Artistry of the Mentally Ill was a 1922 book by psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn, and is known as the work that launched the field of psychiatric art. It was the first attempt to analyze the drawings of the mentally ill not merely psychologically, but also aesthetically.
In the book, Prinzhorn presents the works of ten "schizophrenic masters" from the Heidelberg collection, with in-depth aesthetic analysis of each and also full-color reproductions of their work. These ten masters were:
- Karl Brendel
- August Klotz
- Peter Moog
- August Neter
- Johann Knüpfer
- Viktor Orth
- Hermann Beil
- Heinrich Welz
- Joseph Sell
- Franz Pohl
Read more about Artistry Of The Mentally Ill: Resources
Famous quotes containing the words mentally ill, artistry, mentally and/or ill:
“You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“He did not live, he observed life from a window, and too often was inclined to content himself with no more than what his friends told him they saw when they looked out of a window.... In the end the point of Henry James is neither his artistry nor his seriousness, but his personality, and this was curious and charming and a trifle absurd.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“There are women in middle life, whose days are crowded with practical duties, physical strain, and moral responsibility ... they fail to see that some use of the mind, in solid reading or in study, would refresh them by its contrast with carking cares, and would prepare interest and pleasure for their later years. Such women often sink into depression, as their cares fall away from them, and many even become insane. They are mentally starved to death.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“The difference between a healthy person and one who is mentally ill is the fact that the healthy one has all the mental illnesses, and the mentally ill person has only one.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)