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Diss Prep: 12pm-2pm
Introduction

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Diss prep: 12pm-2pm
Lead Question,
- Discussed Theodore Gericault, Oliver Sacks and Bethlem Museum of the mind.

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Decided on focusing on the topic of Mental health and art.

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Decided on focusing on the topic of Mental health and art.

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Diss prep: 12pm-2pm
Research

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1-to-1
Discussed Lead Question: Rough Title.
'In what ways are art and madness linked in the 19th and early 20th Century?'

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Diss Prep: 12pm-2pm
Formative Assessment -
Overall positive feedback, given suggestion to make comparisons to present day.

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Diss prep: 12pm-2pm
Ethics Checklist
CANCELLED
- Complete Ethic Checklist
- Start Planning Chapter Plan/read into Chapter Plans.

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- Need help with Chapter Plan and wording of lead question.
- start rough research review

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Goal: complete proposal overview and research review.
- get clarification on chapter plan and research review

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Rough Proposal Overview completed

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Last Diss Prep session: 12pm-2pm
Preparation for Summative

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Michel Foucault and Hanz Prinzhorn notes

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Michel Foucault and Hanz Prinzhorn notes

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- Cover Sheet
-Lead Question
- Proposal Overview
- Research Review
- Chapter Plan
- Progress Map
- Ethics Checklist
- Bibliography

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Goal:
Finish writing.
- Proposal Overview
- Research Review
- Chapter Plan

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Go library to find books linked to my topic.

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Complete Research review
Start Chapter Plan

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Rough Chapter Plan Completed

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8th June 2021
My mum has unexpectedly passed away from depression.
I plan to take a few weeks off research.

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I will be attending my mums funeral

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- Read Feedback for Diss Prep.
Action Points:
- Research: The Musee Camille Claudel S.E Paris in Nognet-Sur-Seine.
- Research: Francisco Goya for the Black Paintings.
- Watch: Simon Schama's Power of Art: Rothko S1 Ep8.

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- Researched into Camille Claude, Francisco Goya, Yannoulis Chalepas briefly and made notes. I plan to look into these artists more in the future.

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Research for Artists and Authors after receiving feedback from Diss Prep

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- Oliver Sacks,
-Henry Solomon Wellcome,
- Hanz Prinzhorn
- Camille Claudel

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Research/ Notes after Diss Prep Feedback 

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Research/ Notes after Diss Prep Feedback 

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- Yannoulis Chalapas,
- Francisco Goya,

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- Watch: Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Rothko, S1 Ep8.
- Plan all gallery/museum visits.
- Watch: Girl, interrupted.

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- Emailed the Wellcome collection to find out more information.
- Contacted the Freud Museum.
- Contacted Bethlem Museum of the mind via email.

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4th August 2021 :EMAIL RESPONSE: WELLCOME COLLECTION.

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4th August 2021 :EMAIL RESPONSE: WELLCOME COLLECTION.

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RECOMMENDATIONS:
- Starting with a digitalised collections search:
https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwellcomecollection.org%2Fcollections&data=04%7C01%7Cg.nicoll%40students.rave.ac.uk%7Ce6880b7e551c4c4fd77608d957516cf8%7Cde280afaf4144fb9b8228b01edd08554%7C1%7C0%7C637636829500737433%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=gvj%2F7qT7sGHyYEIcZNLqDQTshwwYSn6UDwjYjyPZdYA%3D&reserved=0

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Our collections are at the heart of what we do. Find out what we have by searching online or visiting our library. If you're interested in exploring and researching our collections, we're here to support you.

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Our collections are at the heart of what we do. Find out what we have by searching online or visiting our library. If you're interested in exploring and researching our collections, we're here to support you.

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4th August 2021: EMAIL RESPONSE: WELLCOME COLLECTION.

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4th August 2021: EMAIL RESPONSE: WELLCOME COLLECTION.

