Madness and Modernity: Mental Illness and the Visual Arts in Vienna 1900 (Lund Humphries/Ashgate Publishing) was published to accompany the exhibition, of the same name, held at the Wellcome Collection from 1st April to 29th June 2009.
The publication investigates two closely interconnected questions:
- How did psychiatry influence early modernism in the visual arts?
- How has modernism influenced our attitudes to mental illness?
Gemma Blackshaw and Leslie Topp – the Editors
Dr Gemma Blackshaw, Lecturer in Art History at the University of Plymouth, is a leading authority on modern art in Vienna 1900. Her current work-in-progress, entitled Journeys into Madness, explores mental illness in Vienna at the turn of the 20th Century.
Dr Leslie Topp is Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Architecture, Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of many titles including Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna (2004).
Madness and Modernity features additional contributions by historians, Dr Nicola Imrie, Dr Luke Heighton, Dr Sabine Wieber and Dr Geoffrey C. Howes.
Madness and Modernity – About the Book
In Vienna 1900 artists, patients and psychiatrists engaged with each other, often deliberately seeking each other out. Madness and Modernity examines contrasting places, such as the mental institution Am Steinhof and Sigmund Freud's consulting room. The publication explores contrasting artists and designers such as Oskar Kokoschka, Gustav Klimt, Max Oppenheimer, Josef Hoffmann, Otto Wagner and others.
Otto Wagner's designs for the Steinhof mental hospital are shown side by side with Kokoschka's portraits of patients confined there. Photographs of patients with neurological disorders are displayed together with self-portraits by Egon Schiele, who was obsessed with his own physical appearance. Artworks created by patients are viewed in the context of the institutions they were treated in.
Madness and Modernity – the Layout
Madness and Modernity, which is illustrated by more than 100 images, is divided into ten chapters and prospective readers will get an overview of the contents from the chapter descriptions:
- Scrutinised Bodies and Lunatic Utopias – Mental Illness, psychiatry and the visual arts in Vienna, 1898–1914. (Leslie Topp and Gemma Blackshaw)
- Karl Henning, Wax Models of Two Male Heads, 1897–98. (Nicola Imrie)
- 'Mad' Modernists: Imaging mental illness in Viennese portraits. (Gemma Blackshaw)
- Gustav Jagerspacher, Portrait of Peter Altenberg, 1909. (Gemma Blackshaw)
- Modernity follows madness? Viennese architecture for mental illness and nervous disorders (Nicola Imrie and Leslie Topp)
- Erwin Pendl (studio), model of Lower Austrian Provincial Institution for the Cure and Care of the Mentally and Nervously Ill 'am Steinhof', C.1907. (Leslie Topp)
- Josef Karl Rädler, Untitled (Self-Portrait), 1913 (Luke Heighton)
- The Allure of Nerves: Class, gender and neurasthenia in Klimt's society portrait. (Sabine Wieber)
- Richard Luksch, Two Faience Figures for the Purkersdorf Sanatorium, 1905. (Sabine Wieber)
- Madness and Literature in Vienna 1900. (Geoffrey C. Howes)
Madness and Modernity – a Fascinating Read
This book is both fascinating and informative and will appeal to anyone interested in the interwoven history of art and mental health in Vienna 1900.
Madness and Modernity (ISBN: 978-1-84822-020-1) is published by Lund Humphries (2009) and priced at £35.00. Details of the exhibition and the publication are available from the Wellcome Collection.
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