Latineos - Latin America, Caribbean, arts, culture

The interest for the theme, both by professionals from a psychiatric background and by those in the artistic field has been recorded since at least the late nineteenth century. In 1864, the infamous criminologist and psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso publishes his book Genio e Follia, focusing on the relationship between artistic genius and hereditary insanity.

The root of this type of interest has been explained by some authors as a nineteenth century’s reaction to a perceived loss in purity, resulting from the galloping pace of the rational and positivistic endeavours, which could perhaps still be found among the ‘primitive’ mind. For artists who rejected the view of modern society as the evolutionary apex, the primitive state would be regarded as superior, supported by Freudian concepts of the unconsciousness which would offer a gateway to creativity. Within that framework, ‘outsider art’ came to encompass the art produced by the ‘primitive’, the mediums, prisoners or children, besides that done by the mentally ill.  

Over the first two decades of the twentieth century, the interest for this type of art grew, with ‘transgression’ and the association between art and insanity becoming an important element in the surrealist and Dadaist movements. In the 1920s, due to a number of written works on the subject, attention was given to the works themselves, though not yet to the creators, for Just as knowledge had to combat faith in the Middle Ages, deploying history and science as arms, now there is an attempt to return to life, using art against knowledgesuch work was not recognised as artistic production. Curiously, well-known artists such as Max Ernst, André Breton and the writer Réja had a background in psychiatry, while the triad ‘art, insanity and psychiatry’ can also be detected in the actual Surrealist Manifesto, written by  André Breton. Inversely, the Nazi used the connection between creative genius and insanity to disqualify what they perceived as an inferior form of human being, evidenced in the concept of ‘degenerated art’.

In 1929, the Brazilian psychiatrist Osório Cézar, publishes A Expressão Artística dos Alienados (‘The artistic Expression of the Alienated’), having already started working with inpatients using art at the Hospital de Juqueri in São Paulo.  But it is only in the second half of the twentieth century that a dispute for the appropriation and legitimation of this type of art becomes apparent. I shall focus on two museums associated with the so-called ‘outsider art’, both located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, which serve as examples of this type of dispute. The first one, The Museum of Images of the Unconscious, was inaugurated in 1952, then, and for a few decades after, under the supervision of the Dr Nise da Silveira, known for her pioneering work in Brazilian psychiatry.

When Dr Nise started working with occupational therapy offering the inpatients a space for painting and sculpting at the Psychiatric Centre Pedro II, she sought the help of a young artist, at that time doing administrative work at the hospital, named Almir Mavignier, who in turn, brought other artists to visit the studio. Some of them, including Mavignier, would become major figures in the Concretist Art Movement in Brazil in the 1950s. By 1956, the museum already had the reputation of holding a unique ‘psychopathologic artistic collection’, having been visited by Carl Jung himself, who commented on the archetypical character of the work.

This moment is seen by many as part of a reform of both art and psychiatry in Brazil, for indeed, the experience that those artists had with the inpatients Adelina, Fernando, Carlos, Raphael, Emydgio, Isaac and Abelardo, the seven inpatients under Dr Nise da Silveira’s care usually shown in the exhibitions of the collection Images of the Unconscious, irrevocably changed the way those artists perceived creativity, as testified in numerous interviews over the years. It is interesting to note that, though the museum holds a collection of hundreds of pieces, the work by those seven artists is what can usually be seen at the exhibitions. Two sets of criteria may be detected in the selection of the pieces that are exhibited: images that can be interpreted as representing archetypical projections, and those that display particular aesthetic accomplishments.

As a contrast, the museum that houses the work of perhaps the most illustrious representative of ‘outsider art’ in Brazil, Arthur Bispo do Rosário, who lived in the Colônia Juliano Moreira as an inpatient for over fifty years, according to the wording of its manifesto, ‘seeks to operate within a new logic’ in an attempt ‘to fight against (pre) concepts inherited from the psychiatric field formulated as a way to control and reduce artistic production to a condition of mental illness’. Those concepts would be terms such as ‘outsider art’, ‘marginal art’ or ‘images of the unconscious.

The treatment given to Bispo do Rosário’s work in the museum that houses his collection seeks to understand his art as such, and not as an object of study. And indeed, although both museums are located within the grounds of medical institutions, in entering the Museum of Contemporary Art Bispo do Rosário the art displays which surround the visitor could be that of any other contemporary exhibition.

In defining itself as museum of contemporary art, the museum seeks to distance itself from the psychiatric field, in a clear allusion to Nietzsche, who once suggested that just as knowledge had to combat faith in the Middle Ages, deploying history and science as arms, now there is an attempt to return to life, using art against knowledge. Those two museums stand for different approaches to a similar attempt to display the fascinating workings of creativity, but art is and ought to continue being appreciated as such, before anything else.