Art and medicine need not be incompatible. A recent exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City provides a case in point. Francesc Tosquelles: Avant-Garde Psychiatry and the Birth of Art Brut is a show about a Catalan psychiatrist who had revolutionary ideas about how to treat the mentally ill. Patients at Saint-Alban psychiatric hospital in southern France lived in an “asylum village” integrated among their doctors and local townspeople, in an early example of a therapeutic community. Tosquelles (at Saint-Alban from 1940-1962) pioneered a psychiatric treatment called Institutional Psychotherapy which restructured the hospital so that patients actively participated in running the facility. In this atmosphere, patients were free to organize plays, films and dance, and, most famously, to create some remarkable works of art.
One of the most successful patient-artists was Auguste Forestier, hospitalized at Saint-Alban at the age of 27 after placing pebbles on a train track and causing a train to derail. After his discharge from treatment, Forestier remained at Saint-Alban for the rest of his life, where he worked in the kitchen. He began to create toys for the children of hospital employees using discarded materials, even butcher’s bones. In this exhibition we see not only a boat created by Forestier from scraps of wood but also a print of Tosquelles proudly holding up one of Forestier’s boats.
The work of Saint-Alban artists came to the attention of French artist Jean Dubuffet, who, after reading the 1922 book Art of the Insane, had founded the Art Brut (also known as Outsider Art) movement. Dubuffet’s attempts to collect it were at first greeted with skepticism by Tosquelles. However, the success of Forestier (eventually he even came to the attention of Picasso) was such that the profits from his work were used to help fund the hospital.
At its previous venues in Europe (the show originated in Barcelona) a larger number of pieces from Saint-Alban were displayed. At its US venue, the show has been augmented with work from American asylums, which prove to be a highlight of the exhibition. Even without a Tosquelles to inspire them, these patients created beautiful and fascinating art.
We see, for example, a coat made by Myrllen, a schizophrenic patient from Tennessee. The patient had reportedly worsened in response to such few treatments as were available at the time. In desperation, she was given discarded rags and threads. What she produced gives us a window into her condition, with strange words and figures whose meaning was known only to her. Ironically, after making several such pieces the patient lost her creative impulse and stopped sewing once put on Thorazine, the first antipsychotic medication.
Another piece, a watercolor entitled “An Antarctic Scenery,” is one of the earliest known American asylum paintings (c. 1816). The patient-artist, Richard Nisbett, in his paranoid imagination has chosen to depict “a fleet of murtherous Pirates” invading Antarctica. Nisbett was a patient at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia under the treatment of none other than Benjamin Rush, often considered to be the father of American psychiatry.
Although the exhibition closes in August, a book (which will be for sale at the Museum and online) is expected to be released in November 2024. The link to a virtual conversation with the show’s curators is given here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9j3fMn0xJA (1 hour 19 minutes).
Francesc Tosquelles is frequently mentioned in The Rebel’s Clinic, by Adam Shatz, a recent biography of the psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon.
A Tosquelles Glossary from the Barcelona exhibition is also a helpful tool: https://www.cccb.org/en/exhibitions/guide/francesc-tosquelles/237849
Illustrations:
Auguste Forestier (1887–1958, France) Untitled (Boat), 1935–1949, Wood, fabric, metal, leather, nail, 29 1/2 x 45 1/4 x 9 1/2 in. Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne/Centre de création industrielle, ART BRUT/Gift of Bruno Decharme in 2021, AM 2022-43.
Romain Vigouroux (active mid-20th century, France), Francesc Tosquelles on the Roof of a Building at the Saint-Alban Psychiatric Hospital, Holding a Sculpture by Auguste Forestier, 1947, Gelatin silver print, 7 x 4 7/8 in Collection Family Ou-Rabah Tosquelles.
Richard Nisbett (1753 England-1823, United States) An Antarctic Scenery, 1816, watercolor. Collection of The Library Company of Philadelphia.
American Folk Art Museum
Lincoln Square, New York, NY 10023
Folkartmuseum.org
