The Art of Extreme Madness

Mental derangement is one of the most horrifying and awe inspiring forces when it shows up in the visual medium. The crawling influences of depression and violent trauma upon art of all kinds are known to many. Schizophrenia, in particular, is an old psychosis that has engendered some of modern art's more freakish treasures. To fully appreciate the following examples of allegedly Schizophrenic art, it's worth exploring the form's aesthetic contrasts spelled out here, as well as this discussion of the Schizophrenic capacity to understand visual art. The Schizophrenic artist is often the ultimate outsider, one who "sees" terrors hinted at in the pages of the weird, and who is themself the subject of otherworldly shadows.



Cat painter Louis Wain is the most famous instance of Schizophrenic art. Wain's outlandish felines have graced the pages of many college psychology textbooks, and his condition is one of Schizophrenic art's most recognized cases. Some researchers have even made an argument that the disorder can arise due to parasites excreted by cats, lending a possible ironic twist to Wain's torture. Wain's hellcats are beautifully rendered and unsettling demons brought into our world by extreme psychic duress. His artistic life and descent into a frightful existence are stunningly recounted by Heather Latimer in The English Cat Artist.


Roughly contemporaneous with Wain is Adolf Wolfli's art. Unlike Wain, Herr Wolfli led a tragic life of abuse and crime. His violent nature resulted in his internment in an institution, where his visual productions and musical experimentation resulted in a small following. Wolfli's eyeball bursting nightmarescapes bring to mind the psychedelic age that emerged decades after he died, and also mirrors the inhuman colors and sensations found in weird literature.


In more recent times, David Marsh is an example of Schizophrenia inspired artwork. His planetary paintings, for instance, don't seem as hallucinatory as the other artists mentioned. However, as he says in this article describing one of his newer exhibits, Marsh appears just as driven by his demons. His art shows a great inclination toward the imaginative and fantastic, another consequence of their illness that Schizophrenics appear to share with both sane and crazed weirdscribes.

-Grim Blogger