MADMEN’S ART

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 April 1928, Page 9

MADMEN’S ART

A MARKET DISCOVERED. Art critics of Paris are. greatly excited by an exhibit of painting and sculpture by patients afflicted with mental disease, according to reports received by' the American Medical Association. It is a matter, apparently to choose between the psychopathic art and the products of the ultramodern school, futurists, cubists, and the like. Only the work of .patients who were not artists before their admissions into institutions, it is slated, is included in the exhibition. This dqes not necessarily mean that the ultramoderns, who paint valuntarily the impressions of the subconscious mind, are insane, in the opinion of Dr August Marie, a wellknown French expert on mental disease. Such artists contend that they give free reign to their emotions, and depict their inmost dreams without the control of reason very much after the manner of spontaneous art of savage tribes and prehistoric races. The insane merely describe Hie vagaries of their subconscious' minds and hallucinations for the satisfaction they g-t, out of it, it is believed. Most of them have no notion of technique; yet ere painted in quite unearthly colours. roaring flames and waves of fire v ";i thy of Turner. This picture was bought by' a wallpaper manufacturer to servo as Hie basis of a now wnll-p-i.pcr design. A psychopathic priest d- pictnd a pope hlow'ng soup bubble'-’ b-forn a l ’ assemblage. of swoon’nv fi-ng-s. The -Froiwh expert believes soni" of the paintings if remov'd fi-oni t'mir environment and pine- 1 '! b’ the eol’ocH'ons of it reputable dealer would command high prices.