Output details

Madness and modernity: mental illness and the visual arts in Vienna 1900

This exhibition and book was the first publically available outcome, and subsequent extension of, an AHRC major research project (2004-08) that considered the various ways and contexts in which psychiatry, mental illness and the progressive visual arts interacted in the former Austria-Hungary. Principal investigator Leslie Topp (Birkbeck, University of London) and co-investigator Gemma Blackshaw (Plymouth University) were commissioned to guest-curate the exhibition at the Wellcome Collection that focused more narrowly on Vienna 1900. The aim of the exhibition was 1) to explore through a range of different objects the relationship between the development of modern psychiatry and modernism in the arts in Vienna 1900, and 2) to investigate how this relationship has influenced our attitudes to the mentally ill. The exhibition displayed paintings, sculptures, drawings and design objects alongside art works by patients, therapeutic equipment, architectural models, and two specially commissioned films by the artist David Bickerstaff contrasting sanatorium designs from different centuries. It ran from 1 April to 28 June 2009 partnered by an exhibition that provided a contemporary viewpoint on mental illness and its treatment from a patient’s perspective (‘Bobby Baker’s Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me, 1997-2008’). ‘Madness and Modernity’ was accompanied by a catalogue (Lund Humphries), edited by Blackshaw and Topp, including their contributions and those of the research associate and two PhD students on the AHRC project. It was not intended as a touring exhibition, but on closing in London, it was commissioned by the Wien Museum, Vienna. This exhibition, ‘Madness and Modernity: Kunst und Wahn in Wien um 1900’, was co-curated by Blackshaw and Sabine Wieber (art historian, University of Glasgow) who was the research associate on the AHRC project. It was a larger exhibition, which included further paintings, drawings and paper ephemera. The catalogue was translated into German and published by Christian Brandstätter.