Hollow Space and Outgrowth: extended chance to see

The Bethlem Gallery’s Hollow Space and Outgrowth exhibition formally closes to visitors today, and the Gallery won’t be open in its regular hours until 29 August. However, the Archives & Museum will be open as normal throughout the summer, from 9.30am to 4.30pm Mondays to Fridays and also from 11.00am to 5.00pm on Saturday 4 August and Saturday 1 September 2012. For the next month (until Tuesday 13 August), Archives & Museum staff would be willing to take any visitors who ask to see Hollow Space and Outgrowth over to the Gallery for the purpose – subject to their availability and other commitments, of course. In the meantime, we are delighted to publish the comments of our guest blogger Susan Slater-Tanner, Professor of Art History at the State University of New York, Orange, on the exhibition.

“What I found fascinating about Hollow Space and Outgrowth at the Bethlem Gallery exhibition was that the artists did not make ‘literal’ visual responses to the artefacts and objects; rather they took an emotive approach responding to and reflecting personally on incidents, experiences and events of their own lives — without agenda or guile. For example, the “prevention of self abuse; anti masturbation device” literally as an object evokes serious ethical issues of human restraint and control. One even might consider bondage connotations. The artistic response Collar of Shame, an upright anthropomorphized dog, was so unexpected, so lyric, so funny yet not without deep thought, consideration and serendipitous artistic response.

“For me, the exhibition and its curatorial theme is not about finding similar shaped objects, or like-minded colours and textures — it is about how we all relate to and cope with our world, our challenges, our fears and our hopes.”

Part of the exhibition. The dog is in the bottom right corner of the left-hand case. The anti masturbation device is above it.

States of Mind: Conference in Newcastle

Last month, Northumbria University held a conference around the theme of Situating and Interpreting States of Mind: 1700 – 2000. This interdisciplinary conference emerged from a research group, whose work explores how the space, place and historical context in which mental states are experienced has shaped the narratives produced by individuals. The conference was wide-ranging, with papers reflecting on historical themes, literature, art and clinical practice in the field of mental health. The varied perspectives of the key-note speakers indicates the breadth of the approach. Joel Peter Eigen began the event with a lecture on the history of psychiatry, focusing on the dynamics of diagnosis in late Victorian forensic psychiatry. Within this field, the diagnosis of homicidal mania was widely adopted by psychiatrists and prison orderlies alike, but remained nonetheless problematic: a label in which a criminal act was regarded to be the first symptom of illness. Speaking from a broader historical perspective, English Literature scholar Melinda Rabb explored the history of cognition in relation to ideas of size and scale, presenting a fascinating account of the Georgian interest in miniatures, from art to “baby houses” (doll houses). Finally, practice-based Art and Design lecturer Judith Tucker gave a moving account of her artistic exploration of her Jewish grandparents’ holiday snapshots from pre-World War Two Germany.

Between these key-note lectures, speakers from a similarly broad range of disciplines offered wide-ranging perspectives. A particularly affecting talk was given by Nursing Lecturer Tommy Dickinson, giving a voice to former patients who received medical treatment for “sexual deviations.” The paper was based on oral histories obtained from seven former male patients, who had sought treatment for homosexuality or transvestism between 1935 and 1974 in Britain. The disturbing accounts of the electro-shock and chemical aversion therapies carried out had a lasting effect on the participants, who all remained emotionally troubled by experiences many regarded as akin to torture. As Dickinson concluded, the study should act as a reminder to nurses (many of whom carried out the treatments detailed) to ensure that their interventions have a sound evidence base, and to constantly reflect on the influence and intersection of science and societal norms.

Two papers made use of material from the Bethlem Archive. One, by the Museum’s Friends Secretary, expanded on material already available on this blog, on late nineteenth-century patients Walter Abraham Haigh, “Kentish Scribbler” and Henry Francis Harding. Meanwhile, Diana Peschier drew on material from Bethlem and county asylum records to look at religious language in the words of female patients in the second half of the nineteenth century. Women, she claimed, seemed to make far greater use of religious language than men, and the feeling that God had abandoned them or was punishing them for a great sin appeared especially common in female psychiatric patients. This, Peschier felt, reflected the wider experiences of women in this period, for whom religion played in important role in their daily lives and their mental health. Overall, the conference provided an interesting opportunity for reflection on how varied states of mind can be, in health and illness, and across history and culture.

In the Frame for July 2012

This month’s In the Frame was written by a work experience student at the Archives & Museum. The picture chosen will be on display in our new exhibition British Outsider Art, which runs until 3 November. Readers may also be interested in a major Madge Gill retrospective, curated by Bow Arts and on display at the Nunnery Gallery in Bow until 23 August. For more information on the exhibition, visit Bow Arts. The student writes as follows:

This picture using pen and ink on cardboard depicts what it says on the tin, a ‘Woman in Elaborate Clothes and Bonnet.’ It is completely in black and grey/cardboard colour and kind of disturbing. The woman’s elaborate clothing is made up of patterns and shapes thrown chaotically together. Also, despite the diversity of the patterns and shapes on the clothing, the woman’s face is incredibly plain and petite in comparison.

