By Hans Prinzhorn, one of the first collectors of 'Outsider Art' - included in Art Theory 1900 - 2000

Art in Theory 1900 – 2000, An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Edited by Charles Harrison & Paul Wood. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2003

Hans Prinzhorn

19    Hans Prinzhorn (1886 – 1933) from Artistry of the Mentally Ill
(affintities with Palaeolithic Cave Art?)

Between the end of the First World War and the early 1920s, Prinzhorn worked as an assistant to Karl Williams, the director of the Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic. Prinzhorn scoured many psychiatric institutions not only in Germany but also in Austria, Switzerland, Holland and Italy, eventually amassing over 5,000 examples, all of which were made spontaneously by inmates of mental institutions, and not just as a result of any ‘art therapy’. Prinzhorn regarded the pictures and objects he collected as evidence as a natural urge to formal and symbolic expression which is repressed by the effects of modern civilisation. Furthermore, he noted similarities between the visual imagery produced spontaneously by mentally ill people and the characteristic formal qualities of the art of the contemporary expressionist avant-garde. His conclusion was not that modern artists were mad, as conservatives tended to urge, but that there was an analogy between the schizophrenic’s response to his illness and the artists response to the troubled nature of his times.

        In the following extracts, Prinzhorn explicitly addresses the relation between the artwork of the mentally ill and what he calls ‘serious art’. They are taken form the closing section of his book…Bildnerei der Geisteskranken was first published by Springer Verlag in Berlin in 1922…no English translation was published until 1972.

IV. Schizophrenic Configuration and Art

We can hardly cite a case in the whole history of art, however, in which an untrained person, separated from the whole world and completely dependant on himself, suddenly reached for a pencil one day in order to produce pictures. The development of Rousseau, a customs official, is unique.

Art in Theory 1900 – 2000, An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Edited by Charles Harrison & Paul Wood. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2003 P 121 – 122

Louis Umgelter: ‘Cerebral Palsy’, 1906

The persons who produced our pictures are distinguished by having worked more or less autonomously, without being nourished by the tradition and schooling to which we attributed the majority of the more customary works of art. Our patients are of course not independent of every traditional conception, but in beginning to compose spontaneously they create a gulf so wide from everything that may be learned about configuration, from all knowledge and skill, that today it cannot be equalled anywhere (except in other parts of the world). The configurative process, instinctive and free of purpose, breaks through in these people without any demonstrable external stimulus or direction – they know not what they do. Whatever may be said to limit the value of this insight, it is certain that nowhere else do we find the components of the configurative process, which are subconscious in every man, in such an unadulterated state.

If we succeed in showing by means of our pictures that material which in many ways approached the quality of professional art grew out of these primary subconscious components, these conclusions must follow: tradition and schooling can influence the cognitive process only peripherally, promoting, through praise and reproach, rules and systems. There is, however, a king of intrinsic process; the preconditions for it development are present in every person. This assertion is supported by numerous experiences. We know today that most children possess a an original configurative urge which develops freely in a suitable environment, but which disappears rapidly as the rationalism of schooling turns an instinctual, playful creature into a knowing and purposeful one. Experiences with primitives and with many dream experiences bear this out. As surely as configuration is an activity in itself have little to do with the visions and fantasy, so does the ability to view objective pictures in dreams and hypnotic hallucinations indicate an original configurative power. We observe repeatedly, especially in psychotherapy, that under the right circumstances almost every person is capable of experiencing his conflicts in extremely pregnant symbolic disguise. We must therefore conclude that an original configurative instinct intrinsic to all men has been buried by the development of civilisation….

 Art in Theory 1900 – 2000, An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Edited by Charles Harrison & Paul Wood. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2003 P 122

Some of our works are so clearly artistic that many an average ‘healthy’ works are left far behind. External qualities will therefore not throw light on undeniable and deep relationships. It would seem much more rewarding to turn our attention to the related traits in the general emotional attitude evinced by the most recent serious art. There we find indeed a basic trait a renunciation of the outside world as commonly understood, as well as a logical devaluation of it surface luster on which all Western art has heretofore depended, and finally a decisive turn inward upon the self. We have used the very same phrases in our efforts to describe the outlook of schizophrenics.

Jakob Mohr, Beweisse [Proofs], ca. 1910.

For the schizophrenic there is the fateful experience. The alienation from the world of appearances is imposed on him as a gruesome, inescapable lot against which he often struggles for some time until he submits and slowly begins to feel at home in his autistic world, which is enriched by his delusions. For the contemporary artist alienation from the once familiar and courted reality may also result from an overpowering experience, but at least it involves conscious and rational decisions. It occurs because of painful self-analysis and because the surmounted relationships with society become repulsive, and it is therefore often mixed with doubts, a bad conscience, and resentments. On the other hand, it had a clear purpose, at least theoretically. By its nature the liberation from the compulsion of external appearances should be so complete that all configuration should deal only with pure psychic qualities. Its source should be a completely autonomous personality with ambitions of entering into a mystic union with the whole world.

What we seem to lack is just that primary experience which precedes all knowledge and which alone produces inspired art. Instead, after all our extravagant wishing, after all the determined triumphs over ancient errors, we finally end up with intellectual substitutes.

           

If we are correct, then the passionate emotions with which sensitive artists react to our pictures becomes completely understandable. These works really emerged from autonomous personalities who carried out the mission of an anonymous force, who were independent of external reality, indebted to no one, and sufficient solely unto themselves. The unborn primeval process of configuration ran its course far from the outside world , without plan but by necessity, like all natural processes.

Cultural values and developments cannot be taught to anyone who has not experienced them. Given the great speed with which cultural forces become history today, the unperceptive person accepts as historic fact what until yesterday he believed he could safely ignore as the phantasmagoria of isolated enthusiasts. If we carefully observe the arts of today we find a number of tendencies active in all of them, the fine arts as well as all branches of literature, to which only a genuine schizophrenic could do justice. Mind you, we are far from trying to prove the presence of symptoms of mental illness in these arts, but we do find an intrinsic affinity for nuances which are familiar to us in schizophrenics.

   Art in Theory 1900 – 2000, An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Edited by Charles Harrison & Paul Wood. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2003 P 122 - 124