Project Details
Projekt
Normal#crazy art. Works from a psychiatric context between diagnostics and aesthetics after 1945
Subject Area
History of Science
Term
since 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 419057548
In 1945, the artist and collector Jean Dubuffet coined the term art brut for original works by laypersons, which were created outside of traditions and current art movements, but which he considered to the true art, including prominently works by psychiatric inmates. He thus took a firm position in the debate about the assignment of these works between pathologization and enhancement to art, which had already started before the Second World War for "Bildnerei der Geisteskranken", until it had been almost completely ousted with National Socialism in the German-speaking world.In the following decades, these works, which we would like to call normal#crazy art in the project proposed here, were at the center of new negotiation processes in which, in addition to psychiatrists, artists, exhibition organizers and gallery owners were increasingly involved, as well as collectors, journalists, art therapists and, last but not least, the artists themselves. In addition to constantly expanding actor constellations, the debates show an erosion of the difference between "normal" and "crazy", although the categories have still not been completely dissolved to this day, but remain related to each other in the sense of a contradiction. This is already ensured by the economic logics of the art market, in which the emancipation of art brut, later outsider art, from a psychiatric context as art cannot do without simultaneous (self-) pathologization. The process is not yet complete. Nevertheless, around 1990, after the establishment of own museums, galleries, and magazines, the end of a phase of institutionalization of the outsider art can be assumed, so that this point in time is suitable as the end of the investigation period.The aim of this sub-project is to make the eroding difference "normal#crazy" at the intersection between the visual arts / art market / art business and psychiatry / psychiatric experience / exceptional psychological experience fruitful for the contemporary history of the psychic. The subproject is based on the normal#crazy art works themselves, their charakteristics and aesthetics in order to identify their peculiarities to be explored in terms of image science as starting points for the reconstruction of the debate from different areas of society.Because of the social importance of art and the public of the discourse, which is based on the normal#crazy works and their radiance, a reconstruction of the erosion process in this area, a reflection of the centrifugal and centripetal tendencies that are effective in it, contributes significantly to the overall concern of the research group.
DFG Programme
Research Units
