows were but previews for the massive exhibition "Degenerate'Art"' stagedby JosephGoebbels'sMinistry for Popular Enlightenment and Propagandaon 30 June 1937. Adolf Ziegler put together a show of 750 objects in rooms in the anthropologicalmuseum in Munich (officially designated"the city of the movement").Among the artists "exhibited" were Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (25 paintings), Emil Nolde (26 paintings), Otto Mtiller (13 paintings),FranzMarc, and Lionel Feininger,as well as Mondrian, Kandinsky,Lissitzky, and Marc Chagall. What is striking about this exhibition is that it employed a basically ethnological approach.It did not consider the paintings "works of art" but rather representativeof the atavistic nature of the Jewish avant-garde.(Even though many of the artist represented-such as Noldewere not Jewish, their role in the avant-gardeenabled the Nazis to label them as such.) The catalogueaccompanyingthe exhibit used the comparativeapproach to illustrate the degeneracy representedby the works of art. African maskswere used to show the "racial" identity of the avantgardeas identical to blacks. But most important, the art of the avant-gardeis related to the art of the mentally ill. And the prime witnessescalled for the prosecution were Adolf Hitler and Wieland Herzfelde.Hitler's programmatic statement at the opening of the "Hall of German Art" in Munich on l9 July 1937 isjuxtaposed with Herzfelde'sexpressionisticcall for the art of the mentally ill to be

38

recognizedas valid.t' The Nazis took the equation of artist = mad = Jew as a Programof action. The art, some of which was sold at auction during 1939 in museumswere strippedof this "degenerate" destroyed.

Lucerne and some of which was simply The Nazis did not create the categoriesof "degenerate"and "healthy" art. It was the seventeenthcentury critic Giovanni Pietro Bellori, in an attack on Vasariand Michelangelo, who first used Machiavelli's label "corruzione"to describe art. Friedrich Schlegel,the German Romantic critic, in his lectures on Greek poetry labeled the works he did not favor as "degenerate."But it was only in the nineteenth century following the work of the medical anthropologistB6n6dict-AugustinMorel (1857) and Max Nordau's popular bookDegeneration,that the medical categoryof the "pathological" was linked with the artistic categoryof the "degenerate."By the time the Nazis used the term in their 1937 exhibition had become a fixture in any discussionof the avant-garde.They simply of appropriatedthe contrast of "healthy'' and "degenerate"and placed into each categorythose works "healthy" The expected. art that the audience, no matter what its aesthetic predilections,would have was the traditional; the "degenerate"was the avant-garde.Each grouPwore its label with a certain smug satisfaction.Each group thus defined itself negatively' his Hans prinzhorn had officially left the Heidelberg clinic in 1921 even before the publication of the of work on the artistic production of the mentally ill. He was following up the interest Heldelberg psychiatristsin psychotropic drugs such as mescaline,when he contracted an illness in the field which led to his premature death in June 1933. His collection, however,remained in the Heidelberg clinic (or ar least in its basement).Wilmanns was stripped of his directorship of the clinic in 1933 becauseof his outspoken anti-Nazi views, and Jewish psychiatristssuch as MayerGross were dismissed.Wilmann's successorwas Carl Schneider,a member of the Nazi party from 1932 and,after the Nazi seizureof poweq the political officer of the newly purged Heidelberg professoriat.Schneider was invited by Goebbels to speak at the opening of the exhibit of "Degenerate'Art'." His speech,though it was not deliveredat the time, was published under the title "Degenerate'Art'and the Art of the Insane."" Schneider'scrudely political statementreified the asrociatiol of the art of the avant-gardeand the art of the insane by simply dismissing Prinzhorn's "picture ambiguousbut careful use of this material and returning to a pre-Bleulerianview of the salad."Schneider'sposition was a clear reflection of his understandingof the implications of the which Heidelberg approachto rhe mentally ill. Jaspershad been stripped of his position in 1937, by time all of the followers of the "Jewishscience"of psychoanalysiswere exiled from the German scholarlyworld. Schneiderwas distancinghimself from an area that had come to be labeled as "Jew "Jewish."He saw the entire attempt to understandthe art of the insane,beginning with the in Lombroso,"as part of the Jewish corruption of Western art and science,a processthat culminated of a expression healthy as the Freud and Adler's attempt to explain art as pathologicalrather than healthy society.Again it is the metaphor of the mad as artists as articulated by Wieland Herzfelde before World War I which Schneidercites as his proof of the corruption of the avant-garde,a corruption exploited by those who wish to destroythe body politic, the Jews, and the Communists. from Schneiderargued againstthe definition of art as form, a definition that Prinzhorn borrowed as perceived ever be ill would mentally of the Klages,and stressedthe question of whether the art like insane, having "successful"form or whether it is a parody of "healthy" art. Schneiderdenies the to the Jew and the black, any true aestheticsensibility.The new perception of the insane as unable the murder, in mass communicate on any level permitted the Nazis to begin their first experiment ,,euthanasia"of the inmates of the German asylums.t*Schneider servedas one of the most important Catholic expertsin the sterilizationand murder of the mentally ill until the intercessionof the The 1939. in Church in the person of Cardinal von Galen shortly after the program had begun movement from killing the insane to killing Jews was but a short step, becausethe interchangeability of the mad and the Jews had long been establishedin the popular mind of Germany.

i l l .23

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I hrs hrston c r l c ont ex t I or Hr ns l- nnlhor n s s t u d ) o l t h e r r l o l I h e m c n t r l l \ r l l s p r n s a s e n e s o l radical changes in the political, social, and intellectual history of Germany. That study must be read in the light of its contcxt as wcll as its reception within this u,eb. The flar.vsthat Prinzhorn himse lf san, in his approach and the veiled political use to n'hich the popularization of the art of the insane was put both colored the structuring of his work. ln addition, the shift in the medical and popular un de rsta nd ing of m adnes s , it s ac c ept anc e o s r n a p p r o p r i a t c l l t e r e g o f o r t h e a r t i s t i n Wi l h e l m i n i a n and Weimar Cerman1,,figured in the frightening use to r'r,hichthis rraterial u,as cventually put.

Prinzhorn did not iive to see the horror of Nazi Germany and the use that nas made of his project, but he certainlv sensed the possibilitv inherent in examining art labeled as the products of the mentally ill. This is one of the reasons he calls his study an examination of the Biltl.nerei,artistic production, rather than the Kunst, art, of the mentally ill. The Nazis, horvever, reduced all of the avant-garde to Bildnerei, dcmoting it from art. Their ans\\rcr to thc qucstion of thc crcativitv of thc insane \ /as to denv it, reducing the insane to a subhuman level, denving them the status of members of a "cultural entitv," and eventually murdering them. Jeu's too are seen in this light, as degenerates u,hose pathology is cvident in the madncss of their Bildnerei. The supposcd inability to creatc rvorks of art thus assumes a major function in defining the outsidcr, a position it had held sincc Hcgel's mid-ninetcenth-century discussion of the nature of African art. The difference is, of course, that bv the 19,10sdirect measures were taken to excise the "disease" from the "boclv politic.'

* O r i g i n a l l yp u b lish e din Sa n d e rL . Clilm a n ,Ch a p te r 10, "Thc N l ad as A rti sts,"D i ft'erence o.f tnd P athoktgt:S tereott'pes lth a ca ,NYa n d L o n d o n,C ornel l U ni versi tvP rcss, I9fJ5),2I7--l 8.

S e x u o l i n ' , R a ce ,ctn d M a d n e(ss

4o

Nores: l See R' D. Laing, TIte Diuided Self:An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness(London: Tavistock, 1960), as well as Robert Boyers and Robert orrill, eds.,LaingandAnti-psychiarry (Harmondsworth: penguin, l97l).

2. Michel Foucault, Histoire de la foile d l'6geclassique(paris: Galimard 1972), 56 ff . , 3' Mary Barnes and Joseph Berke, Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness (New york: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, l97l). The best critique of Mary Barnesis U.H. Peters,"Mary Barnes: psychopathologische Literaturinterpretation am Beispiel einer IiterarischenGattung: Psychose-Fikton,"in Bernd Urban and Winfried Kudszus, eds', Psychoanalytische une psychopathologische Literaturinterpretation(Darmstadt: WissenschaftlicheBuchgesellschafi,lggl), 280-99.

4 See the discussionon Bennett Simon, Mind and Madnessin Ancient Greece(khaca, Ny Cornell University press, l97g), 228-37.

5' Philippe Pinel,Traitd mddico-philosophique surl'alidnationmentale, oulan'ranie (Paris:Richard, Caille & Ravier,IX Llg0l]).

6' Benjamin Rush, Medical Inquiries and Obsenations upon the Diseases of the Mind (philadelphia: Kimber and Richardson, l8l2) And Eric Carlson et al., eds., Benjarnin Rush'sLectures on the Mind (Philadelphia; American philosophical Society, lggl).

7' Eric Carlson and Jeffrey L. Wollock, "Benjamin Rush on Politics and Human Narure," Journal ot' the American Medical Association236 (1976)t 73-77.

8' Pliny Ealre, "The Poetry of Insanity,"American Joumal of PsychologicalMed"icine2 (1g45\ 193-224.Other nineteenthcentury works on the "poetry of the insane" are: R.G. Brunet, Les fous littdraires(Brussels:Gay et Douce, lgg0) and its continuation, Av. Iv. Tcherpakoff, Lest'ous litt1raires(Moscow: wG. Gautier, 1gg3).

9. ForbesWinslow, "On the Insanity of Men of Genius," lournal of PsychologicalMedicine 2 (lg4g): 262-9I; On the Obscure Diseasesof the Brain and Disordersof the Mind (Philadelphia:Blanchard & Lea, 1860); "Mad Artists,".fournal of psychological M e d i c i n e n s 6 ( 1 8 8 0 ) : 3 3 - 7 5 .T h e b e sto ve r vie wofthel i teratureonthemedi cal useofartof thei nsanei sMari aMeuerKledenich, Medizinische Literata zur Metamophosendes asthetichen Einbildungshraft (Frankfurt: Europaische Verlagsanstalt, 1 9 8 0 ) , 3 t 7 - 4 2.

10. Cesare Lombroso, Genio e follia (Milan: Chiusi, lg64).

I l. Ambrose Auguste Tardieu, Etude nddico-I1galesur la folie (Paris:J.,8. Balliere et fils, lg72). l2 On the Romantic fascination with the nightside and the function of poetry see Mario praz,The RonanticAgony,trans.

Angus Davidson (NewYork: Meridian, 1956).

13. Max Simon, "Limagination dans la folie," Annales m1dico-psychologiques 16 (1g76): 35g-90.

1 4 . E . R e g i s ,"L e s a li6 n 6 sp e in t p a r e u x- m â&#x201A;Ź m e s,"Encephal e2 (1882): 184-98,373-83,557-64;2(1g83): 642-55.

I 5. Marcel R6ja, "L'art malade: Dessins de fous," Reuueunit erselleI ( 1901 9 I 3- I 5, and L'artchez les fous:Le dzssin,la ): prose,la podsie(Paris: Soc. Du Mercure de France, 1907). l6.Ale! Hrdlidka, "Art and Literature in the MentallyAbnormal,"ArzericanJournalof Insanity 55 (1g99): 3g3-404.

17' Manfred Bleuler, "Forschungenund Begriffswandlungenin der Schizophrenielehre, l94l-1950 ," Fortschritteder N e u r o l o g i e u n d Psych ia tr ie 9 /1 0 ( 1 9 5 1 ) :3 8 5 - 4 5 3 twenerJanzari k,Themenund.Tbndenzenderdeutschprachi genpsychi atri e (Berlin: Springer, 1974).

I 8 Joseph Rogues de Fursac' Les dcrits et les dessinsdans lesmaladiesnerueuseset mentsles: essaieclinique (paris: Masson, I 905). l9 Friedrich Justinus Mohr, "Uber Zerhnungen von Geisteskranken,"T,enschift fur angewandtepsychologie2 (190g-09): 291-300.

20 The best overuiewis Werner Janzarik,"1000 Jahre Heidelberger Psychiatrie,"in psychopathologiealsGrundlagenuissenschaft(Stuttgart: Thieme, I 979).

21. Karl Jaspers,Alleneine Psychopathologie (Berlin: Springer, 1973).

22' Hans Prinzhorn, "Das bilderische Schatten der Geisteskranken," Zeitschrift fur die GesamteNeurologie und psychiatrie 52 (1919\ 307-36. one evidence of Lombroso'sinfluence on many of these later studies is the fact that, lust as Lombroso followed his studies of the insane with studies of the drawings and graffiti found in prisons, prinzhorn followed his study of the art of the insane with Bildnerei der Get'angenen(Berlin: Axel Juncker Verlag, 1926), art of the prisoners.