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RECOMMENDATIONS:
- The science museum group hold many of their collections and they can be access: https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcollection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk%2F%3F_ga%3D2.200652270.1358698127.1628085753-59449837.1590572655&data=04%7C01%7Cg.nicoll%40students.rave.ac.uk%7Ce6880b7e551c4c4fd77608d957516cf8%7Cde280afaf4144fb9b8228b01edd08554%7C1%7C0%7C637636829500747391%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=eiLI91LCw2JDfd4L1b5ygOEYQrJPXpZuESlo4zTYOsc%3D&reserved=0

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Medicine

Explore global medical developments and advances over time

Railways

The development of railways from goods transport to commuter travel

Art

From innovative processes to depicting our connection with science

Industrial Revolution

The machines and industries that powered the Industrial Revolution

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Explore global medical developments and advances over time The development of railways from goods transport to commuter travel From innovative processes to depicting our connection with science The machines and industries that powered the Industrial Revolution

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4th August 2021: EMAIL RESPONSE: WELLCOME COLLECTION.

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4th August 2021: EMAIL RESPONSE: WELLCOME COLLECTION.

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4th August 2021: EMAIL RESPONSE: WELLCOME COLLECTION.

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4th August 2021: EMAIL RESPONSE: WELLCOME COLLECTION.

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RECOMMENDATIONS:
- There are some objects available for viewing in 'Medicine man' and 'The reading room', (these are two permanent spaces).
- Some rarer texts and images on display temporarily as parts of tranquillity and joy exhibitions.

* Reach out to medical museums group = collaborative organisation of all medical and science collections and archives in London.

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7th August 2021: EMAIL RESPONSE FROM BETHLEM MUSEUM OF THE MIND.

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7th August 2021: EMAIL RESPONSE FROM BETHLEM MUSEUM OF THE MIND.

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Recommend:
- Richard Dadd exhibition.
- Read John Macgregor’s - the discovery of the art of the insane.

*note: was mentioned in the email the my lead question is fairly broad.

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7th August 2021 : EMAIL RESPONSE FROM BETHLEM.

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7th August 2021 : EMAIL RESPONSE FROM BETHLEM.

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- Recommend Richard Dadd Exhibition.
- Noted that lead question is quite broad.
- Recommended book: John Macgregor's The discovery of the art of the insane.

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Bethlem Museum of the mind - email feedback notes

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Bethlem Museum of the mind - email feedback notes

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Found 2 articles using Google Scholar on JSTOR:
- 'Virginia Woolf and the Art of Madness'.
- 'Manic Depressive Illness and Creativity' Kay Redfield Jamison

Aim :
Read and annotate each study.

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- William Hogarth : The Rakes Progress (1735).
- Robert Blythe : Nebuchadnezzar recovering his 1781).
- Henry Mackenzie: In his man of feeling (1771).
- Caius Gabriel Cibber: Raving and Melancholic lunacy.
(1680)
- Henry Fuseli: 'The Escapee: A real scene in the hospital of San Spirito at Rome'. (1791)

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19th August 2021 - FREUD MUSEUM EMAIL RESPONSE 

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19th August 2021 - FREUD MUSEUM EMAIL RESPONSE 

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Response from Jamie Ruers (events manager at Freud museum)
- ‘Madness’ was quite a gendered term .
- A lot of materials saw women as subjects.
- Freud didn’t like the term madness.

Events:
- there is a course coming up that will be an introduction to hysteria.
https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.freud.org.uk%2Fevent%2Fintroducing-freud-1-hysteria%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cg.nicoll%40students.rave.ac.uk%7C24d5f98e17074231e6a408d9632df127%7Cde280afaf4144fb9b8228b01edd08554%7C1%7C0%7C637649872330106092%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=px4wVKcb0%2BW6nkde2TP%2FSSH6Art1KrfCb3MxviO1%2BMU%3D&reserved=0
- [not at Freud museum] Art and Mind
https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DmUCqGgulN5A&data=04%7C01%7Cg.nicoll%40students.rave.ac.uk%7C24d5f98e17074231e6a408d9632df127%7Cde280afaf4144fb9b8228b01edd08554%7C1%7C0%7C637649872330111070%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=hzvmUd3jGKio7qdeLS8TcgqO5%2FJgIExFwyikQyTNavc%3D&reserved=0

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- Watch Simon Schakas power of art (I've found it hard to found where I could watch this).
- Follow up on Wellcome collection advice.