I think the reason I find this picture disturbing and confusing is because it doesn’t make much sense. It’s all mangled together and has no order or structure.

I think this style could possibly reflect back onto Madge Gill’s own life, as she went through many tragic and chaotic events in her lifetime such as being an illegitimate child, sent to an orphanage when she was nine, loss of one of her three sons, giving birth to her still-born daughter and loss of the sight in one eye.

This drawing is just one of hundreds Madge Gill drew throughout her life. When she died her son found hundreds of drawings in the boxes underneath her bed, all drawn on things like postcards and cardboard because they were cheap. She spent most of her time after she lost the sight in the left eye in bed just endlessly drawing, knitting and embroidering. She most likely did this as an escape from the hard and tragic life she had lived.

 

Woman in Elaborate Clothes and Bonnet - Madge Gill (1884 – 1961)

Bethlem Sunfayre this Saturday, 7 July: Full Details

We’re hoping the weather picks up soon for this weekend’s Bethlem site open day – the annual Sunfayre. Open to all, there will be activities on offer for every age group, running throughout the afternoon from 12 – 5pm. Bethlem is one of the oldest psychiatric hospitals in the world, founded in 1247. The current site, at Monks Orchard in Beckenham, opened in 1930: there will be an opportunity to find out more about its history in a repeat of our January exhibition, A Clearer, Bluer Sky, in the Community Centre. There will be a talk on this exhibition at 2pm. In addition, the Archives and Museum will be running regular historical talks and tours, which include a rare opportunity to visit the historic boardroom. Talks will take place in the Education Room, and tours will begin from this point after the final talk.

Exploring the Archives: A chance to read historical case records of 19th century patients, in a session led by Museum staff. Begins at 12.40, 13.40 and 14.40.

Bethlem Patients in the 1850s: A talk focused on the portrait photographs taken of Bethlem patients in the 1850s by society photographer Henry Hering. Begins at 13.00, 14.00 and 15.00.

Historical Tour: Starting at the Education Room, this guided tour will then take in the historic boardroom, before proceeding around the site to the walled garden. Nature walks led by Bromley Council will start at the walled garden shortly after the tour finishes. Tour starts at 13.20, 14.20 and 15.20.

The Museum will also be running a family trail, following clues around the hospital grounds. Pick up a copy at the main entrance: pencils – and prizes! – are available in the Museum, where you can also view our new exhibition on British Outsider Art. The Bethlem Gallery will be open for a chance to visit the fascinating current exhibition, in which artists responded to objects from the museum’s collection. They will also have a stall where art from the Gallery can be purchased. Next door to the Gallery, there will be free art and ceramics workshops, running on an hourly basis throughout the afternoon.

In addition, the day will include children’s rides and activities, including an interactive play – Salty Sue and the Stolen Treasure Map - at 2pm. Bands will play regularly on the main stage in front of the picnic area, and complementary therapies – including Reiki, Indian head massage and hot stone massage – will be on offer in the community centre. For further details of these activities, visit the Sunfayre website.

 

Windows Onto the Past IV

Stained glass windows were the starting point of the first two posts in this sequence, and a woodcut the springboard of the third. This time we feature a monument carved in stone in the seventeenth century by the Flemish sculptor Artus Quellinus the Elder – metaphorically as much a window onto early modern attitudes to ‘madness’ as the stained glass was onto medieval. Frenzy depicts a woman disrobed and tearing at her hair in evident mental torment. The trope of disordered hair (to represent the disordered mind) is employed to unsettling effect here as elsewhere – depictions of Matilda of Cologne and Crazy Jane spring to mind in this connection.

Now in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the original setting of Frenzy was the courtyard of the city’s lunatic asylum. Faces stare out from the plinth upon which the woman writhes, each “with a pleading yet futile expression [as if] determined to see and be seen while at the same time realising that any thoughts of escape are useless”, according to the art historian Richard Cork. Presumably it functioned to advertise the role of the asylum in much the same way as did Cauis Gabriel Cibber’s statues of Raving and Melancholy Madness for London’s Bethlem Hospital from 1676 to 1815. But was it intended as a stigmatising image? Richard Cork thinks not. Whilst certainly “forthright”, it may perhaps have been intended “to arouse compassion for the plight of this possessed woman” and, by extension, that of the insane in general.¹

A comparison is worth drawing between Frenzy and another work attributed to Cibber, Dementia, which was sold to a private buyer at auction in 2008. Rather than portraying the illness we commonly associate with old age, Dementia seems to represent a middle-life trauma involving child neglect and alcoholism. It shares with ‘Raving’ and ‘Melancholy’ a stark realism that belies caricature. “How could anyone laugh at their suffering, when Cibber had gone out of his way to avoid all semblance of absurdity?”²

1 Richard Cork, The Healing Presence of Art (Yale University Press, 2012), p. 149.

2 ibid., p. 153.