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Artistry of the Mentally Ill: A Contribution to the Psychology and Psychopathology of Configuration

Hans Prinzhorn,

Eric Von Brockdorff (Translator )

4.40 · Rating details · 47 ratings · 5 reviews

One of the original attempts to analyze the artistic work of the mentally ill, Prinzhorn's collection of drawings, paintings, and sculptures helps to define an area encompassing psychiatry and art, illness and self-expression. Where other collections are only the products of psychotherapeutic case studies, this heavily illustrated, classic analysis stands in valuable contr ...more

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274 pages

Published November 3rd 1972 by Springer (first published January 1st 1922)

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Dec 26, 2007 tENTATIVELY, cONVENIENCE rated it really liked it

Shelves: art

This is the earliest of the bks on this subject that I know of (but not the 1st I read). It's worth it for the material on Heinrich Welz alone! In a world supersaturated w/ the work of businessmen like Andy Warhol, it's fantastic to be able to have access to images & ideas from people whose marginality wd ordinarily push them to the garbage-heap-of-humanity-a-go-go. ...more

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Apr 21, 2012 Astral rated it it was amazing

Absolutely essential work for any artist. Chances are if you are looking for this book you already know about it, if you find a copy, then it was meant for you.

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May 23, 2020 anon rated it really liked it

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Dec 14, 2019 Samuel added it · review of another edition

This was one of the first books ever published on the art of people suffering from severe mental illness, and probably the first one to try to look systematically at this field of study. It's worth its weight in gold for the heart of the text, the biographical sketches and artist studies of the ten "schizophrenic masters," whose art remains compelling and haunting. (August Natterer remains my favorite, but they're all worth engaging with.)

The first and third parts of the book, dealing with the r This was one of the first books ever published on the art of people suffering from severe mental illness, and probably the first one to try to look systematically at this field of study. It's worth its weight in gold for the heart of the text, the biographical sketches and artist studies of the ten "schizophrenic masters," whose art remains compelling and haunting. (August Natterer remains my favorite, but they're all worth engaging with.)

The first and third parts of the book, dealing with the relationship between mental illness and creativity, and the origins and subtypes of the creative impulse, have been superseded, but are a fascinating look into the then-nascent field of modern psychology, as well as ethnography and art criticism. Prinzhorn had been trained in both art history and psychology, and his mastery of both fields shows.

I read the ending of the book with a deep sadness. Prinzhorn writes about how the art produced by these artists is as real and worthy of merit as any other art, and talks about his hopes for further studies of mental illness and creativity. I know, though Prinzhorn of course couldn't, that less than two decades later, the Nazis would sweep through the institutions that cared for these artists and people like them; some 300,000 mental patients in Germany and areas controlled by the Third Reich were murdered during the Aktion T4 program. Prinzhorn himself was dead by the time the war started, and his collection of asylum art only survived because it had been stored away in the attic at the University of Heidelberg.

As a side note, for an acknowledged classic in the field, Artistry of the Mentally Ill has had a really spotty publication history. The version I own is the 1995 reprint, and the quality of the images is noticeably bad -- online images of the same works are much, much clearer. For a long time, this was the most recent edition, but it's finally back in print as of this year (2019). I haven't seen the new edition yet, but I hope they've cleaned up the image quality issues. ...more

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