Madness & Modernity at the Wellcome Collection

Madness & Modernity at the Wellcome Collection

31 March, 2009
by: Tom Jeffreys

From Thomas Hoccleve to Amy Winehouse via William Blake and Vincent van Gogh, the history of the arts is littered with those whose personalities tread the boundary between the unorthodox and the unhinged. Is there something intrinsic perhaps that links creativity with mental illness? Is it perhaps the unusually intense focus on the self that the creative act so often necessitates? Or is it rather the structures by which these things are measured, the fine line therefore being not an internal division but a product of external methods of measurement? The Wellcome Collection's current exhibition, Madness & Modernity, does not profess to answer all – or, indeed, any – of these questions. And neither do I.

So what does it do? Well, as the title suggests, Madness & Modernity is an exploration of the relationship between mental illness and notions of modernity in fin de siècle Vienna. Not only did some of the era's best architects and designers put much effort into the designs of various institutions for the insane, but the city's bohemian artsy circles also decided that there was something rather cool about being a wee bit mental.

The first three rooms focus on institutional attitudes towards mental illness. We kick off in The Tower of Fools, an institution built in Vienna in 1784 with the intention of housing 'dangerous lunatics'. A two-screen video-projection depicts a shuffling, unnerving tour through corridors and past cabinets and cells. On the right are four 'character heads' by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt whose grimacing expressions are so contorted as to be at once painful and ridiculous.


Model of the Narrenturm (Tower of Fools) Vienna, credit:Technisches Museum, Vienna

The next room sees a shift in time to 1907 and the opening on the edge of Vienna of the 'Am Steinhof' clinic. Here, the discrepancy between madness and modernity is made obvious: on the one hand, this institution is a beautifully designed luxury resort that advertises for residents. On the other hand, this is where the mentally ill are treated: those in solitary confinement are characterised by the scrawny, angular limbs of Erwin Dom Osen's drawings and locked away behind heavy wooden doors.

The hegemonic focus on the physicality of mental illness epitomised in the images of Dom Osen is one of the many ideas challenged by the groundbreaking work of Sigmund Freud. The third room is an exploration of the paraphernalia of methodology: the contrast between the terrifying electrotherapeutic cage and the ancient Roman Egyptian deities that adorned Freud's desk is a striking one. Instead of exercising on some bizarre mechanotherapy chair, Freud's patients reclined on a couch, and talked.

The next two rooms shift the emphasis from the means used to understand and confine mental illness, to its appropriation as a kind of chic affectation by Vienna's boho elite. There's portraits of, among others, artist and art historian Lotte Franzes, writer Peter Altenberg and painter Max Oppenheimer. The most interesting work here, I think, is Egon Schiele's The Painter Max Oppenheimer. This portrait encapsulates one half of the relationship between madness and modernity: Oppenheimer's elegantly cut black suit and tie frames bony brittle fingers and a green/yellow jaundiced visage. One is reminded of today's fashion industry and its love of the size-zero heroin-chic aesthetic.


Josef Karl Rädler, credit: Christian M. Nebehay Antiquariat und Kunsthandlung, Vienna

The final room – Patient Artist – sees a move away from urban modishness towards genuine outsider art. There's a single streak of collaged newspaper by an unknown patient known only as Frau St – painstakingly produced and strikingly beautiful – and a series of double-sided watercolour-on-paper works by Josef Karl Rädler, the self-styled 'laughing philosopher'. Rädler's images are highly detailed, formal and regular, with lengthy chunks of text intertwined with depictions of everyday rural life. It's interesting to note that both sets of works are displayed behind glass – as if the fragile nature of the pieces echoes the unstable minds of those that produced them.

The exhibition – and this last section in particular – is designed to complement a display of diary drawings by contemporary performance artist Bobby Baker. Every day since 1997 Baker has drawn a picture a day as part of a diary documenting her battle with mental illness. These are magical and touching works that make one wonder just how she has juggled career and family with such debilitating internal struggles.

Madness & Modernity is, in a sense, a study of surface – brilliantly put together and beautifully arranged – but with a sense of shallowness that mirrors the era it examines (and exposes). Baker's disarmingly honest pieces go where such an exhibition cannot: to the very line between brilliance and madness, the line that must be drawn and re-drawn over and over again. Credit to the Wellcome Collection for its ability to incorporate these contrasting approaches.

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Tom Jeffreys