23' The best overviewson Prinzhorn in German are the three postwar catalogues of the exhibitions selected from the collection: Wolfgang Rothe' Bildnerei der Geisteskranken ausdzr Prinzhorn-Samnrlung (Heidelberg: Galerie Rothe, 1967); Bildeneri uon psychischKranl<en,aus der Samnlung Prinzhorn (Bonn: Rheinland-Verlag, 1973); and Hans Grecke and Inge Jarchov,eds.,Die Prinzhornsammlung(Konigstein:Athen?ium, 1980). An English translation of prinzhorn,s 1922 monograph Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Berlin: J. Springer, 1922) is Artistry of the Mentally lll, trans.

Eric von Brockdorff (New york: Springer-Verlag,1972). There is also a monograph by Roger Cardinal, outside Art (New york: praeger, 1972), which deals. with most of the Prinzhorn material.

24- Paul Schilder, Wahn und Erkenntnis: Eine psychopathologische Studie (Berlin: J. Springer, 19lg).

25' These texts are now collected in Thomas Anz, ed., Phantasieniiber den Wahnsinn: Expressionisntische Tbxte(Munich: C. Hanser, 1980). See also Wolgang Rthe, "Der Geisteskrankeim Expressionismus."

Co4finiapsTchintriea)5 (1972): lg5-il1.

26. ln Anz, Phantasienuber den Wahnsinn,59. My translation.

27. Ibid.. t27-32.

28. walter Morgenthaler, Ein GeisteskrankeralsKiinstler (Bern: E. Birchea l92l).

29. see my and wolf Von Eckhardt's Bertort Brecht'sBerriz (New york: Doubleday, r974).

30. Mein Karnpf, trans. Ralph Manheim (cambridge: Houghton Mifflin, r943), 258-59.

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31. See Franz Roh,"Entarte" Kunst: Kunstbarbarei im Dritten Reich (Hannover: Fackeltrtiger-Verlag, 1962), and Henry Grosshans,Hitler and the Artists(New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), 95- I 16.

32. See the translation byWilliam C. Bunce, Degenerate'Art" (Redding, Conn.: Silver Fox Press, 1972).

33. Carl Schneider, "Entarte Kunst und Irrekunst," Arclrir fur Psychiatie und Nervenkrankheit ll0 (1939): 135-44. The link between the Jews, the insane, and "degenerate art" was one of the standard associations of the Reich Ministry for Propaganda See Franz-Heyen,ed., Paroleder Woche:Eine Wandzeitungim Dritten Reich, 1936-1943(Munich: dtv, 1983), 44.

34. Alexander Mitscherlich, Doctors of Infamy: The Story of the Nazi Medical Crimes, trans. Heinz Norden (New York: H. Schuman.1949).

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"Allen S. Weiss

P nr NzHo n n 's HrtrRoroP rA

a patient is God but sweepsthe room willingly...

Hers PnrnzHonrq,Artistry of the Mentally lll

Emmc Bachmayer, Untitled [ill. 24] [+Z]

Is there a primal source of both image and word? Is it physical or metaphysical?Does it even make senseto pose the question in such a dualist manner) Reflecting on the paintings of Cy Twombly, Rolaad Barthes considexed tle essence of writiag in ternos of neither use value nor fo,nra,nejther communicationnor calligraphy,but rather in terms of gesture,defined by its ruins: blunders, marks, traces,imperfections,negligence,waste, accidents.He sums up his impressionsby stressingthat the work entails a certain impulse, a certain demand of the body itself.' This theory of ruin value indicatesthe zero-degreeof writing: the impulse underlying inscription, the non-significativepleasure of marking,the gesturethat traces the passageof a body in the world. For to stain is to exist.

Seekingthe common foundation of all image-making,psychopathologicaland otherwise, Hans Prinzhorncentered his Gestalt theory on bodily gesture:the organizationof the artwork is based on a primal tendency of nonobjectiuedisorderedscribbling, chaotic traces, traces of chaos, nonrepresentational,nonteleologicalmarks. The impulse of pleasurereigns, with no significance other than the immediate expressionof motor activity and corporealpresence.'Though such traces are soon assimilatedto the needs for expression,symbolization,reproduction, and decoration,they are initially presymbolic,preobjectivetraces of excitation, direct signs of the primary processes, without intention or norm. Rhythmosprecedeslogos.Accident antedatesessence.

Written well after the emergenceof dbstract art, in which letters and words had long servedas plasrrc prttorrai PrMorns rheory sCIugfuro piaee psycfioparfoobgrcal on tfie sameaestheticbasis as all other art. Far from being a purely formalist theory as the centrality of Gestalt psychologymight suggest,his was one based on the inextricable interrelations between formal and symbolic domains. Insisting that a work in itself cannot be psychoanalyzed,that one cannot deduce pathology from aesthetics,and that the meaning of any given work is dependent upon a nexus of psychological,existential,historical, and s)rmbolicdeterminations,he stressedthat, "The problem becomesboth obscure and fascinatingwhen patients carry out their own philosophicalbattles with instincts and cultural forces, becausealthough they use traditional symbols...theyspontaneouslyor, from another point of view, intuitively, add new meaningsto old symbolsor even create new ones out of their own conflicts."r Combat is the crux, for it is through such endopsychicagon that a unique worldview is established:deformedby illness, informed by the restrictedworld of the psychiatric institution, formed through the aesthetic impulse.

Might not this Gestalt schematizationsuggestan appropriatemode of experiencingevery image, such that aestheticperception is congruouswith the structural aspectsof an artwork? Might not some works demand the relaxationof our symbolic vigilance (stop making sensel),so that gesturaltraces may be pursued by our own motor actions, for the sheer pleasure of the act, before all classification and analysis?At the other extreme,might not other works demand a profound, disorienting, disquietingjourney into the labyrinths of the symbolic, to undreamt of regions,to alternateworlds whosemetaphysicsare marked by, "the devaluationof the externalworld and the dissolution of reality and unreality?".Might this not lead us, following Octave Mannoni, to posit the aestheticproductions of the mentally ill as a unique literary genre; or even, as Jorge Luis Borgesmight well insist, to considersuch works, along with all metaphysics,as a subgenreof fantastic literature?

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Franz Joseph Kleber, Plon of the Regensburg lnstitution [ill. 251 Modern aestheticsis fractured by one of the aporiasof depth psychology:the imagination is either a reactive form of hallucination, sequesteredin "another scene"by the repressiveexigenciesof the reality principle; or, conversely,it is an active force, a potentiality-organized by the primary Processes,by desire, by the libido-establishing this other sceneprecisely in order to escapethe constraints of reality. This question of intentionality, while a key to the psychoanalyticenterprise,is converselythe source of a common fallacy that plaguesaesthetichermeneutics: the "intentional fallacy,"in which intention is deduced from form.

Foreclosureof the symbolic enriches the imaginary;loss of contact with the world motivates the construction of alternate worlds. Such phantasmaticsubstitutescharacterizetwo modes of fantasy: delirium and literature. In delirium, however, the agencies of psychic refTexivity(establishing the boundariesof the self) as well as both communication and empathy (guarantorsof contact with a communal world) are either diminished or ceaseto function altogether.Among the most disquieting examplesof hallucinatory psychotic literature is Daniel Paul Schreber'sMemoirs of My Ner-vous lllness (the text upon which Freud based his theory of psychosis),in regard to which Octave Mannoni suggeststhat psychiatric asylums,"are like 'prosthetic'substitutes for this other place, when it is lacking, in that asylums materially and actually isolate what cannot be denied."' The asylum is a representational,theatrical system,the real scene of hallucinated worlds, a space hyperbolicallyclosed, hermetic as the psychic system of paranoiathat breeds within its confines, the stageof a "gruesomesolipsism."u In the instruction of stagedirection and decor,obligatoryreadingsshould include memoirs of incarcerationin death camps, prisons,hospitals;tales of seafaring,shipwrecks,balloonjourneys, arctic and submariheexploration;accountsof monasteries,anchorites,stylites;studies of paleolithic art, speleology, and even premature burial. For the realizationof theater presumesthe negotiationof claustrophobic(and claustrophilic)space.'ln this context, the history of the representation,both realist and fantastic, of psychiatricinstitutions deservesdetailed study' The totalizing overdetermined spacesof this other scene,these alternateworlds, can be either utopic or dystopic.Utopia implies a finite spatialor systemicclosure that permits an infinite affective or imaginativeopenness.The fixed nature of any icon, architecturalor otherwise,is alwaysperturbed by the open ended variability of the narrativesto which it is susceptible.The architecturalicon is sublated,often effaced,in perverse, aberrant,and abnormal stagingsof the theater of the impulses,where the traumasand enigmasof existenceare abreactedand narrated.Such mutability would seem to be antithetical to the inherent solidnessof architecture,suggestinga paradoxat the very core of utopianism.

Dystopiaoften coincides with reality; utopia rarely does. Thus the dual role of fantasy:as defense mechanism,to reduce psychic torment or libidinal strife; and as wish-fulfillment, to compensatefor material impoverishment or psychic deprivation. RegardingFranz JosephKleber'sPlan of the Regensburg Institution, it is impossible to know what the precision of his architectural "realism" symbolizesor conceals.However, given his diagnosisas, "primary insanity in form of melancholia cum stupor,"one can sensethe perpetual futility of enclosure,the saturnine weight of stone, the stifling formality of regimentation, the tightening anxiety of panopticism.' One can only marvel that a varied and sustainedartistic production originated in such an institution; artists such as Kleber prove that there are means, however "minor" and obscure, to transform institutional spaceinto veritablehetsrotooias.

August Natterer, Nopoleon. Antipope. The Invisible Enemy of God in the Clouds [ill. 26] The climax of the New Testament,The Revelationof John, revealsa greatcelestial artwork, where the apocalypticopening of the sevensealsdisclosesthe ultimate powers of the heavensover human destiny:"And there was a violent earthquake;the sun turned black as a funeral pall and the moon all red as blood; the stars in the sky fell to the earth, like figs shaken down by a gale;the sky vanished,as a scroll is rolled,rp...."'oFrom vellum to celluloid,this scroll would providethe ground for a master narrative illuminated by an iconographyvacillating between dansemacabre andvanitas, betweenpersonificationsor autofigurationsof death and the vast contemporarytechnologyof death.

Everytechnologicaltransformation (whether dreamt or realized)changesthe ratio between the senses,modifies forms of fantasy,and offers new aestheticpossibilities.A certain modernist apocalypse-where the Christological and eschatologicalcomponents are sublated into paranoid delirium or rechnoiqical orminousness--+s manifesred as a venrable phanrasmaguna, the quintessenceof special effects.

August Natterer began to have hypocondriacaland delusional symptoms in 1907; taking himself for a prince, a king, an emperor, Christ himself, he spoke in great anguish of the imminent last judgement.His hallucinations, later representedin drawings (notably after the First World War) variouslycalled forth visions of a prophet, a pope, the Antichrist, and the Spirit of God in the clouds.After a suicide attempt he was interned, and subsequentlymanifested acute schizophrenic symptoms,marked by innumerable hallucinations.

At first I saw a white spot in the cloud, very near by-the clouds all stood still-then

the white spot withdrew and remainedin the sky the whole time, like a board. On this board or screen or stagepictures followed one another like lightening,maybe 10,000 in half an hour, so that I could absorb the most important only with the greatestattention. The Lord himself appeared,the witch who created the world-in between there were worldly scenes:war pictures, parts of the

earth, monuments, battle scenesfrom the Wars of Liberation, palaces,marvelouspalaces,in short the beauties of the whole world-but all of these in supraearthlypictures. They were at least 20 meters high, could be seen clearly,and were almost colorless,like photographs;some were slightly colored. They were living figures which moved. At first I thought that they were not really alive; then they were transcendedwith ecstasy,the ecstasywas breathed into them. Finally it was like a movie. The meaning became immediately clear on first sight, even if one becomesconsciousof the details only later while drawing them. The whole thing was very exciting and eerie. The pictures were manifestations of the last judgement....theyare revealedto me by God for the completion of the redemption."

Perhapsonly in madnessis this supreme conjunction of optical, meteorological,theological,and protocinematic phenomena realized. Such is the nightmare of a total cinema revealedin psychosis, where the libidinal thrusts of the return of the repressedtransform both perception and imagination,circumventing and reinventing the narrative forms then being codified by the studio production of the period. Natterer's hallucinations passedat the rate of approximatelyten thousand per thirty minutes, i.e., approximatelyfive and a half imagesper second, or about three frames per image at silent film speed. The sublimation of theology into psybhosisserendipitiouslyoffered a protot)?e of the most advancedexperimental cinema.r2Msual imagery and narrative trajectories

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were transmogrifiedwithin psychopathologicalsymptoms-themselves informed by modernist technophilia and technophobia-images and tales soon to be disseminatedwithin the art world, preciselyat the moment in 1922 that Max Ernst arrived in Paris, bearing a copy of Hans Prinzhorn's Artistry of the Mentally lll as a gift for Paul Eluard.

