Notebook June 2014
Beauty out of madness
Looking at the Prinzhorn Collection, a collection of artwork by psychotic patients.
Whenever I am in Heidelberg, which is not often, the Prinzhorn Collection is my first port of call. The Prinzhorn Collection is the world’s first, largest, and best collection of art by psychotic patients, founded by the psychiatrist Dr. Hans Prinzhorn. To Prinzhorn belongs the honor, to my mind a considerable one, of having recognized artistic merit in the productions of psychotic persons and not merely pathological manifestations of grossly disordered psyches. It bespeaks a laudable openness and largeness of spirit in him as well as an admirably independent aesthetic judgment. These do not always go together. The...
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