Oh Vienna!

The rebellious Klimt who refused to fit ‘in the box, body language symbolism and the relationship with phsyco analysis.

Im captivated in a book, ‘Madness and Modernity. Mental Illness and the visual arts in Vienna 1900 - Gemma Blackshaw & Leslie Topp - 2009.

The changes that were happening at that time to the visual arts with art movements - Secessionists and Expressionists, both exploring breaking of the traditional boundaries , responses to their own emotions and darkness of hysteria and disease for which imagery from the asylums were of major reference.

Jean -Martin Charcots ‘Work on Hysterics’ provided a catalogue of patients and the displaying body language, for artists to use. Such as Schiele and his treatment of hands in his work.

The images are not comfortable to view but most definitely envoke a deeper and darker reference point for visualising trauma, emotion and human behaviour, for which I do not mean the patients!

I am naturally drawn and interested in researching an historical view point and I find myself looking more into mental health and art as a therapy, alongside a fascination with how mental health, including those misdiagnosed, were treated in the asylums of the 1900’s.