The Discovery of the Art of the Insane

This pioneering work, the first history of the art of the insane, scrutinizes changes in attitudes toward the art of the mentally ill from a time when it was either ignored or ridiculed, through the era when major figures in the art world discovered the extraordinary power of visual statements by psychotic artists such as Adolf Wlfli and Richard Dadd. John MacGregor draws on his dual training in art history and in psychiatry and psychoanalysis to describe not only this evolution in attitudes but also the significant influence of the art of the mentally ill on the development of modern art as a whole. His detailed narrative, with its strangely beautiful illustrations, introduces us to a fascinating group of people that includes the psychotic artists, both trained and untrained, and the psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, critics, and art historians who encountered their work.

• Beyond Reason: Art and Psychosis Works From the Prinzhorn Collection
• Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives (World of Art)
• Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought
• Art Brut: The Origins of Outsider Art
• Outsider Art: Visionary Worlds and Trauma
• Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings
• Groundwaters: A Century of Art by Self-Taught And Outsider Artists
• Art Brut: The Origins of Outsider Art
• On the Verge of Insanity: Van Gogh and His Illness