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Johob Mohr, Proofs fill. 27] Despitethe contemporaryinfatuation with all things electronic, being "wired" may bear the most sinisterconnotations.Antonin Artaud: "State of nerves,statesof mind, state of the world. There are momentswhen the universe seemsto resemblemost closely a nervous scalp quivering with electric jolts."'' This description of a psychic state raised to cosmologicalproportions (written years before the invention of electroshocktherapy) proved to be a precursor of the physical tortures, psychic catastrophes,and "artificial deaths" he suffered during his years of incarceration at the psychiatric hospitalof Rodez.Afterwards, protesting againstthe electroshocktreatments that ravagedhim, he would despair:"The human body is an electric battery whose dischargeshave been castratedand repressed,whose capacitiesand emphaseshave been oriented toward sexuallife, while in fact it was createdpreciselyin order to absorb,by its voltaic displacements,all the stray reservesof the infinite void, of the ever more incommensurableholes of the void of a never satisfied organic possibility."''

The srrnzrngtbr rfte a$sothre engenders arrgst.

Eversince Ren6 Descartes'smechanisticmetaphysicsand Julien Offray de La Mettrie's notion of "man the machine,"the human body has been repeatedlyassimilatedto sundry artificial forms, whose energy derivesfrom power sourcesthat control (and often punish) the body,mind, and soul. Such prostheses areamplifiedand demonizedwithin the mechanismsof paranoia.As Mark Robertssuggests,in relation to Schreber:"'Pluggedinto madness,renderedinto a machine, strappedinto restraints,probed by devices,subjectedto the psycho-and electromechanicaltheoriesof the time, Schreberwas naturally both intenselyawareof the fact that he had become a machine and horrified that he was one."''

Schreberbecamea machine connectedto god: not god the absentclockmakerof a perfect universe, but a more sinister,sadistic,all-too-presentmanicheandemiurge,one who botcheshis creation,one who recreateshumans as impoverishedmarionettes,as malfunctioning machines,as freaks.

The psychoanalyticlocus classicuson the topic is Victor Tausk's,"On the Origin of the Influencing Machine in Schizophrenia."

The schizophrenicinfluencing machine is a mechanism of a mystical nature. The patients are able to give only vague hints of its construction. It consistsof boxes, cranks, levers,wheels, buttons, wires, batteries and the like. Patients endeavorto discoverthe construction of the apparatusby means of their own technical knowledge,and it appearsthat with the progressivepopularizationof the sciences,all the forces known to technology are utilized to explain the functioning of the apparatus.All the discoveriesof mankind, however,are regardedas inadequateto explain the marvelouspowers of this machine,by which the patients feel themselvespersecuted.'o

of thesemechanisms,which act in the form of a "suggestionapparatus," The majorcharacteristics are that they make the patients see pictures, usually in the form of a magic lantern or cinematograph;they produce corporealmotor phenomena (often of a sexualnature); they create variouspathologicaloccurrencesand either produce or eliminate thoughts and feelings, all by means of air currents, electricity, magnetism, or x-rays.Psychoanalysisinterprets the appearanceof these machinesin psychosisas a pathologicalprojection serving as defence againsttotal narcissistic regressionof the libido, with the senseof estrangementdue to a turning away of the libido from forbidden organsor objects. These are works that, as Prinzhorn claimed of psychotic art, "emerged from autonomouspersonalitieswho carried out the mission of an anonymousforce."'t anxietyproducingmachines,influencingmachines,bachelormachines,infemal Suggestion apparatuses, machines:the solipsistcircuit of desire,surveillance,and punishmentprefiguredin many myths and tales bred by the early history of image and sound recording inaugurateda central stylistic trope of modernism.

Reproductivetechnologiescreate a paradoxicalontology,simultaneouslyoriginating a duplication or prohferationof the real and a gapwithin the real; generatingboth the fantasizedreconstruction of the pastand the proleptic inscription of a future; establishingboth the simulacrum of thebody and its prostheticprolongations.Henceforth, reproduction and creativiry are no longer distinguishable; temporalitycan no longer be conceivedof as linear and univocal; spacebecomeslabyrinthine; human perceptionand cognition are inextricably intertwined with prosthetics,robotics, and cybernetics.

ill. 28

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Louis Costner, "AmeicaPrlot"

[ill. 28]

Is this a new design for a bicycle, or an infernal machine?As modernist forms and psychopathologicalsymptoms both have a propensity toward overdetermination,the question is ultimately unanswerable.However, one symbolic matrix that might shed light on the problem is what came to be known by the felicitous term coined at midcentury by Michel Carrouges,machines cdlibataires,bachelor machines.The most concise definition of the bachelor machine is given by Carrouges:"A bachelor machine is a fantastic image that transforms love into a mechanicsof death."'' Such transformationsdescribe the solipsistic circuit of onanistic sexuality(incorporatingall possible dualisms and perversions),delirious metaphysics(conflating all possible ontological contradictions), uselesssimulation (where every machine is essentiallyinfernal), and morbid functionalism (where time, solitude and death exist synonymouslyand contemporaneously).Jean Clair schematizedthe major forms of such apparatuses,the manifestationsof which are Iegion in the annals of modernism: antigravitation,chronometry cycles, electrification, love-makingmachines, art-making machines, perpetual motion, artificial life, voyeurism." Some examples:Villiers de l'lsleAdam, The Future Ele; JuIesVerne, The Chateau of the Carpathians; Raymond Roussel, lrnpressions of Africa; H. G. Wells, TheTimeMachine; Franz Kafka,lnthePenalColony; FrancisPicabia,Gid Born Without a Mother; Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,Even and Andmic Cindma; HeinrichAnton Miiller, Machines;Fritz Lang, Metropolis;Adolfo Bioy Casares,The lmtention of Morel, Richard Lindner, Boy With Machine; Jean Tinguely, Machine-Happening' Autodestructive; Harry Smith, Heaten and Earth Magic; and especially Alfred Jarry,The Supertnale, that most hallucinatory celebration of the phallic erotics and impossible mechanics of the bicycle.

Rather than accentuate the incommensurable, tragic distance between ardent desire and nostalgic death that constitutes the core of romanticism, the ultramodernist bachelor machines conflate Eros and Thanatos, suppressnostalgia,collapse time and eternity, confuse origins and telos, so as to inaugurate an epoch where reproductive technologiesinform corporeal mechanics and phantasmatic simulacra.

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Kathorina Detzel, Katho:nns Detzel with o male stuffed dummy of her own mahing [ill. 29] What is a doll? What is a doll? It's something strange.It's something from the shadows.It's something from the earth. It's something from the origin. It's something magical. It's something paternal. It's something forbidden. It's something from God. It's something distant. It's something without eyes. It's something animal. It's something birdlike. It's something silent. It's something eternal. It's something of mud. It's something pebblelike. Something vegetal.Something from childhood. Something cruel. Somethingjoyous. Something screaming.Something mute. That's it!'?o

So writes the French artist Michel Nedjar, creator of hundreds of superlativelygrotesqueand morbid rag dolls. His litany would suggestthat dolls are not only primal objects of psychological projection, not only protean doubles of the human form, but an elemental ontological category.

In Novices:A Study of Poetie'\pprenticeship,Clayton Eshleman discussesthe implications of the Freudian notion of the primal scene for the poetic imagination. He utilizes the model of a pyramid lying on its side to connect memory with the immemorial, humanity with the unhuman, the body with phantoms. Surmounted by the self, the parents are phantasizedin the pri interpreted simultaneouslyas copulation and mutual cannibalism; this is in tur

act of coitus, vided into the sets of grandparents,great-grandparents,etcetera,etcetera.Exploring the depths of this pyramid, he imagines:"Who knows what you will find at the back wall-deified ancestors,human beings with animal heads, or'roaring nothingness?And streamingout from the base, like giant squid tentacles, are these not the pyramid'sroots connecting it to the kingdoms of the nonhuman other?"'' What if we were to use this schema to create a doll museum?At the entrance will be found such dolls as Barbie and B6cassine,Matreshka and Midrani, Ken and G.I. Joe, Bluette and RaggedyAnne, so often cast in stereotyped,neurotic, Oedipal family games;further back are ritual dolls representing ancestralfigures, assurancesof social continuity'and psychic stability; yet farther back will be effigies of white and black magic, ex-votos,fetish dolls, demonic figurines, death images;and finally, in the profoundest recesses,exist certain unmentionable, unrepresentable,uncanny objects, hardly dolls at all, inadequateicons of the black abyssof depression,the horrific dismembermentsof schizophrenia,the crushing deifications of psychosis.

Everybodyhas contributions to this museum; everyonehas body doubles, astral projections, fantasy figures, fetish objects, magical amulets, secret portraits, pale reflections, private monuments, subtle bodies.Where would we place Katharina Detzellsdoll-grotesque sexualcaricature, sad impoverishedicon-in our museum? Is it an apotropaiceffigy or simple plaything? Magic or fetish?

Nostalgic or ludic) Traumatic or mocking? Representationor misrepresentation?Ultimately, the location of any doll in this museum without walls depends more on how it is used or abused than on how it appears.

ill.30

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Kotz, Untitled [ill. 301 of Perception,Maurice Merleau-Pontyexplainshow, "sexuality concealsitself ln the Phenomenology from itself beneath a mask of generality,and continually tries to escapefrom the tension and drama which it sets up.... Sexualityis neither transcendedin human life nor shows up at its center by unconsciousrepresentations.It is at all times present there like an atmosphere....Sexualitybecomes

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diffused in imageswhich derive from it only certain typical relationships,only a certain general emotional physiognomy.""The libidinal body servesas a symbolic system,aspiring equally.to base materiality and sublime spirituality. For the schizophrenic,as well as the dreamer,the body representsthe universe.This is preciselywhy eroticism bears both a concrete and a spiritual dimension, why it is manifest in both representationaland abstract compositions." Thus both a secular system (Freudian metapsychology)or a theologicalone (Tantrism) could have sexualityas the dominant principle of the symbolic, as the dimension that informs all appearancesand essences.

Is this image by Katz a most awkward attempt at the sheer instrumentality of pornography?Is it a manifestationof Eros motivated by that aspiration to absolute mysticism rypical of much schizophrenia,where the religious and the erotic intermingle to generateforms not uncommon to modernist art? Is this drawing symptom, obscenity,art, or myth? Certainly there is a symbolic transfer between these existential dimensions,which determine hermeneutic levels of apprehension rather than ontological differentiations.This work shows the limits of the formulation "symptom or art?" which, subsequentto Prinzhorn'sanalysis,must henceforth be posed as "symptom and at." It is simultaneouslysymptom, stimulation, provocation,art, and myth, all ambiguouslycirculating in a dense hermeneutic equivocation.

Crucial to Prinzhorn'sstudy of the "psychopathologyof expression"(assumingthe historical fluctuation of nomenclatures,definitions, diagnoses,pathologies,aesthetics)was the desire to expand the aesthetic realm, and not to demarcatedeterminate boundariesbetween pathologyand aesthetics.A generationlater, Jean Dubuffet attempted a similar expansionof the aestheticfield by means of the notion of Art Brut, which must be considereda polemic rather than a theory an overture rather than a delineation. In both cases,art historical taxonomieswere perturbed, subverted,enlarged;the realm of the imagination enriched.

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Joseph Schneller, "Hyperodrom" [ill. 311 They attempted to "...sweep me away in their sexualhyperaesthesia,their libidinous mannerism,their salaciouserotic sensibilization,their carnal obsessionwith the abject and infectuous flesh, their phallic copulativedelirium, their concrete corporealerotization,their complete affective beastialization,their total sexualcorporization,their crasshypodermic invagination,their integral erotic debauchery their totally profligateabomination,their unveiled criminal fornication."2'The fiendish sexualtorments and psychic assassination attempts suffered by Antonin Artaud-victim of demons and vampires,incubi and succubiwere experiencedas divine punishment, necessitatingthe exclusionof sex and love from his ethos.Artaud comments on the rationale for his anti-erotic asceticism:"Insofar as I am concerned,my dear friend, I already statedthat the best means of getting rid of the demons that torment us and make us ill is to remain chaste, becauseit is the practice of sexualitythat summons the demons to us, and that createsmaniacs,neuropaths, perverts,and criminels. All demons are obscenelubricious ideas which in the course of rime have deranged the human brain, and I believe that it is this idea that Freud had at the bottom of his mind when he created the scientific term 'libido,'which incriminates sexualityas the causeof all pain and all evil.""

In this hallucinatory psychic scenario-opposed to the rule of syllogism,and therefore determined by the chaosof noncontradiction-man and god, life and death, Eros and Thanatos, self and other, man and woman are conflated. Following Friedrich Nietzsche,Artaud abjected god in order to recreatehimself as his own origin, in his own image. The instauration of an anti-oedipal,antitheocratic ascesis,a radical purification, would be a guaranteeagainstthe profligate sexualabominationsof god. Artaud sought an impossible transcendenceof sexuality.There exist, however,other scenarios.

