Schizophrenia, Aging and Art: Louis Wain

 Images 2006-02 Cat-Schizophrenia

A Cornell University student's research project titled "Schizophrenia, Aging and Art" profiles Louis Wain, an early 20th century artist who began to suffer from schizophrenia late in life. While a commercial artist, he drew lots of comics of cats that appeared in newspapers and children's books. From the project's Web site:

During the onset of his disease at 57, Wain continued to paint, draw and sketch cats, but the focus changed from fanciful situations, to focus on the cats themselves.


Characteristic changes in the art began to occur, changes common to schizophrenic artists. Jagged lines of bright color began emanating from his feline subjects. The outlines of the cats became sever and spiky, and their outlines persisted well throughout the sketches, as if they were throwing off energy.


Soon the cats became abstracted, seeming now to be made up of hundreds of small repetitive shapes, coming together in a clashing jangles of color that transform the cat into something resembling an Eastern diety.

The abstraction continued, the cats now being seen as made up by small repeating patterns, almost fractal in nature. Until finally they ceased to resemble cats at all, and became the ultimate abstraction, an indistinct form made up by near symmetrical repeating patterns.

Link
(via Neatorama)


UPDATE: Fortean researcher Mark Pilkington of the excellent Strange Attractor Journal writes:

The dramatically satisfying idea that these beautiful pieces reflect Wain's ongoing descent into schizophrenia is most likely untrue. In his biography of Wain, The Man Who Drew Cats (as far as I know this is the only biography of the artist), Rodney Dale shows that Dr Walter Maclay, a collector of art by mental patients, found the images and arranged them, arbitrarily (some are unsigned and all are undated), into an order that suggested the progression of Wain's madness…

Says Dale: "Assembling what little factual knowledge we have on Dr Maclay's eight paintings, there is clearly no justification for regarding them as more than samples of Louis Wain's art at different times. Wain experimented with patterns and cats, and even quite late in life was still producing conventional cat pictures…"

The kaleidoscopic cats, and other fine examples of art by sufferers from schizophrenia, depression and other mental illnesses, are on display
at the Bethlehem hospital archive and gallery in Beckenhem, Kent (just south of London) which is well worth a visit. You can also pick up fantastic Louis Wain mugs, as well as postcards! They have a site here.