Madness on Paper and Canvas

The famous Artists from Gugging (Künstler aus Gugging) are twelve men living and working at the so-called Artists’ House on the area of the psychiatric hospital of Maria Gugging, near Vienna. Within Europe, the Haus der Künstler is regarded as a model for psychiatric reforms, based on art therapy as a means to reintegrate inmates into society.
In the course of the 1990s, the project, started in the 1960s by psychiatrist Leo Navratil, expanded into the Art/Brut Center Gugging: a museum combined with a commercial gallery and museum shop. Art from Gugging acquired such a market value, that artists can now pay for their own psychiatric caretaking at the ward.

This research takes the Artists from Gugging as a case in order to investigate the contrast between common ideas about the supposedly ‘pure’ and authentic creation of ‘outsider’ drawings and paintings, and their actual production.

Cultural anthropologist Alexandra Schüssler conducted one year anthropological fieldwork in Gugging. In her book, she thoroughly analyzes the reception of art brut works from the psychiatric clinic, and presents ideas and fantasies related to these works, as voiced by visitors and collectors. Subsequently, she shows the actual making, presentation and distribution of Art from Gugging. Strikingly, the actual chief psychiatrist and manager of the Guggingers appears to have abandoned the therapeutic aims of his predecessor in favour of an almost industrial, market oriented production and sheer commercialization of drawings and paintings. Making art is no longer primarily a means of recovery for patients, but mainly a raison d’être for the medical, artistic and business staff that is supposed to take care of them.

Alexandra Schüssler studied sculpture, stage design and cultural anthropology. She has worked as curator, stage designer and lecturer in Vienna, Prague and Amsterdam. Currently she is working at the Musée d’Ethnographie de Genève as responsible for the European department. Her current research focuses on the new plutocracy of post-socialist countries.