{"id":28,"date":"2007-04-06T13:48:02","date_gmt":"2007-04-06T17:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/frenchart\/2007\/04\/06\/hans-prinzhorn\/"},"modified":"2009-01-21T21:58:06","modified_gmt":"2009-01-22T01:58:06","slug":"hans-prinzhorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/frenchart\/outsider-art\/hans-prinzhorn\/","title":{"rendered":"Hans Prinzhorn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While the hard-line approach of scientific inquiry came to a tragic head during the 1937 <em>Entartete Kunst<\/em> exhibition in Berlin, a more interdisciplinary, humanistic, and ultimately successful appraisal of the art of the outsider is evident in the career of Dr. Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933). Trained in both psychiatry and art history, Prinzhorn&#8217;s approach to the art of the mentally ill, while still influenced by the diagnostic tendencies of his peers, bears the mark of an individual genuinely in awe of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153beauty, originality, and expressive intensity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d underscoring the breadth of art works found within the clinics, hospitals and asylums of the time (MacGregor 1989:193). In his seminal book, <em>Artistry of the Mentally Ill<\/em>, first published in 1922, Prinzhorn strives to cast off the dominant paradigms equating genius with madness, arguing that, if a work may be said to constitute genius, judgment \u00e2\u20ac\u0153by any fixed, outside standard\u00e2\u20ac\u009d should have little bearing on its intrinsic and lasting value (Prinzhorn 1972:6). In light of this, Prinzhorn strives to examine his subjects, a vast collection of patients&#8217; work from Europe and America held in the Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic, on the basis of their own merits, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153as free of prejudice as possible\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Prinzhorn 1972:6). To do so is Prinzhorn&#8217;s challenge to both his contemporaries and the field of art history as a whole. Sensitive to the long-standing habit of the academy to perpetuate \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a distinction between one class of objects and another very similar one which is dismissed as nonart,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Prinzhorn set about discovering a common ground between the mainstream and outsider production, finding it in what he considered the single, elemental purpose of all art-making activity: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to actualize the psyche and thereby build a bridge from the self to others\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Prinzhorn 1972:1,12). <\/p>\n<p>With the assertion that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the most sovereign drawing by Rembrandt [and] the most miserable daubing by a paralytic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are both valid \u00e2\u20ac\u0153expressions of the psyche,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Prinzhorn (1972:xviii) manages to level the playing field to the point where the work of the outsider may be examined using the same methodology as applied to the masters. Once this is achieved, the author formulates a series of universal \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tendencies of pictoral configuration\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by which an individual may achieve \u00e2\u20ac\u0153configurative power,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d meaning the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ability to translate whatever moves him into a picture in such a way that a viewer may participate in the experience\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Prinzhorn 1972:15,33-34). <\/p>\n<p>Significantly influenced by the inward gaze of German Expressionism, Prinzhorn&#8217;s theories allow for the existence of variable approaches to the configurative process. In fact, Prinzhorn likens the art of the avant-garde to the very \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nature of schizophrenic configuration,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d citing a synchronistic preoccupation with a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153decisive turn inward upon the self,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d coupled with the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153free treatment of the outside world [as] raw material\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to be reordered according to individual intentions (Prinzhorn 1972:264,271). Alluding in this manner to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153schizophrenic outlook\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the art of his day, an art caught between wars in a time of massive social and political upheaval, Prinzhorn ultimately posits the revolutionary hypothesis that art, by its very nature, can never be truly pathological (MacGregor 1989:205). Despite its origins, he concludes, it is the intention of the artist that must be considered, and because this intention is essentially an effort to communicate the contents of the psyche or soul, it is the responsibility of anyone serious about the existence of art to set aside their prejudices in order to perceive the innermost expressive essence of a given art work.<\/p>\n<p>Prinzhorn&#8217;s writings, as groundbreaking and influential as they were, did not arise as an intended manifesto meant to destabilize long-established art historical practices. Rather, <em>Artistry of the Mentally Ill<\/em> served to model an integration of ideas and ideals already effecting great change within modernist sensibilities. In keeping with Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky&#8217;s call for an art of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153internal truths\u00e2\u20ac\u009d unconcerned by the restrictions of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153external form,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Paul Klee was fully immersed in the exploration of elemental sources of creativity (Kandinsky 1977:1). Writing in his diary in 1912, Klee (1964:266) focuses his attention on the work of children and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the mentally diseased\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as inspiration for sweeping reformation in an art world that had, in his eyes, degenerated into \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the very incarnation of exhaustion.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d For in these \u00e2\u20ac\u0153primitive beginnings,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Klee insists, one may glimpse \u00e2\u20ac\u0153instructive examples\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of pure expression existing independently of the dictates of cultural expectations (1964:226). Recognizing the invigorating potential of these peripheral sources, including African and Oceanic cultures, Klee speaks with a passion devoid of irony regarding the need to spare the &#8216;primitive&#8217; from the aggressive corruption of the art world. Perhaps Klee was reacting to widespread appropriation of the Japanese woodblock (itself a product of Western influence,) or Picasso&#8217;s <em>Les Demoiselles d&#8217;Avignon<\/em>. Regardless, he makes little mention of a proactive, preservationist approach. But by the time Klee and his contemporaries had forged an articulation of their shared sense of &#8216;otherness&#8217;, more often alluding to physical or generational, rather than pysiological distance, the notion of the outsider was sufficeintly planted in the thinking of the twentieth century. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While the hard-line approach of scientific inquiry came to a tragic head during the 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibition in Berlin, a more interdisciplinary, humanistic, and ultimately successful appraisal of the art of the outsider is evident in the career of Dr. Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933). Trained in both psychiatry and art history, Prinzhorn&#8217;s approach to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/frenchart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/frenchart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/frenchart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/frenchart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/frenchart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/frenchart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/frenchart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/frenchart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/frenchart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}