Incarceration often leads to the most unbridled sexualfantasies,famously attested to by the work of D.A.F. Sade,and here, Joseph Schneller. Not surprisingly,these fantasiesare frequently manifested in sadomasochisticform-itself a principle of noncontradiction, merging pleasure and pain, active and passive, reality and fantasy-where the codes of power and sex are mingled in every gesture. Eros-rich and ambiguous,terrifying and delightful-exists as the aporia between the imaginable and the unimaginable, gestureand speech, desire and act. These stagingsof the erotic offer spacesobscene,becausehaunted by death;sitesfascinating,becauseruled by pure metamorphosis;scenesof excess,becausethey necessarily extend beyond the limits of quotidian imagination; realms of seduction, becausethey permit phantasmatic projection; theaters of pornography,becauseof an unspeakablepromiscuity; domains of transgression, becausesymbolic articulation is no longer possible. Such is the erotic field of modernity.

ill. 32

Oshcr Herzberg, Ccstroti fill. 32] l9l3 was a watershedyear for modern art: Luigi Russolopublished The Art of Noises;Marcel Duchamp produced his Bleycle Wheel and composedthe aleatoryMusical Enatum; Kasimir Malevich conceived his black square series;Igor Stravinskycomposed the Rite of Spring; Marcel Proust began publication of Remembranceof Things Past;Lee de Forest used the newly invented technologyof regenerativeelectric circuitry to produce the first sound amplification. But, less noted, this was also the year that AlessandroMoreschi, the last castrato,left the choir of the Sistine Chapel. This eventuality was presagedin the middle of the seventeenrhcentury by GregorioAllegri, who exclaimed,"When we, the castrati, will no longer be here, bel canto will also intone its Miserere."With the disappearanceof the last castrato,an entire tradition of song, indeed, one of the summits of the vocal arts, forever disappeared.A certain expressionof the sublime was lost.

The searchfor apure enunciation-a voice free from body, sex, mortaliw: the voice of aruels. the music of the celestialspheres-culminated in the song of the castrati.Their voice was of the broadest range(often three octaves),capableof hitting the highest notes (occasionallyF abovehigh C); it was endowedwith the most sophisticatedsupplenessof embellishment, and evinced a unique sonorous quality combining the lightness,flexibilility, and high notes of the female voice with the brilliance, limpidity, and power of the male voice.2uThe performancesof castrati-sexually ambiguous,human and angelic, sensualand sublime-provoked paroxymsof joy. By 1913, the prodigiousvocal purity, power, and passionof the castrati had alreadyfallen into oblivion, and the reality of castration passedfrom one myth to another, now bound by the knots and double-binds of the Freudian Oedipal complex, with castration relegatedto punishent (both real and imagined), perversity,and even medical treatmenr.

In Oskar Herzberg'scirca l9l3 watercoloq the choir of castrati sing to God's glory in what may be imagined as a psycho-melodramarepresentedupon an abstract, almost modernist stage.(Edward Gordon Craig's stagecraftwas alreadywell-established,with its simplified design, abstracrllghting, and extensiveuse of screensand curtains as plastic elements).A menacing phallic object occupies the foreground, and a vaguelycelestial assemblyantithetically hovers above,in symbolist presence: dualist machinations of the symbolic.As these young boys would be at the beginning of their singing careers,without their mature vocal prowess,the representationwould seem to balance the rememberedor imagined perfections of celestialvoices with the pictorial idealizationof sexual innocence, sealedby divine grace and menaced by the eruptions of the unconscious.Are not such sanctificationsand forebodingsthe prime movers of our metaphysics?

r : t

6o

Norrs: l . R o l a n d B a r t h e s,"cy' lwo m b ly,o u No n m u lta se d m ul tum,"i nL'obvi eetl 'obtus(P ari s:LeS eui l '1982)'160-61' (N ew Y ork: spri nger-V erl ag,1972)'14'

2 . H a n s p r i n z ho r n , Ar tistr yo fth e M e n ta llylll,tr a n s.E ri cvonB rochdorff 3. tbid.,237.

4. rbid., 241.

Prado de Oliveira, Mark Roberts' Allen S Weiss' eds ' 5. Octave Mannoni, "Writing and Madness," in David Allison, schreber case (Albany: State University of New York Press' the psychosisand sexual ldentity: Tottard.a Post-Analytic view of 1988),58.

6. Prinzhorn, Artistry of the Mentally lll,266' thePrison,trans.Alan Sheridan (1975: NewYork' Vintage Books' 7. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and.Punish:TheBirthof Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press' 1969)' 1979); and Gaston Bachelard,,ThePoet;csof Space,trans' R i chard Mi l l er (t97I: N ew Y ork' H i l l & w ang' g . F o r p o s s i b l em o d e ls,se e Ro la n d Ba r th e s,sa d e ,Fouri er'Loyol a,trans. tJnbuildable(cambridge, Mass': MIT Press' l99l); Helen Rosenau' lg76); Robert Harbison, The Built, the unbuih and the The Sphere and thz Labyrinth, trans' Pellegrino d'Acierno and The ldeatCity (New York Methuen, 1983); Manfredo Tafuri, Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi' The Dictionary of Alberto Robert Connolly (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990); and discoveryin the genre is discussedin Jo Farb major recent most The 1980). lmaginaryPlaces(New York: Macmillan, Architect of Magnificent wsioras(New York:Abrams' i997)' Hernandez,John Beardsley,and Roger cardinal, A. G. Rizzoli, Beyond Reason,Art'and Psychosis:Wo*s ftom the Prinzhorn 9. Bettina Brand-Claussen, Inge Jridi and Caroline Douglas, of California Press' 1996)' 104' Collection (London: Hayward Gallery and Berkeley: University Oxford and Cambridge University Presses, r97o)' 322' (Oxford Cambridge: and 1o.The NewEnglish Bibte: The Nsw Tbstamezr I l. Prinzhorn, Afiistry of the Mentally lll' 159-60 segments, notably in La Roue (1923); single frame work would 12. Note Abel Gance's pioneering use of extremely brief montage cinema of the 1950s.SeeAllen S Weiss,"Kinomadness"'in Breer's become a staple of experim"ntul"fll- beginningwith Robert State University of NewYork Press' 1992)' I l5-26' On the relations ShatteredFonns: Art Brut, Phantasms,Modemism(Albany' Madnessand Modemism (NewYork: Basic Books' 1992); Maurice between psychiatric art and modernism, see Louis sass, pqrallelVisions: ModemAttists and Outsider Art (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Counry Museum of Tuchman and Carol S. Eliel, eds., thz lnsanc (Princeton: Princeton university Press' 1989)' Art, 1992):John M. MacGregor, The Discoueryof thc Art ot' Athanasiou (Parts: Gallimard' 1969)' 266' d Gdnica in Lettres 1926, 13. Antonin Artaud, letter oi22 A,rgr,st cotnplites,vol' i3 (Paris:Gallimard' 1974)' 108' (1947), oeuvres in "Le la de th6atre 14. Antonin Artaud, ".uaut6" Mrtualist," The Drama Rettiew151 (]1996):37' 15. Mark Roberts, "schreber as Machine, Technophobe,and in in Schizophrenia,"PsychoanalyticQuarterly (1933); reprinted 16. Mctor Tausk,,,On the Origin of the Influencing Machine relation (1992):544 the on 6 Sanford Kwinter, Ramona Naddaff, eds, lncorporations:zone Jonathan crary Michel Feher, "The Anxiety of the Influencing Machine"' octobet 23 copjec, see studies, film Lacanian Joan between this subject and of "influencing machines"' see Annette (1982): 43-59;for a specific analysisof a "bachelor machine" in the context " 12" no' 2 (1973): 64-69' Artforum Work Michelson, ",An6mic cin6ma': Reflections on an Emblematic 272 lll, 17. Prinzhorn, Artistry of the Mentally Machines cdlibatabes (Venice:Alfieri' 1975)' 21' Thls is 1g. Jean clair and Harald Szeeman, eds.,JunggesellenmaschinenlLes Paris, 1976. The original text is Michel carrouges' Les the catalogueof an exhibition at the Mus6e des Arts D6coratifs, Bachelors(Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999)' Krauss, machinescdlibataires(paris:Arcanes, 1954); see also Rosalind des Mus6es Nationaux/Gallimard/Electa' (Paris: Reunion cofps au inL'Atne 19. Jean Clair, "Les machines c6libataires," r 9 9 3 ) , 4 3 3 -3 9 . whitehead, from L'lndomptable ' a radio documentary on dolls 20. Michel Nedjar, interviewed by Allen S. weiss and Gregory Culture, Radio France (22 December i996)' France broadcastin the Atelier de la Crâ&#x201A;Źation Radiophoniqueof (Los Angeles: Mercer & Aitchison' 1989)' 1 1' Apprenticeship Poetic of 2 I . clayton Eshleman, Nolices:A Study p h e n o m e n o lo g yopf e rcepti on(194i ),trans.col i nsmi th(London: R outl edge& K eganP aul ' 2 2 . M a u r i c eM e r le a u - p o n ty, t970),237.

(N ew Y ork:A bbevi l l e' 2 3 . s e e M a u r ice T u ch m a n a n d Ju d iF r e e m a n , e d s.,Thespi ri tual i nA rt:A bstractP ai nti ngl sg0-1985 l e86).

(Paris: (December 1946-January 1947)' in oetwres compldtes'vol 25 24. Antonin Artaud,cahiers d.uRetour,i Paris G a l l i m a r d ,1 9 9 0 ) ,2 0 5 . dcrits dp Rodez (Patis: Gallimard' 1977)' 84-85 25. Antonin Artaud, letter of 1 1 February lg44, in Notweaux 'l'he Crosland (London: Souvenir Press' 1996); and Michel Margaret trans.

Castrati, the Woild of 26. See Patrick Barbier, A rthurD enner(l thaca'N Y C ornel l U ni versi tyP ress' p o i z a t , T h e An g e l' sCr y:tse yo n d .th e Ple o su r e P i nci pl ei nOpera,trans true and lg04 Though they offer hardly any senseat all of the in 1902 made were Moreschi ofAllesandro Recordings 1gg2).

Vatican Complete Castrato Last The Moreschit Allesandro hearing: beauty of the castrato voice, they remain a curiosity worth Recordings(Opal CD 9823).

Bracha Lichtenberg Tttinger

So rvr r - Tnr NG ,S oMs-E vrNr A ND S oMr-E Nc o u NT E R BETwEENSrNrrrovrE AND Svuprolr

Sinthome cnd symptom [6r]

When we are reflecting on the difference between a creative artifact produced as a symptom-be it an expressionin a form and with the help of "artistic" tools, be it in the languageof writing, of painting, or in a musical language-and a work of art that appearsas what JacquesLacan names,to mark a slight but definite difference from the symptom, a sinthome,a seeminglyparadoxicalidea imposesitself: it is the symptom-and the creative artifact produced as a symptom-that in fact makessensein and by the Symbolic. And such a making-sensein and by the Symbolic, creative as it may be, cannot be a measureof art, becauseit discoversitself via significance that is already culturally accepted. Once again, the question of this difference is called upon in view of the works of the PrinzhornCollection.

A form comes to life and excercisesits effects as a work of art on a level that, at least to begin with, subvertsthis significance;a level equivalent to the level of events that burst out in the Real. And so we may say that the work of art, any work of art fabricated as a sinthome, is in a way crazy;it is produced at the level of jouissanceand it is meant to createjouissanceand to make sensethrough what is left of it (an objet a, a plus-de-jouir).

Thus, the meaningful work-as-symptomof the mentally ill, unlike this kind of crazyartwork-assinthome,is in fact very sane,contrary to any intuitive qualification of such a product. A work as a neurofic or psychofic sympfom js nof af alJ 'neurotic" or 'psycho$c" jn jfs sfructure, because jt js an articulation of suffering alreadyin the languageof the Other, an articulation made for the Otheq a messageaimed towards and communicated to a symbolic Other, and finally perhapsalso apprehendedby those who can analyzeit and return its senseto the subject who createdit. If the symbolicOther alreadycontains all the clues for decipheringthe messagecontained in the work-asslmptom, this work has no potentiality to transformthis same Symbolic.The work-as-symptomstems from the unconsciousand aims at an unconscious"structured as a language,"at what is alreadyhere but dissimulated,or cut away,or castrated,or repressed,or temporarilylacking. The work of art as a sinthome,on the other hand, is a unique responsethat contains the enigma it co-respondsto and that brings it about, an enigma that resonatesa lacuna of quite a different status in the Symbolic: it doesn'tcorrespondto lacks defined by the phallic mechanism of castrationbut to whateveris not yet there, to what is yet to come, to what resiststhe Symbolic and to the mysteriousand fascinating territory of that which is not yet euenunconsciousor to what is impossibleto cognition.

