Symposium in Zurich
Symposium “Raw Art? Art from Outside the Art Establishment”
Zurich University of the Arts
10. Mai 2019, 9:00 – 19:00, Museum für Gestaltung, Vortragssaal AU 150, Ausstellungsstrasse 60, Zürich
How can works from psychiatric institutions be shown in an art context? Is “madness” a productive state that should remain untreated? Does the Swiss requirement of anonymisation serve to protect patients or is this stigmatising them?
The symposium “ROHE KUNST?” was an accompanying event to the exhibition “EXTRAORDINAIRE! Unknown Works from Psychiatric Institutions in Switzerland around 1900” (Kunstmuseum Thun, 09.02.-19.05.2019). In panel discussions, inputs, film screenings and concerts, the conference dealt with legal, therapeutic and art-historical questions and discusses the possibilities of mediating art that has arisen outside the art world.
Further information: https://www.zhdk.ch/en/event/38335
Exhibition: Extraordinary! Unknown Works from Swiss Psychiatric Institutions around 1900
– Sammlung Prinzhorn in Heidelberg from 11 October 2018 to 20 January 2019
– Kunstmuseum Thun from 9 February 2019 to 19 May 2019, accompanying the exhibition Ida Applebroog
– LENTOS Kunstmuseum, Linz from 7 June 2019 to 18 August 2019
The only project of its kind to date, this comprehensive study gives an overview of the artistic activities of patients in psychiatric institutions in Switzerland from 1870 to 1930. A selection of their mostly unknown works is presented here. The institutionalized men and women created their works with devotion and great technical skill. They understood them as a contribution to public life, as inventions or as a means of expressing their ideas, as critiques of the institutions in which they lived or as a way of enriching their monotonous everyday lives. Their works are a reflection of what was considered ‘abnormal’ in their time, and of the experience of being excluded from public life. Through these works the artists find their voice, adding an entirely new facet to turn-of-the-century modern art.
Exhibition catalogue (in German and English)
Katrin Luchsinger, Helen Hirsch, Thomas Röske (eds.), Extraordinaire! Unbekannte Werke aus psychiatrischen Einrichtungen in der Schweiz um 1900 / Extraordinary! Unknown Works from Swiss Psychiatric Institutions around 1900, Zürich, Scheidegger & Spiess 2018
Current Exhibition catalogue: Extraordinary! Unknown Works from Swiss Psychiatric Institutions around 1900. Published by Scheidegger & Spiess.