Art

800,000 Pages of Patient Art and Mental Health Archives Are Going Online

A few weeks ago, the Wellcome Library announced a new initiative to digitize more than 800,000 pages of material from British psychiatric hospitals. Dating between the 18th and 20th centuries, the trove includes examples of patient artwork and writing, as well as patient-produced publications.

 

 

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Some of these are shaky pencil drawings stuck amid further details on patient conditions — like this casebook on a patient at Ticehurst Hospital that includes a portrait of a doctor from 1891. Others are more elaborate oil paintings, like the above late-19th-century piece by George Sidebottom at the York Retreat, showing an eclectic scene of recreation. Together these visual details and the greater archives record a period of change in mental health management, when the mistreatment of patients began to be be addressed and institutionalization became more popular (and then gradually less so in the 20th century). The effort sees  the Wellcome Library partnering with the Borthwick Institute for Archives, London Metropolitan Archives, Dumfries and Galloway Council Archives, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Archives, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

The digitizing starts this fall as part of a two-year project, and you can already explore materials from the York Retreat, St Luke’s Hospital Woodside, Crichton Royal Hospital, Gartnavel Royal Hospital, and Camberwell House Asylum. Especially interesting are the issues of Crichton Royal Hospital’s New Moon, a magazine created by patients at the Scottish institution starting in 1844, with poetry, articles, reviews of hospital concerts and theater, cartoons, asylum news, and puzzles. Later in the 1860s, the publication would be professionally printed by Adam Richardson. The Dumfries and Galloway archives has more details on its perceived value to the patients and institution:

Dr W. A. F. Browne encouraged patients to undertake occupations and amusements as an important part of their treatment, including writing, and in his Annual Report for 1844 he said of the new publication, “it is the unaided work of five patients, who are or have recently been residents in the Institution; it will serve as a vehicle for free undisguised feelings and views of the writers, whether erroneous or not; it will be a compound of the grotesque and the beautiful, of the sensible and the extravagant, it will be a collection of the impressions of healthy and the new creations of disordered imaginations, of mental portraits, and of all that relates to the present condition and prospects of its contributors, and of the class to which they belong.”

Back in August, the Wellcome Library announced its partnership with digital technology charity Jisc in an effort to put 15 million pages of 19th-century medical books online; these mental health archives will further enrich the availability of medical history materials online. The value of art in mental health treatment is still evolving — art wasn’t really established as a healing tool until just before World War II — and these new materials can be an important historical resource.

Source: http://hyperallergic.com/157321/800000-pag...

The Simpsons’ Springfield Illustrated As A Deadbeat Town

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Austin-based illustrator and print-maker Tim Doyle first started creating these dark and dismal Simpsons-themed artworks as part of his first UnReal Estate gallery show for Spoke Art in 2012.

His UnReal Estate series re-imagines iconic locations found in the fictional worlds of well-known television shows (including – d’oh! – Springfield, the town where the Simpsons live) and films in pop culture. Since then, Doyle has continued the series with more works for his subsequent 2013 and 2014 editions of UnReal Estate, and all three shows were sold out! Doyle’s dark and disturbing vision shows a derelict Springfield, devoid of life and fallen onto hard times. The eerily post-apocalyptic mood of these works is pretty glorious.

 

More info: mrdoyle.com via Bored Panda

 

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Hip-Hop Meets Art History

The best ideas often seem so obvious that you kick yourself for not thinking of them first. They happen when people draw connections between the millions of bites of information they take in every day, whether by ingenuity or sheer coincidence.

Cecilia Azcarate, a designer at Johannes Leonardo creative agency, must have been having one of those moments when she came up with the idea for her art history tumblelog, B4XVI (which stands for “before the 16th century,” as all the art she uses is). In an unlikely marriage, it pairs pictures of rappers with historical sculptures, paintings, and statues from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection, tracing the swag and power poses of hip-hop artists like Young Thug and Whiz Khalifa to pre-Colombian effigies and Netherlandish paintings.

The results are uncanny. We all know 103, but who knew that 2 Chainz’s hand signs have their roots in the blinged-out, 14th-century reliquary arm of St. Valentine? Or that Kanye West is actually taking style cues from a fur-swathed young man in a 16th-century northern German painting? Or that Hot Sugar looks so much like a baby-faced Jesus?

It now seems clear: one century’s highbrow is another’s lowbrow. Azcarate’s side-by-side images give us a reason to ditch the labels altogether.

VIA hyperallergic

Artist Hikaru Cho Creates Visual Illusions That Are Good Enough to Eat

Hikaru Cho is a Tokyo-based artist who creates amazing hyper-realistic paintings that play on optical illusion and the perception of surface. At first glance, it might be hard to figure out what the deception is in these ordinary images, however a closer look reveals a tomato, a banana and an egg that have been perfectly camouflaged to look like an orange a cucumber and an eggplant. The project appropriately titled "It's Not What It Seems" showcases Cho's talent and skills in a playful way. Visual News writes, "In transforming what we see, Cho is helping us re-think everyday objects along with human form and nature."

Via Junk Culture

"Imagine Finding Me" Series by Chino Otsuka

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This series of photos that Japanese London-based photographer Chino Otsuka created is so nostalgic and heartwarming, it left me breathless. In “Imagine Finding Me,” Chino does something unique that I frankly have never seen before: she digitally inserts herself into old photos, so that she is standing next to her younger self. The concept is simple and her digital manipulation of the photos is done so well it makes it seem she is a time traveler (HMM). These pictures are filled with a sense of longing for simpler times that may hit you at your core.

Source: http://www.viralnova.com/time-traveling-ph...