A symptom that correspondsto a lack in the Symbolic aims to defy castration and points to a lack or a failure in the phallic structure. A sinthome that points to the Unconscious'sown dark margins and strugglesto resonatesthe traces of a Thing is lying beyondthe effects of castration;it is indifferent to castration,it does not even def, it as the foreclosed.It indirectly hints at the failure o/the phallic structureas such, or at some kind of psychicworld where the phallic structureis just irrelevant.'ln that sense,and in others, it has to do with the dimension of the feminine beyondthe Phallus.And that's preciselywhere-in the site of the relation to such a feminine, and in the non-place of such a feminine difference-Lacan's very late idea of the sinthome steps forward to mark its deviation both from his early notion and from his late notion of the symptom.

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Lacan'ssymptom,following Freudianguidelines,has two facets.One is that of the articulatedmessage Other. This was emphasizedby Lacan in his early theory. Here comes to at the service of the s).rynbolic light what the symptom"says"to the Other where the subjectcannot speakfor itself. Under this aspect, if the syrnptomparticipatesin creationit doesso by way of the metaphor,by a displacementof whatever is already a compensation for a lack, a subjective split, a separationfrom one's own partial corpo-reality and from one'sown archaicmother.The secondfacet is that of jouissance,emphasizedby Lacan in his late theory. Here comes to light the ways drives are satisfied by way of the symptom and the pleasure derived from an imaginary satisfaction of the desire of the Other. Under this aspect the symptom participates in creation by metonl.'rny,repudiating signification by rejecting any recognition of a lack.

A symptom as such is not a work of art. However, as J.A. Miller remarked, it does, accordingto Lacan, backtrack itself in effects of creation. If in its facet of articulated message"the symptom harmonizeswith castration,"' it is perhaps more on its other facet that it backtracksitself in the effects of creation: while following upon the trails of jouissance.Here, something is satisfiedby the symptom; something in the speak/through-beingis gratified even if the subject is suffering.

Something is delighted "beyond the pleasureprinciple," in what also causessuffering. But if we want to speak of artobject and artworking, even in light of the reading of the symptom under the second facet, that ofjouissance, which introduces the operation of death drive in repetition,

i

something is missing from the picture, something that has to do with creativity that transgresses sublimation, with the intrinsic potentiality of a work of art to open the world apart in order to embrace a new meaning and to transform the world's frontiers into thresholds.

Where a messageof suffering-symptom-can be transformedinto a work of art, another senseis createdbeyond symbolic signification,and a supplementaryjouissancedoes not just penetratethe sceneor the spaceof the work but is invented inlby it. An unimaginedtrail of jouissanceis invested then, but is not just followed by a working-through.By the sinthome, somethingmore is added to the domain of jouissance,somethingI can think of as a diffracted trace-imprint of trauma-and-jouissance that, as in the reversalof the movement of time, turns the trace of an imprint that would usually be an effect into an imprint of a trace that presentsitself as a causeto which, as an effect now it would also joins in the creation of seem-as trace-imprint-to reply.This trace-imprint of trauma-and-jouissance jouissance. pure Neither is it message and not a is not a codified the work of art work of art because a just an expressionof trails of suffering or pleasure,nor is it a pure marking of their traces.The work of art is an externalincarnation of the body-and-psychein matter with representation.It is the unfolding into time and place of a psychic spaceat the bordersof the Real, in a visible form or an object that though inanimate it does, like a subjectivesubstance, mal<zsufferlenjoyand make sense.It makes sense,it boulverses,it touches,and fascinates-it and not the subject behind it.

A trace-imprint of trauma-and-jouissancemakes suffer/enjoy,but not only by metonymy in terms of clinging onto an object. And it makes sense,but not as a metaphor, not through the passagevia the treasure of existing signifiers and therefore not via the Symbolic and not via a public and social recognition-not, at least, to begin with; not, at least, as its defining criterion. The Symbolic is to start with thereby dethroned, in order to only reappearby the back door on condition of becoming a receptive texture that is capable to leave the accessto and from what I call the Event-Thing and the Encounter-Thing of the body-psyche-that affected body-psyche,denuded and lusting-open.

Sinthome, hnots ond ferninine "impossible sexuol ropport" Up until the end of his teaching, Lacan repeatedlyclaimed that "there is no sexualrapport," that psychoanalysisitself attests to that, and that this lack of rapport (relationship) is the basis of psychoanalyticdiscourse,but that if such a rapport were to exist, it would be feminine. Logical and topological considerationsmainly, but also aesthetic-poeticones, led Lacan in some of his very late

66

"woman" can't only be defined by the failure in the phallic system.And so to this I add: if a woman is a sinthome for every man, it is perfectly clear that there needs to be found not only another name for what becomesa "man" for a woman but also of what becomes a"woman"for a rvor,4an,becausea "woman" for a woman cannot remain a radical Other as she can remain to men, or else, all women would be psychotic when coming into contact with their own difference. For a woman, a "woman" must at moments be a border-Other. She cannot be radically absent in subjectivity but deabsentor abpresent,and so her difference also locates a state of preabsence.However, in the no-place of the Thing in art, Lacan identifies via the sinthome something of the dimension of the revelation of the "absent"feminine and of her "impossible"sexualrapport.I seein the sinthomepossibilitiesof sublimation in/from forclosed aspectsof the feminine, on condition that we give this notion a twist in light of the matrixial differencet in order to discoverby that what a "woman" can become in-

diffurcncefur a woman.

Feminine sinthome os oweaving of the Reol, the lmaginory o;nd the Symbolic The encounterbetween trauma,jouissance,phantasm,and desireis a unique conjunctionof working art. The register of unconsciousphantasy (phantasme)and considerationsconcerning traumatic events enablesus to conceptualizea connection between a mental object and a desiring subject at the level of the Thing "before" it is emptied and erasedby the symbolic Other, before the Other was empoweredvia the phallus. If psychoanalyticdiscourseleans on the feminine difference as absence,on the impossibility of elaboratingwhat is beyond the phallic field, on the impossibility of feminine rapport and on the othering of "woman" to the point of her foreclosure,art may be a site from which some light may be shed on this "woman." This site is not availablefor "therapy,"but it allows psychoanalyticresearchto extract something from whatever is imprinted in art for the first time and "use" it as its proper material. If the concept of the sinthome brings together the enigma of the feminine and the question of the origins of the work of art, it leads to the articulation of the enigma of art with the question of sexualdifference.

"The desire to know rnftâ&#x201A;Źrrsobsrlaclâ&#x201A;Źs. [n ondretto ernlmrily tth,eolostracl,eIr hrave',n'ven'tedth,e kn'.ot'."'

With the notions of sinthome and knot, Lacan looks for ways for knowing "woman" beyond mere affirmations of her existence.However, this "woman" beyond-the-phallusexhibits the intra-psychic knot while remaining a radical Other. In the Borromeanknot, the unconsciousis disharmonious;the knot leads us to deal with knowledgein/of the Real. Surely,saysLacan, women are less closely committed to the disharmoniousunconscious,they are somewhatmore free in relation to it. The knots account enigmatically for the failure to inscribe feminine desire in Lacan's still-and up until the end-phallic paradigm. However, with the concept of the "knot" it becomesclear that for Lacan the possibility to describe the "supplementary"feminine within the phallic framework reachesits is the co-formativeactivity limits. In the passageto a matrixial apparatus,what I call metrarnorphosis, that remembers,inscribes, and transferstraces of/from the feminine during borderlinking and spreadsits specific kind of "thinking" or sense-makingacrossthe threshold of culture. In the matrixial stratum, "she" exhibits intersectionsof knots in a trans-psychicweb and therefore she is presabsentas a border-Other. Such can be the work of a feminine, "sinthome" emergingfrom a shared and partial, assembledand diffracted subjectivity: it inscribes traces in the psyche and makes their passageto the world via artworking that enables a bordershareabilityin trauma and phantasm while it resonatesmeaning and createsfeminine-Other-desirevia metramorphosisthat also creates and contacts dit..tly knots in a [rans-subiec[ive non-conscious web., If knowledge stored in the Real is not a host of data awaiting decoding by means of signification that will also constitute a cleft from it, but is an "invention, that's what happens in every encounter, in any first encounter with sexualrapport"'othan a metramorphic processof webbing and wit(h)nessing,a metramorphic processof exchangeof affect and phantasm, based on conduction of/in

ill. 36

t6Zl

imprints,traces trauma or jouissancein/from a joint event, and a metramorphic processof transmissions-in-transformationof phantasy,initially between a becoming-subjectand a becomingm/Other-to,be, but more generallybetween I in coemergencewith an uncognizednon-1,an assembledsubjective unit that can then be considereda plural-several,partial and diffracted "woman," all of these processesreleaseknowledgefrom blanks and holes in the Real. A swervingat the heart of a joint event opens a minimal distance between partial elements and links between them. This swerving,like in a spiral movement back and forwards and inbetween elements, inscribes traces of these borderspacingsand borderlinkings themselves.We can consider the from a feminine manifestationsof these moves as a matrixial sinthome that releases/creates/invents, side, potential desireswhose sense,which does not depend on the signifier, will be revealedin further encounters between old and new elements.Thus, a feminine weaving tells us the story of decentralizedsewrality,of unpredicted occurrencesof encounter and of non-symmetricalreciprocity, if we can read between the threads of the braid and join them.

A work of art does not expressthe artist's intra-psychic conflicts-or does not just expressthem in a relieving form. A work of art channels anew trauma(s) and jouissance(s)coming from the world and from non-l(s) that get linked to the artist who bifurcates, disperses,and rejoins their imprint-traces anew but in difference. The artist acts on the borderline, transcribing it while sketching and laying it out and opening it wide to turn it into a threshold and to metramorphoseit into a borderspace'The metramorphic activity functions to borderlink known and unknown elements and it transmits the knowledge of the artwork that is derived from invisibility. The artist that acts on the borderline in that way and captures a resonatingmeaning while knotting a transsubjectivesinthome, this artist, male or female, is an artist-woman.(Pleasenote: Lacan uses the writing of JamesJoyceto describe the sinthome. With what we call a feminine sinthomewe are taking this notion beyond the work of and the problematic of Joyce to speak of a special kind of artworking, and beyond the art of writing visual art). of problematics and the painting languageto speakmainly on

Izo]

sinthomes.Such a doctor-and-patientborderspacefinds its echoesin the viewer; its vibrations impregnatethe viewer'sown psychic borderspace.It shedshght on the archaic trans-subjective rapport between the I and the non-l and it invites one to further think of the possibletransmission between different subjectsand objects,beyond time and space,in a potential in-between zone of a borne and yielded by painting at the same time that it shedssome light on transitive-subjective-object the potentiality to engender/produce/invent and analyzetransferentialrelations in therapy.

Art os a site of transference In terms of the unconsciousart-coefficient and of relations of transference,Marcel Duchamp suggestsa kind of aesthetic osmosisbetween the artist and the viewer via the artwork.'8It was Freud himself who qualified some transferentialphenomena as Unheimliche, thus opening the route for Duchamp to deliver them to an aesthetic sphere and to make them intersect with aesthetic experience."Mysterious," even "mystical" affective uncanny contingenciesunderlie the therapeutic potentiality of psychoanalysis,saysFreud, in terms of the patient's opennessto inter-personal interaction, influence and suggestibility,or his/her "tendency for transference"in the encounter with the doctor with-in the psychoanalyticprocess.This tendency for transference,since it reposeson sexualitythat is "the activity of the libido"'e enters the "holes" we are treating.

A doctor and a patient arrive at their transferentialencounter with different phantasiesand desires.

Nevertheless,their phantasiesand desiresare somehoq mysteriously,temporarily,and partially shared in an asymmetricalyet reciprocal way, and are transformedin/by the encounter, and retransmitted on. Furthermore, phantasiesand desiresare created in the transferentialborderspaceas alreadyconductible and shareablethough in-difference and as fabricated specificallyin/for each unexpectedand unique psychoanalyticencounter. If a matrixial borderspacefor inscribing originary besidednesswith-in-out is opened in the spaceof transference,in the wandering of phantasyand desire one's own phantasyand desire are not in any way replaced by those of an other. Beside a a matrixial transferencetakes place, where trans-individual phallic transference/countertransference, subjectivity-as-encounteris created between an I and an unknown other, or between an I and the unknown zone of a known non-I. The uncanny affects, both allowing and accompanyingthe matrixial rapport between doctor and patient, signal to both that a transference/countertransference common-in-differenceevent which equally-but-differentlyconcerns each of them approachesthe margins of shared awareness,surrounds the edgesof its hidden cavity and is about to appear.A

i l l . 38

Izr]

transferentialborderspaceof inter-with-ness,besidednessand transgression embeddedin relations of transferenceseeksways to becomeknown and thinkablevia the screenof Vision. Hereby,an assembledand diffractedtrans-individualdoctor-and-patient entity rolls itself in bits and bit bv bit into the Symboliclevel.