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19th August 2021 - FREUD MUSEUM RESPONSE 

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19th August 2021 - FREUD MUSEUM RESPONSE 

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Books:
- Catalogue for madness abs modernity exhibiton at the Wellcome Collection, 2009
- Mad, Bad and sad: the history of women and mind doctors from 1800 to the present (£14.99)
- Hysteria by Andrew Scull
- Other exhibition/ art books from Freud museum shop.

Materials on their website:
- Litograph from the Collection: Un Lecon clinique du Dr.Charcot a la Salpetriere - showing a room full of male neurologists studying a female subject being hypnotised by world leading neurologist Jean Martin Charot. Whom was Freud's mentor in Paris 1886-87.
- Freuds case study of Wolf Man - A young Russian Aristocrat who came to Freud as a patient suffering fro severe depression. His paintings of his famous dream of dream of wolves in a tree are now part of the museum collection.
- The surrealists were very inspired by 'madness' and Charcots reasearch into hysterical patients.
- Anouka Grose's paper in this conference may be of interest.

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Bethlem Museum of the mind event:
The Passion of Richard Dadd @ 12pm-12:30pm
(I aim to have visited there twice)
- Exhibition: 31st July-27th November 2021

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- Dissertation Drop in @2pm

Notes of discussion:
- Outsider art.
- Ethics.
- Turning the art world upside down: Anish Kapoor: Turning the World Upside Down - YouTube

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Anish Kapoor: Turning the World Upside Down

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19th August 2021 - FREUD MUSEUM RESPONSE 

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19th August 2021 - FREUD MUSEUM RESPONSE 

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Podcasts:
- Mad, Bad and Sad by Jacqueline Rose and Sally Alexander.
- Cinema and Hysteria from a course by Mary Wild.
- Portraits of the insane, author's talk with Robert Snell (looks at Gericaults).
- Can artist's teach the mind doctors? with the amazing Grisela Pollock.

Other Events:
- There's a course coming up that will be an introduction to hysteria.
- Art and mind [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUCqGgulN5A ]

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Portraits of the Insane: Theodore Gericault and the Subject of Psychotherapy | Freud Museum London
- Gericault made a series of portraits of patients in an asylum. (portraits don't have names of the patients but Gericault would've known the patients names).
- Paintings were considered unprecedented.
- Created 1822-23? in Paris.
- Were lost and rediscovered in an attic in 1863.
- Originally 10 portraits (5 missing) - theorised the missing portraits were the patients after treatment.
- Gericault compared of Rembrandt.
- Thesis in Snell's Book: Portraits are a sort of crystallisation of a painters and some doctors attention and engagement during a brief historical window in which such dialogue was not only possible but also very alive.
- Dialogue between doctor and painter and between doctor and patient.
- To be mad is the same as to be mentally ill?
- Doctors become healers and custodians.
- 'Madness seen as an animal state'.
- 'Moral Treatment'
(MENTIONED THINKERS)
- Michel Foucault
- Norbert Elias
- Phillippe Pinel
- Charles Bell
- Marcel Gauchet

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Analytic psychotherapist and art historian, Robert Snell joins us to discuss his forthcoming book, Portraits of the Insane: Théodore Géricault and the Subject of Psychotherapy.
In the gloomy aftermath of the 1789 Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, the French painter Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) made a series of portraits of patients in an asylum or clinic. The paintings are unprecedented: they show people designated as insane as ordinary, unique individuals. They point to a new, essentially democratic conception of the human being, sane or mad, as available for relationship and communication: a 'therapeutic subject'. Made during a period of massive social, cultural, and economic transformation, they register a critical moment in the history of subjectivity, and connect us to some living roots of psychoanalysis.They challenge us profoundly, in our own conflicted era, to find responses in ourselves to the stranger in our midst.

'The scope of this book is remarkable. Robert Snell's meditation on five portraits of mad people by Géricault is the springboard for a fascinating cultural investigation. He surveys two centuries of change in the understanding of human nature, and considers how this is reflected in changing approaches to the treatment of madness.The breadth and depth of scholarship on offer here is exceptional, and this admirable book is an object lesson in the relation of psychoanalysis to the history of ideas.' - Michael Parsons, British Psychoanalytical Society and French Psychoanalytic Association

Robert Snell is an analytic psychotherapist and art historian, a member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Therapeutic Education at Roehampton University.

