State-bound art

Letter from the psychiatric patient Emma Hauck to her husband in 1909, sweetheart come, Prinzhorn collection

State-based art is a term coined by the Austrian psychiatrist Leo Navratil to denote non-discriminatory artistic work by people with mental illness in general and in particular from the Lower Austrian state mental health clinic in Gugging , which he runs. More common for this area of art production are the term Art brut and increasingly the term Outsider Art, which comes from the English-speaking world, but is not limited to images of mentally ill people.

State-bound refers primarily to the state of psychosis, in which visual perception is often greatly changed. The changed perception caused by mental illness, the changed drive and unusual impulses allow special artistic designs that caught the attention of modern artists.

During a study visit to the Institute of Psychiatry at Maudsley Hospital in London in the early 1950s, Navratil had dealt with the diagnostic value of drawings and in particular dealt with a drawing test method of the American psychologist Karen Machover (1902-1996), which he after his return to Austria in 1954 applied to patients in Gugging. So he gave them a cue and asked them to draw or paint whatever came to mind. Subsequently he developed his own method for determining the condition of his patients from the works he created. He called the works of the patients state-bound art . Navratil believed that psychosis can promote creative expression in a person. He examined the works of art for recurring expression patterns that could be associated with the pathological course of disorders. This feature-based approach is now considered obsolete.

literature

Leo Navratil: Schizophrenia and Art. A contribution to the psychology of design. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1965.
The sky ELLENO. State-based art: Drawings and paintings from the Lower Austrian State Hospital for Psychiatry and Neurology Klosterneuburg. Edited by Leo Navratil. Graz 1975.
Burkhart Brückner, Robin Pape: Navratil, Leo. In: Biographical Archive of Psychiatry (2015).
Thomas Röske : Psychosis as an artist. Leo Navratil's “Schizophrenia and Art” - a review, in: Georg Theunissen (Ed.): Outsider art. Extraordinary sculptures by people with intellectual and psychological disabilities, Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, pp. 103–116.

Individual evidence

^ Thomas Röske : Psychosis as an artist. Leo Navratil's “Schizophrenia and Art” - a review, in: Georg Theunissen (Ed.): Outsider art. Extraordinary sculptures by people with intellectual and psychological disabilities, Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, pp. 103–116.

[1] Thomas Röske : Psychosis as an artist. Leo Navratil's “Schizophrenia and Art” - a review, in: Georg Theunissen (Ed.): Outsider art. Extraordinary sculptures by people with intellectual and psychological disabilities, Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, pp. 103–116.