Traces of a buried-alive trauma are about to be reborn from amnesiainto coemergingmemory and the potentialityof partiallysharingit in the transferentialborderspaceis the condition for its aPPearance.That is how we may read Duchamp's art coefficjent connected to spaceof fransference: the artist and the viewer transform the artwork and are transformed by it in different times and places and to different degrees,in different-yet-connectedways. Each viewer gives the artwork new life, and what escapesthe captureof the artist'sawarenessis the kernel of this process.Matrixial affects allow and accompanyseeingwith-in/through a work of art. Such affects otherwise allow and accomPanythe rapport with-in/through psychoanalysis.Affective phenomena like admiration, amazement,empathy,anxiety,fascination and awe that are hidden inside the patient's readinessfor transference,as well as closelyrelatedphenomenalike wonder,dread,compassion,and even telepathy,which are hidden in the doctor'stendencyfor countertransference, also arisein viewing art. It is as if an object becomesa partial-subjectand startsto communicatewith us. Shared, exchanged,and diffractedon the unconsciouspartial dimension,theseaffectsattract and diffuse aesthetic threads and participate in the artwork'spotentiality for hurting and healing and for rendering the viewer vulnerable.

The doctor and the patient coemergein the transferentialspace,sharing-in-difference the screenof phantasythrough free associations and floatingattention.The artist and the viewer,each of them a as a doctor-and-patient ensemble,coemergein diversewayswith the work and by the work, sharingin-difference the screen of Vision through passage-to-actionand floating viewing. A matrixial gaze floats to the edgesof visibility when a floating eye traversesthe screen.Artist and viewer are not ln passive/active contradictionin relationto the screen,and yet neither do they amalgamate;they are not the same,and they are not symmetrical.They exchangeand keep a distancein proximitythat allowsthe artist a freedom to act and allowsthe viewer emphaticcom-passionas well as the

ill. 39

possibility for re-diffusion and re-infusion of elements in the transferentialborderspace.Without fusion a critical spaceof subversionand resistancemakes a room for itself.

Non-signifierizginstancesmake sensethrough the artwork. Some-Thing,some-Event,someEncounter, are not just being expressedor "represented."They keep being presentified and keep resonatingtheir de-signified meaning while attracting the viewer'sgazeto join them in and to join in of them. And this some-Thing,some-Event,or some-Encounterhas to do with the becoming-sense that which is for the phallic-Symbolic an impossibility-to-meaning.Thus, artworking articulated via the sinthome and twisted by a matrixial touch has to do with the coming-into-senseof what for Lacan is the "impossible feminine rapport" and what is for me an originary matrixial difference that can't make sensewithout a transsubjectivetransmission,and whose imprints-tracesemergein/by it is in order to articulate artworking. If to metaphor and metonymywe had to add ncetramorphosis, the potential for linking by the borders while borderspacingas a thinking processthat doesn't operateby offering substitutions for absence,and a working-through of presentified trauma and jouissancethat does not supposea collision into a suffocating undifferentiation.

A work of art produces, to borrow a Lacanian expression,a joui-sense,a senseemergingfrom a These tracescan unique jouissancebut whosevestigesare treasuredby its traces("plus-de-jouir"). be transformed into a work that will make rts sensefor the first time, and that rather then being interpreted by the Symbolic will transformthe Symbolic by that which was never, up to that point, known to the Other or known in the Other or known to the I. With such an idea, the idea of a joui-sense,not of the artist's experiencebut of the artwork itself in its processof transitive workingthrough, we would now like to bring Lacan'ssinthomeinto an uncanny encounter with Jean-Frangois Lyotard'sanalysisof the work of anamnesisin art.

Anamnesisworks in psychoanalysisthrough infinite recurrencesof an immemorial-yet always present-originary scene, and an artwork, saysLyotard, emergesby working-through via anamnesis to give traces to the invisible in the visible. In art, repetitions in anamnesicworking-through do not reestablishthe lost object but make present the unpresentableThing, crypted in the artwork's unconscious,that keeps returning, for its debt can't ever be repaid. This Thing inhabits the artist as if it dwelled outside her, or rather, it is the artist that is de-habitatedfrom her own habitat by it, from her own body and history.'oThe artist's body is invoked by Lyotard as a rnonsterinhabited by, and concealingthe non-place of a Thing uithout face. If the subject is founded by what for Lyotard is a recurrent intermittence of its own lossesand returns (in order to enlighten the Freudianfort/da that establishesan object by two distinct movements-constitutive of matrix-figure and its on/off beat-)'z' a spasm is brought forward by him, where an appearanceis bound up with disappearance in one and the same movement, where artwork testifies to such a spasm,and where the artist pays for it in her own body conceived as affection. In anamnesis,the return of the "same"via a spasmis never the same for it carries the marks of the peril of disappearancein the appearance.Spasm thus gives birth to artwork's apparition amidst recurrence as a threshold. The artist's gesture Lyotard refersto is that which createsa spaceof suspensioninside recurrenceand contractsrecurrencesas alternationsin a spasm,where an event is repeatedlyprocessedbut in difference, and artwork affects and createsa minimal soul-an anima minima.22 Encounters with remno:nts of troumo

i

A symptom reflects a traumatic event. It representsand articulates it in a dissimulated language.A work of art is doing something else-or, perhaps, something more. It captures and transmits the traces and effects of trauma, and it affects the viewer-when it works-in a traumatic way; it makes the viewer'sindividual psychic limits more fragile. Matrixial artworking is tracing a spasm inloflfor articulation of trauma the Other. It is therefore a co-spasming.If a symptom is a symbolic-imaginary where co-spasmingis and jouissance,a work of art is a transport-stationof trauma-and-jouissance,

74

inseparablefrom sense-creating.This is a transport-stationthat more than a location in time and place is rather a dynamic spacethat allows for certain occasionsfor occurrence and for encounter, in yet anothermatrixial spaceby which will become the realizationof borderlinkingand borderspacing way of the encounterit initiates.The transportis expectedin this station,and it is possible,but the transport-stationdoes not promise that passageof remnants of trauma will actually take place in it; it only supplies the spacefor an occasionof encounter.The passageis expectedbut uncertain, the transport does not happen in each encounter and for every gazingsubject. In this space,a gathering of severalof the artworks potential intended correspondentsis possible-of several,and not of all of them, and not at just any moment, in their actualizationas partial-objectsand partial-subjects, betweenpresenceand absence."

Here we can conceive of an occasionfor the realizationof an unavoidableencounter with remnants of trauma in a psychic dimension where a web of connectionsinside and outside the individual's limits, and a self-mutual but asymmetricaltransgressionof these limits, does not favor the total separationof any distinct individual from its own feminine dimension. This web is tragic in many senses,but is not melancholic,hysterical,or psychoticdespitethe psychoticpotential that stems from this non-separationitself and from the overflow of the borders themselves.The realizationof an encounter-Eventvia the artwork penetratesinto, impregnates,and createsfurther encounters between the artist-woman and the world, the artist and the object, the artist and the other, artists and viewers. The realizationof such an encounter distancesthe painting from sheer expression(of the Real), presentation (in the Imaginary), and articulation (in the Symbolic). On a fourth dimension, the painting is transformed by its own co-spasmingwith-in the Event-Thing into a transport-station of trauma and jouissance.

The matrixial affect diffracts and testifies to a difference on the level of the Thing when it signals that some-particular-Thinghappens,and a work of art that brings into some light the sensethat a transition from Thing, as Event and as Encounter, to object takes place is working-the-Eventthrough uithout a total separationform .the Thing. A minimal senseof differentiation-in-togetherness is tracing itself between signal and significance,testifying that partial subjectivity is alreadyinvolved in this move, that individuals are there to be affected, and that these individuals are not just objects or just subjects. Borderlinking is thus enabled by a minimal difference of affect or by affective minimal differentiation that occurs in the passagefrom Thing-Event and Thing-Encounter into partial-subject and partial-object.A joint awakeningof unthoughtful-knowledgeon the borderline and an inscription of the encounter in traces within the spaceof encounter, traces that open a space in and along the borderline itself between subjects and between subjects and objects are carried by metramorphosisthat is also thus a co-affectiuityand co-actiui\ that open the borderlinebetween subjects and between subject and object into a spacethat occasiona linking and a mutation into a threshold, so that the absolute separationbetween subjects upon the pattern of cut/split/castration from the Other-Thing-a separationwhich in fact is the pattern of elimination of the archaic femininity-the m/Other-Event-Encounter-becomes impossible.With-in the work of art the borderlines lose momentarily their frontier-quality and surrender to the transitive movement. The artist-woman wit(h)nessestrauma not necessarilywith a direct experienceof the event that s6u5sd-114uma of Other, of others and of the world-and engravesits unforgettablememory of oblivion in the work.

One more word We started with the difference between a production of a symptom and a fabrication of a sinthome, we continued by linking the questions of sinthome, art and the feminine in order to look at anamnesis,amnesia,and transferencein both art and psychoanalysis,and we are ending with the elusive matrixial difference born out of the affected body-psycheas a distance opened in the Real by

I{

{ i :

7S

an affected Thing-Event and Thing-Encounter, which in the difference between work-as-symptomand artwork can perhaps be articulated as the distance between the giving up to death-drivein an endless repetition circulating around an archaic trauma and a forcloseedfemininity on the one hand, and the strugglewith the angel of non-life-coming-into-lifeby a differential co-spasmingwith the Other and the world, in the linkage to the feminine, on the other hand. This touching struggleopens the sphere of affected transsubjectivityand redefines the artist-male or female

woman.

+All quotes from JacquesLacan are translatedby Joseph Simas and Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger and are copyrighted.

Nores; l. See Jacques-AlainMiller (1985), "Reflections on the Formal Envelope of the Symptom," Lacanian Ink 4 (1991), 13-21.

2. Ibid.

3. Jaqcues Lacan, Les non-dupes errent, unpublished seminar, 197 3-74, 1974; and Le sinth1me, unpublished seminar, 1975-76.

4. Lacan, Les non-dupes enent, unpublished seminar, 23 April and l2 February 1974.

5. parl'etre,usually translated as speaking-being.

6, Lacan, Le sinthime, unpublished seminar, l7 and l0 February 1976.

7. Ibid.

8. To learn more about Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger's concepts of Matrix and Metramorphosis the reader can refer to: The Matrixiql Caze, (Leeds: Department of Fine Arts, Leeds University, 1995); "Metramorphic Borderlinks and Matrixial Borderspace,"in Rethinking Borders, ed. John Welchman (London: Macmillan and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 125-59; "The With-lnMsible Screen," in lnside the Visible,ed. Catherine de Zegher (Cambridge, Mass.: M IT Press, 1996); "The Becoming Threshold of Matrixial Borderlines,"inTrarellers'Tales,eds., Robertsonet al. (Routledge:London, 1994); and "Matrix and Metramorphosis,"in Dffirences,4, no. 3, (Bloomington, Il: Indiana University Press, 1992).

9. Lacan, Le sinthbme 10. Lacan, Les non-dupes errent.

1 l. Lacan, Le sinth}me.

12. Sigmund Freud (19I0), "second Lecture," in Fire Lectures on Psychoanalysis.The Standard Edition of the Works of Sigmund Freud ( S . E . ) ,2 l - 2 8 ( L o n d o n : Ho g a r th , 1 9 5 7 ) ,2 7 .

S.E. Vol. 11,9-20 (London: Hogarth, 1957),20; and Freud (1910), 13. Freud (1910), "First Lecture," in Five Lectureson Psychoanalysis.

"Fourth Lecture," in Fite Lectureson Psychoanalysls.

S.E. Vol. I l, 40-48 (London: Hogarth, 1957), 4l 14. Lacan, Le sinthime.

15. JacquesLacan, D'un autre d l'Autre, unpublished seminar, 1968-69.

16. Gilles Deleuze, "La litdrature et la vie," in Critique et clinique, (Paris:Minuit, 1993), l1-17.

17. Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, "Trans-SubjectiveTransferentialBorderspace,"in Doctor and Patient, ed. Marketta Seppala(Pori, Finland: Pori Art Museum Publications, 1997). Reprinted in Deleuze,Guattari and the Philosophyof Expression,ed. Brian Massumi, special issue of C anadian Retiew of C omparathte Literature, 24, no. 3, 1997.

18. Marcel Duchamp, Duehamp du signe (Paris:Flammarion, 1975), 188-89.

S.E. Vol. 16, (London: 19. Sigmund Freud (1916-17). "General Theory of the Neuroses,"in lntroductoryLectureson Psychoanalysis, Hogarth, 1963),446.