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Portraits of the Insane: Theodore Gericault and the Subject of Psychotherapy | Freud Museum London

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Analytic psychotherapist and art historian, Robert Snell joins us to discuss his forthcoming book, Portraits of the Insane: Théodore Géricault and the Subject of Psychotherapy . In the gloomy aftermath of the 1789 Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, the French painter Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) made a series of portraits of patients in an asylum or clinic.

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Notes on Gericault Podcast by Robert Snell

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Notes on Gericault Podcast by Robert Snell

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- Research recommended sources further.
- Visit Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
- Listen to 'Portraits of the insane' Podcast and make notes.

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4th September 2021: Visited Bethlem Museum of the Mind

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4th September 2021: Visited Bethlem Museum of the Mind

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The visit was very mentally draining and intense but insightful experience.
- Visited the Passion of Richard Dadd Revisited.
- The museum
- Artist Sarah Carpenter was at the gallery and gave me her email address in order to discuss my topic.

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Bethlem Museum of the Mind visit - notes 

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Bethlem Museum of the Mind visit - notes 

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Bethlem Museum of the Mind visit - notes Pt.2

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Bethlem Museum of the Mind visit - notes Pt.2

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Bethlem Museum of the Mind visit - notes Pt.3

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Bethlem Museum of the Mind visit - notes Pt.3

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Bethlem Museum of the Mind visit - notes Pt.4

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Bethlem Museum of the Mind visit - notes Pt.4

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5th September 2021: Read the essay - Seeing in conceiving: The construction of femininity in Dr Morrison’s portraits of the insane by Caroline Smith 

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5th September 2021: Read the essay - Seeing in conceiving: The construction of femininity in Dr Morrison’s portraits of the insane by Caroline Smith 

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The essay gives insight on the study of Physiognomy and it’s significance with the 19th Century.
It gives examples of the sketches from the artists Alexander Johnstone and Charles Gow showing the before and after of patients at Bethlem.

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Seeing in conceiving: The construction of femininity in Dr Morrison’s portraits of the insane by Caroline Smith 

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Seeing in conceiving: The construction of femininity in Dr Morrison’s portraits of the insane by Caroline Smith 

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Before and After of a Bethlem Patient (Elizabeth Jeffreys) drawn. Alexander Johnstone, Charles Gow 

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Read studies from book I got from Bethlem museum of the mind,
- The anatomy of melancholy,
- The weight of history
- The art of Bedlam: Richard Dadd

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Dissertation drop in:
- Made the decision to focus on the representation on madness in art, as well as studies such as physiognomy and Phrenology.

- Need to reword my lead question.

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PHYSIOGNOMY:
Books-
* Reading the face: Understanding a person’s character through Physiognomy by Norbert Glas.
* Physiognomy in Profile: Lavater’s impact on European Culture.

Literature Example: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Notes:
- Include emails to Museums in Appendix,
- Henry Tonks,
- Jean Dubuffet,
- Outsider artists,
- Contemporary Context,
- Art Brut,
- Georgina Starr

'Visual Representations of the insane with examples of Gericault.'

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6th October 2021- William Grace Before treatment: Bethlem has a section without their museum of before and after pictures of their patients during the 19th Century. This is a interesting part of my research as creating visual documentations of patients before (and after) their treatment seems to be common throughout history, with examples of Gericault's portraits and Dr Morisons patients.

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6th October 2021- William Grace Before treatment: Bethlem has a section without their museum of before and after pictures of their patients during the 19th Century. This is a interesting part of my research as creating visual documentations of patients before (and after) their treatment seems to be common throughout history, with examples of Gericault's portraits and Dr Morisons patients.

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8th October 2021: Research notes after week 1 tutorials.

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8th October 2021: Research notes after week 1 tutorials.

