Interesting Find: Schizophrenia's Effect on Art

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Source: http://www.schizophrenia.org/artist.html

What Schizophrenia Does

A 20th-century artist, Louis Wain, who was fascinated by cats, painted these pictures over a period of time in which he developed schizophrenia. The pictures mark progressive stages in the illness and exemplify what it does to the victim's perception.

Wow! That's incredible! I like the bottom left, reminds me of a fractal.

It's interesting how the first thing to really go amiss is the eyes.

But I find the pictures except the first one really disturbing and don't want to look at them anymore.

From that page I navigated to this:

http://www.schizophrenia.org/crackup.html

Which is interesting. And I recently read about schizophrenia and toxoplasmosis and cat feces

http://www.physorg.com/news200164470.html

It also mentions other infections that can affect the brain, including mentioning that a flu infection during pregnancy may have a higher incidence of schizophrenia or autism.

Very interesting. The cat painting on the bottom right makes me feel intimidated and uneasy. It almost looks demonic.

Also, is it geeky if I say that the progression of these paintings reminds me of Pokemon evolution?

This might be false, as I have read more.

The man was institutionalized and apparently did not date his drawings, so it isn't known if those were actual progressions. Further more, some believe he actually had Asperger's Syndrome and he was merely drawing pictures with a very keen attention to detail to his interest of cats.

From the descriptions of him having a change in personality and delusions however, if these are true, it was likely he did develop schizophrenia but I'm not sure if these paintings are an actual progress into the worsening of such a mental illness.

The third one looks more like an owl to me

My uncle was schizophrenic and also a great artist. He made his living painting. I have some of his pictures hanging up in my house. I can't trace any progressive state of his illness through the pictures. They are all very realistic western type of pictures.

The bottom right picture makes me think of a fire. I notice that if I focus on an object long enough, it becomes something more abstract. For instance, right now I'm looking at my Christmas tree lights. Each individual light bulb looks like a star settled in the tree. Or like one of my dishes might be perceived more like a geometric form, or the products in the aisle at the grocery store look like globs of different colors.

That's actually disdurbing, I don't think I could look deep into it.

_________________
Blint.

Who says that exemplifies what it does to perception? Did he claim they were realistic drawings?

Four pictures out of how many are taken as representative, and moreover taken as a representation of what was seen rather than of what was considered pretty?

That's very interesting. Those are pretty groovy pictures.

I think he was just an abstract artist like I am.



I think perhaps I was subconciously inspired by Louis Wain.

Suffice to say, that Schizophrenia is not a mental illness. It is a gift.