20. Jean-FranEoisLyotard, "L'anamnEse,"Doctor and Patient, ed. Marketta Seppala(Pori, Finland; Pori Art Museum Publications, 1997) 21. Sigmund Freud (1920), "Beyond the PleasurePrinciple," in S.E. Vol. 18, (London: Hogarth Press, 1955). Freud describesa child's game with a wooden reel. The child accompaniesthe disappearanceof the reel with the expression:"fort" (gone),and its appearance, with: "da" (there). Freud'sessayis the basis for a tremendous psychoanalyticalliterature concerning the idea of psychologicalloss, lack, absence,the other/mother as object, the object of desire, and the playing object.

22. Jean-FrangoisLyotard, "Diffracted Traces,"inBrachaLichtenbergEttinger. Halala-AutistttorL (Jerusalem:The Israel Museum and Aix en Provence;Cit6 du Liwe. 1995).

23. See "fut as the Transport-stationof Tiauma," in Bracha Lichunberg Ettinger: Artworking 1985-1999 (Gent and Amsterdam: Ludion, 2000).

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Untitled

Lo uIs Ca srxnn "Americo prlot," c. 1920+ Pencil,indeliblepencil,and coloredpencilon Paper 13x 1 6 l/2 (33x 2l) Inv.3l1 5re cto 1920, l92O Pencil,indeliblepencil,and coloredpencilon Paper 13x 1 6 r/2 (3 3x 21) Inv.3ll7 recto

Puff Poodle ond Bulldog (continuotion of strip cortoon); The retnever and his troined decoy duch (below) "Pudelin Puff u Buldogg(2); Der Jogdhundu seinedressierteLochente"

KarHanrNe DErzEr

Arp'oNs FnrNrr Untitled Pencilon drawingpaper x 3 0 5 / t 6 ( 57x 77) 22 7 11 6 Inv.2383 recto Untitled, 1906 Pencilon drawingpaper ( 53. 8x 35.I ) x 1 3 13116 21 31 16 Inv 2385verso

Inv. 2404 recto

Inv.2412 recto

Untitled Pencil,pen, and watercoloron PaPer ( 12. 3x 7. 4) 4 71 8x2 1 51 16 Lnv.2057

IJntitled, after l9l6+ Mixedmediaon cardboard t3 1 5/1 6x 8 I l/ 16 G 5. ax 22. r ) Inv.4494

Pencil on paper 51/2x12 (13.9x 30.4)

Pencil on drawing paper 10 5/8 x 27 9116(27 x70)

Untitled on PaPer Pencil,pen,andwatercolor 5 t116x j 3116(r2.9x 8) Inv 2056

Jo sEr Fon srn n

Sleighwith Scil "Windschlitten"

How o Mouse Moused the Elephont' c. 1906 "Wie eine Mqus den Elehantenvemoust hot"

Osxan DsIrNrnvEn

Kothanna Detzel with o mole stuffed of her ownmohing+ Photograph 6 5h 6x4 3/8 ( 16x t l) lnv.2713a

Pencil on drawing paper 6 314x 13 13/16(17.2x 35) Inv 2399 recto

dummy

Pencil on drawing paper 9 7/8 x21 r/4 (25 x 54) tnv.2414 recto

Puff Poodle and Bulldog (strip cortoon) "PudelinPuff u. Buldog" (1) Pencilon drawingpaper 9 518x 2r l/4 (24.5x 54) [rw.2415

G. (MrssG.) Untitled, 1897 Embroidery thread on linen handkerchief 't4 9/16 x 14 l /8 \37 x 36) Inv. 6053

Paur GorscH Dreom Fo;ntasy "Troumphontasie" Bodycoloroverpencilon paPer 6 1 / 2x 8 l / 8 ( 1 6 . 5x 2 0 . 6 ) Inv 880

Airship Modelby Alfons Frenhl, 19O6 "Luftschiffe Model Alfons Frenhl" Pencilon drawingpaper 13 314x l0 3/4(35x 27.4) Inv.2386recto

Horus Dismembered* " D er zerstilchelte Horus" Bodycoloroverpencilon paPer 6 r / 2 x 8 1 1 8( 1 6 . 5x 2 0 . 6 ) Inv 881

"Puff Terre"

"Portrsit" Bodycoloroverpencilon paper 6 r / 2 x 8 1 l 8 ( 1 6 . 5x 2 0 . 6 ) Inv.889

Pencilon drawingpaper I 3/1 6x l3 I 1/ 16( 20. 8x 34. 8) Inv.2390recto

8z

Menrs Lrss

Fneu Kor-r,n Untitled

CeIl fToordecorated with torn strips oJ cloth, 1894

Pencil on drawing paper 2 0 I / 8 x 26 9 /1 6 ( 5 1 x 6 7.5 )

Photograph on card mount Photograph:4 3/8 x 6 5/16 (1 I x 16)

Inv 1634

l nv. l 77l /l

E. Peur- Kunzp Untitled, 1913 Pencil, Indian ink, body color, and collage on drawing paper

Cell fToor decoroted with torn strips of cloth, t894 Photographon card mount P hotograph: 4 3/8 x 6 5/16 (l I x 16) lnv. 1772/l

7 t / 8 x 9 3 /8 ( 1 8 x 2 3 .8 ) lnv.705/2

Untitled, 1913

H E N nrcu

Pencil, body color, and pen on paper 6 3 / 8 x 8 5 /1 6 ( 1 6 .2x 2 I)

M.

Untitled Pencil and colored pencil on paper 8 7/16 x 6 l I/16 (21.4x 17)

I n v 7 0 5 l 18 r e cto

Drmrrnr Gnep Lerrsnonrr'

lnv.2795 recto

Drawing Book

Wrrr.HsI-N{Maescu

Pencil, indelible pencil, pen, and pastel 12 5/8 x 9 5/8 (32 x 24.5) page

Eliseflower, c. l9 l0 "Eliseblume"

Inv.2375

Indelible pencil and body color on calendarpage 4 3/8 x 3 t/16 (l r.t x7.7) Inv 3042 recto

Canr Leucn Untitled, c. l9O0 Pencil on drawing paper 1 I l / 1 6 x 4 ' t/2 ( 2 8 x tl.4 )

Untitled,c. l9l0 Indelible pencil and body color on calendarpage 4 3/8 x 3 l /16 (l l .l x 7 .7)

Inv 94

A Proof of Divine Justice os agoinst Humo:n Injustice, 1900* " Ein Beweis giittlicher Gerechtigkeitgegentiber meftschlicher Ungerechtigleit" Pencil and pen on drawing paper t 5 7/ t 6 x 8 t/t6 ( 3 9 .2x 2 0 .5 )

Inv. 3043 recto

"Kleist,"c. l9l0+ Pencil, indelible pencil, and body color on calendarpage 4 3/8 x 3 1/16 (11.1.x 7 .7) Inv 3044 recto

Untitled, c. l9 l0

Inv. 95 recto

On the Holy Miracle in Bread, c. 1900 "Zum heiligenWunder im Brod"

Pencil and chalk on calendarpage 4 3/8 x 3 l /16 (11.l x 7.7) Inv. 3046 recto

Pencil on drawing paper 1 9 3 / 8 x 1 4 ( 4 9 .2x 3 5 .5 )

Finhenhomrner,

the Buclwvheot

Inv 98

"F inhenhammer

der Buchweizenhcindler"

Cristo

viene,

los meurtos

se levanton!

i,e,

Chnst Comes,the Dead Arise, c. 1900 "Cnstoviene,Iosmuertosse lovontanld.h.

Christus kommt, die Todten stehenauf' Pen on drawing paper 1 . 95 / 1 6 x 5 l,l/1 ,6( 4 9 x 1 ,4 .5 ) Inv 98/1

Foctor, c. l9l0

Pencil, indelible pencil, and chalk on calendarpage 4 3/8 x 3 1/16 (l l .l x 7 .7) Inv 3050 recto yon Flandern," c. l9l0 Pencil, indelible pencil, chalk, and body color on calendar page 4 3/8 x 3 l /16 (l l .l x 7.7) "Dare

Inv. 3054 recto

The photo grophically verifioble, interleoved miraculous imoges, reveoling o fifteen-yeor-old crime, in the brsoleof the victtm'sshoe, c. 1900 "Die photogrophischnochsweisboren, ineinanderliegenden, ein f ilnf zehnjdhnges VerbrechenenthtillendenWunderbilderin der Schuheinlegesohle des Geopferten"

Higher Plont from the Mountoins, c. 19l0 "OberpJlanzeausdem Gebirge" Indelible pencil on calendarpage 4 3/8 x 3 1,/16(Il ,.l , x 7.7) Inv 3062 recto

"Oberdorf," c. l9l0

Pencil on drawing paper 2 A 3 / 1 6 x 2 5 lI/1 6 ( 5 1 .2x 6 5 .2 )

Pencil, indelible pencil, and body color on calendarpage 4 3/8 x3 l /16 (l l .1 x7.7)

Inv 99

Inv 3065 recto

83

E r - r s nM en rrn "Dorothde"

lnnocence Love (Booh 3) "Unschuldliebe"(Drittes Heft)

Pencil, indelible pencil, and watercoloron paper 8 7 / 8 x l 5 1 /2 ( 2 2 .5x 3 9 .4 ) l n v + 4 2/ r e cto

Pencil,pen, and brush in a sewn booklet made from cardboardand paper 7 r/2x6 3/8 (19x 16.1) Inv 381

Untitled N,lixed mediaandindeliblepencilon paper 8 3 /8x t3 3 / 8( 21. 2x 3a. t ) lnv 4438recto Jo sn eH Ar-o r s G or r FRr ED M Ar ER Untitled Pencilandpastelon officepaper 12 t5/16x 8 t/4 (32.9x 2l) Iny 1 59 3

How Honor HelpsT (Book 5) "Wie F.hrehilt't?"(Fiint'tesHet't) Pencil, pen, and brush in a sewn and glued booklet made from cardboardand paper 8 3/16 x 6 1/2 (20.8x 16.5) Inv 382 B l ossom B oodness-S

ecti on l -Mebe\

Knowledge of Life, l9l3 "Bltihe Gtite-Abtheilung I -Mebes LeberLserhenntni$"

Airship Pencilandpastelon officepaper 8 1/4x 12 5/8(2r x 32.9) Inv I 593/l

Pencil,pen, and brush in a sewn and glucd booklet made from cardboardand paper

Untitled, l90l Pencilandpastelon officepaper 8 5/1 6x 12 t5/ 16( 21x 32. 9) Inv 1593/3

The Spirituolly Self -protecting Wonder pod. . .

"Die sich geistigschtitzendeWunderhrilse.. .,'

Drowing for Single Rcdio graphy, lg}l "Zeichnung t'iir einf ache Durchleuchtung" Pencilandpen on officepaper 8 5/16 x t2 13 / t 6( 2t x 32. 5) lnv. 1593/4 Light Phenomeno Similor to Rontgen, lgOl " Lichterscheinungen d.hnlich wie R6ntgen" Pcncilandpenon officepaper 8 5/1 6x t2 t3/ 16( 21x 32. 5) Inv I 593/5 Signs cnd Remarhs Bssed on Emissions cnd Eve nts,19 01 "Anzeichen u. Bemertungen, die sich auf B egebenhe it en und G es chehen" Pencilandpen on officepaper 8 I/4 x 1 2 13 / 16( 21 x 32. 5) Inv I 593/6 FneNrz MerrER The Goddess Sybillio's Domoin. A Novel of the Cqstle Dungeons "Der Glttin SybilliensGefithe.Bomon der Burgverlliese" Pencilon paper 2Ol/8 x t6 9/t6 ( 5t x 12) In v 2s04 lla HsrNnrcH Hrn unNN

M r es s

Treasure Malte Peace after Loyalty (Booh 2) "Schcitze schaffe Fieden noch Treu" (Zweites Heft) Pencil,pen,and brush,in a sewnbookletmadefrom cardboard andpaper 7 r/2 x6 3/8 (l9x t 6. l) Inv 380

8 5/16 x 6 5/8 (21 x 16.3) tnv Jat)

Pencil and brush in body color on paper 57/8x7 (t1.9x17.7) Inv. 388 recto

Who Wiil Roll the Stone from the Entronce of the Tomb? (Eoster) "Wer wcilztuns den Stein von der Grabes Thtir?', (Ostern) Pencil, pcn, and brush on paper 4 1/8 x 1 3/4 (10.4x t2.t) Inv 403

The Pesce of Easter agairrst Self-tormented H e ethendom (Re surre ction) "Der Osterfriedenwieder dos sich qualende H eidentum" ( Aufer stehung) Pen and brush on paper 5 1/8 x 17/8 (13 x nA ) Inv 402{

How Is the Crow to Be Comparedwith the Hsre as Agoinst such c Pose?

"Wie ist die Krahe dem Hasen solcherStellung gegeniiber zu yer gleichen?"

Pencil,pen, and brush on paper 17/16x7 (11.2x17.8) Inv 405

The DorhZeitgeist "D er dunheleZeitgeist" Pencil, pen, and brush on paper 41/8x6 9/16 (10.5x 16.6) Inv 406 recto

Booh of Wisdom Chopter 9 ond l\/Booh of Doniel Chapter 7 "WeisheitCap 9 u 10/ DanielCap 7" Pencil,pen, and brush on paper 1 3/8 x 4 1/2 (11 x 11.4) Inv 412 recto

84

Pencil on paper 63/8x4 (16.1x l 0)

F ollow= God Abandon=Gods "F olgt=G ott v erlost=Gottet"

l nr:159-65

Pencil,pen, and brush on PaPer 8 7 1 8x 4 1 5 1 1 6( 2 2 .6x 1 2 .5 ) Inv 413 recto

Bornber,1915 "Lut'tlteuzer"

The Anorchic Snakes=The Scalesof the Asylum "D er ge setzloseSchlangen=Irrenhausschuppen" Pencil,pen, and brush on PaPer 3 I l 2 x 4 7 1 1 6( 8 .9 x lI.2 ) Inv 417 recto

Pencil and colored pencil on drawing paper x 1l 7/16 (19.9 x29) 7 '13116 Inv. 172

Cosmic Axis with Hore (II), before I 9 I 9 "Weltochsemit Hose" (il)

Somuel Hetp! (Coin ond Abel in the Wolf's Glen in "Der Freischiitz") "somuelhifl" (Koin und AbeIin der Wofsschlucht des Freischiitz) Pencil, pen, and brush on PaPer 4 7 1 8 x 6 1 / 8 ( 1 2 .3 x 1 5 .5 ) Inv 419

P r r r n M r Y E n (Mo o c ) Illuminote d litur gical manus c ript Body color, pastel,pencil, and pen on paper mounted on cardboard,sewn 1 2 l l 4 x 7 5 / 1 6 ( 3 1 x 1 8 .5 ) I n v . D 1 0 4 / l (1 9 9 3 )

The Adorotion, l92O "Die Anbetung" Pen and body color on office paper mounted on cardboard 1 2 1 3 / 1 6x 8 5 /1 6 ( 3 2 .5 x2 r ) Inv l04b

Pencil and watercoloron watercolorboard, mounted on chipboard 8 l /16 x 1O 5/16 (2O.5x26.r) Inv.174

Ncpoleon. Antipope, the Invisible Enemy of God in the Clouds, c. l9l7 "Nopoleon.Antipcpst,der unsichtboreFeind Gottesin denWolken" Pencil and watercoloron drawing papeq varnished,and mounted on grey cardboard 10 5/16 x 8 1/16 (26.1x 20.4) Inv 175

The Miraculous Shepherd(II), before l9l9 "Wunder-Hirthe" (II) Pencil and u'atercoloron watercolorboard,varnished,and mounted on grey cardboard 9 518x7 l l l 16 (24.5x 19.5) Inv i 76

+ Witch's Heod (TransPsrencY) "H exenhopf' (TiansPorentbild)

The HoIy Sepulchre(Pietd), c' l9l9 "Dos hl. Grob'(Pietd)"

Pencil, watercolor,and pen on varnishedcard l 0 3/16 x 13 l l 2 (25 9 x34.2)

Pencil, pen, and bodY color on PaPer 1 2 1 3 / 1 6x I 1 1 4( 3 2 .5x 2 O.9 )

Inv 184

Inv.104f

Pencil and coloredpencil on drawing paper g 13116xl 5 1l l 16 (24.9x 39.8)

"schiessboch"(Breech),1915

J er on M oHn

Inv 185b

P r oof s c, . 1 9 1 0 " "BeweiJJe"

C LeN ,IE I.,rsvoN OE R TZE n (V Irron

Pencil and pen on office PaPer

Untitled, 1900-19

1 3 x 8 5 / 1 6 ( 3 3 x2 1 ) I n v 6 2 7 l l ( i 9 88 ) r e cto

Pencil on drawing PaPer 8 l 3/16 x l O 5116(22.3 x26.2) Inv. 741a recto

A uc us r NRrts n rR (N rrrn ) witch (trial shetch), before I 9 I 9 "Hexe"(Probeshizze) Pencil on writing paPer,pasteddown 7 l 3 l 1 6 x 6 r l2 ( 1 9 .9x 1 6 5 ) Inv.151

Skirt Metomorphoses (Eight v oriotions) " Rockverwondlungen" (ocht Vonationen) Pencil on paPer 6 3 1 8 x 4 ( 1 6.1 x 1 0 .) lnv 158 Shirt

MetomorPhoses

" Rocll erw andlungen"

(Eight

vatiations)

(ocht Voiotionen)

OnrH )

Pharooh,1900-19 "Phorlo" Pencil ond wotercolor on drowing poper 8 l 3 l 1 6x l 0 l l 8 ( 2 2 . 3x 2 5 . 7 ) Inv 741brecto Untitled, 1900-19 Pencilandcoloredpencilon drawingpaper ( 2 2 . 3x 2 5 . 6 ) 8 1 3 / 1 6x l 0 1 1 1 6 Inv 74lc recto lJntitled, 1900-19* Penciland watercoloron drawingpaper 1 0 1 / 1 6x 8 1 3 / 1 6( 2 5 . 6x 2 2 . 3 ) Inv 74le recto

85

Count Zeppelin "Graf Zeppelin"

Untitled, l9OO-19 Pencil and watcrcolor on drawing paper l 0 1 / 8 x 8 1 3 / 1 6( 2 5 .7x2 2 .3 )

Pencilon writingpaper 1 27 1 8x l 6 7 l l 6 ( 3 2 . 8x 4 1 . 8 \

Inv 74lf recto

Untitled, l9O0-19

lnv

Pencil and watercoloron drawing paper l 0 l / 1 6 x 8 1 3 /1 6 ( 2 5 .6 x2 2 .3 )

Donce Pcncilancls atercolor on flims1 7 3 / 1 6x 1 0 t / 2 ( r 8 . 2x 2 6 . 7 ) lnv.22

I n v 7 4 1 gr e c t o

Untitled, 1900-l9

Giont Pnnce lmzonin "Der Riesenf iirst Imzonin" Pencilon officepaper 127/8x 163/8 132.6 x 41.5) lnv.433I a

Pencil and watercoloron drawing paper 1 0 1 / 1 6x 8 1 3 /1 6 ( 2 5 .6 x2 2 .2 ) lnv 7.llh recto

J os r eH S c nr . { Er-rs n(Ss L r) "Hyperodrom"* Pencil on drawing paper and parchment paper 6 7 / 1 6 x 9 1 5 / 1 6( 1 6 .4x2 5 .3 ) lnv.2167

Mixed media and collage t 5 t / 1 6 x 6 t / 2 ( 3 8 .2x 1 6 .5 ) lnv.2324 Design-"

Canal"

Level,

19 | 6

"Mode Entwurf-' C anal'Nivecu" Mixed media and collage t 5 3 / t 6 x 5 5 / 16 ( 3 8 .5 x 1 3 .4 ) lnv.2334

Design-"CNL" Level, 19l6 "E ntwurf-' CNL' Niveou" Mixed media on card 1 4 3 / 1 6 x 5 5 / 1 6 ( 3 6 x 1 3 .4 ) lnv.2335

Untitled Pencilandwatercolor on flimsy 6 7 1 8x t 0 t h 6 ( 1 7. 4x 2 5 . 5 ) Inv. 4332e The Houses of Conection in the Gittingen Areo,79l8, l9l8 "Die Conectionshciuserb. G\ttingen 1918" Pencilandwatercolor on paper 2 l l 1 / 1 6x 1 27/ 8 ( 5 5x 3 2 . 7 ) Inv.4333a Sr. (rnnern)

A polr S c uuo s L Steep Path, l9O7 "SteilerPt'ad" Pencil, stumped, on drawing paper 7 1 3 / 1 6x 5 1 . 1 /1 6\1 9 .9 x 1 4 .4 ) Inv 1660 Tood Pond ot Full Moon,

Untitled Pencilanclsatercolor un flimsy 7 3/4x l0 7/8 (19.7x 27.6) Inv 4332c Untitled Pencilandwatercolor on flimsy 7 l/2 x'lO 5/16(19.1x 26.2) lnv.4332d

D esign-C onal level, | 9 | 6 "E ntwurf-Conol Niveou"

Foshion

I / recto

l9O7

" Kr ltenteich im Vollmonde" Pencil, stumped, on drawing paper 5 5 / 8 x 8 5 / 8 ( 1a .3 x 2 1.9 ) Inv 166l

The Horses' Feeding Time, l9O7 -O8 "Die Fiitterzeit der Pferde" Pencil on drawing paper 8 5 / 8 x 1 0 5 / 8 \2 1 .9 x2 7 ) Inv. 1662

Kenr Gusrnv Srsvsns Untitled (Bildergeschichte), before I 9 I 8

Untitled collage, c. 1890 Pencilon marginsof newspaper, pasted 7 3 / 8x 4 l 1 5 / 1 6\ 1 8 . 7x 1 0 6 . 5 ) Inv 3413 Untitled collage, c. l89l + Pencil,chalk,andbodycoloron marginsof pasted newspaPer 15 3/16 x 32 l /2 (38.5x 82.5) Inv.3416

Untitled colloge, c. 189I Body color on marginsof newspaper 1 7/16 x 39 l 5/16 (3.7 x 101.5) Inv 3418

B ensene S ucxrU rr Untitled, 19lO Pencil and pen on office paper 13 x 16 9/16 33 x a2) Inv. 1956 verso

Strip cartoon

Untitled, l9lo

Pencil on office paper 1 l 1 / 4 x l 5 5 / 16 ( 2 8 .6x 3 8 .8 ) Inv 3

Pencil and pen on office paper 13 x 16 9/16 \33 x 42) Inv 1957recto

86

Untitled, 19lO+ Pencil and pen on office paper 13x 16 9/16 (33 x 42) I n v 1 9 5 8 r e c to

Untitled, \9lO Pins in paper 1 3 x 1 6 9 / 1 6 \3 3 x 4 2 ) Inv 196l

"Demagogos" Pencilon drawingpaper 7 5 / 1 6x l 0 3 / 1 6( 1 8 . 5x 2 5 . 8 ) lnv.245l Norwegian Shodow "Norwegischer Schctten" Pencilon paper 7 5 / 1 6x 1 0 3 / 1 6( 1 8 . 5x 2 5 . 8 ) lnv.2456

Osren FrRnrNelsnHsrNnrcH Vor,r Dro.wingboolt Pencil 8 l / 1 6 x l 0 5/1 6 ( 2 O.5x2 6 .1 ) Inv 318 Drowingbooh Pencil 8 l / 2 x 1 0 1 5 /1 6\2 1 .5 x2 7 .8 ) Inv 328

Drawingbooh Pencil t2 t5/t6 x8 t / 2 ( 32. 9x 20. 6) Inv.360 Hvecrnrn F nEr Hs nn v oN W TESER (Hrrnn rcH W r r z ) A Man's Circle of Ideas Projected onto the Externol World "Ideenhreis eines Mannes auf die Au!3enweh projiziert" Pencilandpenon drawingpaper ( 33. 3x 25. 2) 1 3 1 /8x 9 1 . 5/ 16 lnv.2425 L. Father!, Mistrol Gorden, l9l2 " L. Vater!, Mistrolgarten" Fols.I and4 I of folder48 loosesheets Pencilon writingpaper l0 I l/16 x 8 l/ 8 ( 27. 2x 2O . 7) lnv.2432/5 Cuwes of Volition "Willenshunen" Pencilon paper 8 1/16x 6 7/16(20.4x 16.3) [nv.2443

Power ldeaView "Machtideenblick" Pencilon drawingpaper 7 l / 4 x I O l / 2 ( 1 8 . 4x 2 6 . 6 ) lnv.2457 A Dignified, Manly Air One Has cs o Motter of Course 'Mannlichwtirdige Art hat mon unbendingt" Pencilon drawingpaper 7 3 h 6 x 1 0 5 / 1 6( 1 8 . 3x 2 6 . 1 ) Inv 2458recto Lively Contemplction of Rev. W. Obermaier " Lebonsvolle Betrochtung des Pf oners W. Obermoier" Pencilon drawingpaper 7 3 / 1 6x 1 03 / 8 ( 1 8 . 3x 2 6 . 3 ) lnv.2459 Foirest One! "schonste" Pencilon drawingpaper 7 1 / 4x l 0 7 / 1 6( 1 , 8 .x42 6 . 5 ) lnv.2462recto Max ZrnnrSheet from a Noteboolc "()bsewotions of o Myopic on the Light Estimotions (Lunor Light) on the Orgo;n of Seeing," I889-1896 "Zeichnungen zu der S chrift " B eobachtungengen eine s Kurzsichtigeniib er Wertungen des Lichte s (Mondlichtes) auf dos Sehorgan" Penand pencilon office and writing paper '1 3 x 8 1 / 4 ( 3 3 x 2 1 ) Inv.2022/3O verso