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Portrait of Charles Deek - before and after by Henry Tonks 

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Portrait of Charles Deek - before and after by Henry Tonks 

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“Dreadful Subjects for the Public View”: Portraits in Henry Tonks’s Facial Injury Images | Morbid Art History (wordpress.com)

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13th October 2021: Week 2 hour tutorials

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13th October 2021: Week 2 hour tutorials

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Notes:
-Talking about how people are shown anthropological subjects - Henry Tonks.
- The electrical life of Louis Wain.
- A short history of mental illness in art | Christmas charity appeal 2014 | The Guardian
-Albrecht Durer.
- Joel Peter Whitkin.
- Madness of King George
- Salon Painting
- Delaroche

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Art has led the way in seeing mental illness not as alien or contemptible but part of the human condition - even as a positive and useful experience. Modern art has even celebrated mental suffering as a creative adventure. This psychiatric modernism started with the "madness" of Vincent van Gogh and led to work by patients being discovered as a new kind of art. Yet it has much deeper historical roots. Albrecht Durer portrayed genius as melancholic as early as the Renaissance and Romantic painters identified with the "mad".

Perhaps it is not hard to see why artists often show empathy for what society calls illness: all creativity is an irrational voyage. The idea of going outside yourself to see things afresh is probably as old as the torchlit visions of cave artists and was expressed by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato when he wrote that poetic ecstasy is the only source of divine truth. "Madness is a gift from the gods", as Plato put it.

1. Vittore Carpaccio - The Healing of the Possessed Man at the Rialto (c. 1496)

This painting of everyday life in 15th century Venice reveals how mental illness was understood and treated in the middle ages. It is sometimes called "The Healing of the Madman", but "possessed" is closer to contemporary ideas about the mind. For the man being miraculously healed by a priest amidst the human drama of the Rialto bridge has been taken over by a demon. His suffering is neither a medical nor social problem, but a religious experience.

2. Matthias Grunewald - The Temptation of St. Anthony (c. 1512 - 16)

Late medieval artists were fascinated by the story of the early Christian hermit Saint Anthony the Great who was tempted by devils. For Grunewald, this becomes a truly personal and psychological terror, an image of a man whose sanity is under threat. The infinite horrible shapes of the demons are like malformed thoughts. It is a compassionate work, for this is part of the Isenheim altarpiece, painted for a hospital that treated people with disfiguring illnesses. One of the devils has the sores and grey skin that appear in other parts of the altarpiece and evoke the illnesses treated there. Does this swarming scene therefore portray the threat to mental health posed by extreme physical suffering? It influenced German expressionism and is to this day a masterpiece of the threatened mind.

3. Albrecht Durer - Melancholia (1514)

This visionary work of art is both a diagnosis and heroic celebration of what might now be seen as illness. Melancholia was known and experienced in the middle ages, a darkness of the mind resulting from an inbalance of the humours. That darkness is marked on the brooding face of Durer's spirit of melancholy. In her despond, she appears unable to continue with her great works. She is to judge by her tools a mathematician, geometer, and architect: a Renaissance genius. Durer portrays through this emblem his own inner life and intuits the mind's complexity. For Melancholy in his eyes is the badge of genius - to aspire to know and create is to slump into despair. Unhappiness is noble, for Durer. This print is arguably the beginning of modern psychology.

4. William Hogarth - The Rake in Bedlam (1733)

The insight of Durer - not to mention Shakespeare and Cervantes - that mental shadows are part of human life was lost on the founders of London's Bethlem Hospital. The notorious "Bedlam" was founded in the middle ages and may have specialised in mental illness as early as the 14th century. When Hogarth in the 18th century portrayed a young man whose career of gambling and spending had led him there, it was a place where Londoners could come and look at the "mad". Hogarth shows two "sane" women enjoying the spectacle of madness, which includes people who think they are kings and bishops. Of course, in Hogarth's view, the boundary between sanity and insanity is not that obvious at all.

5. Francisco Goya y Lucientes - The sleep of reason produces monsters (c. 1799)

Goya's depiction of a sleeping man - the artist - assailed by monsters of the night is an image of reason's frailty made at the end of the Enlightenment, the great 18th century movement that sought to change the world with encyclopaedias, scientific demonstrations and the first factories. Goya's pessimistic yet also compassionate view is that reason only ever rules part of our minds. It must share the world with nightmares. At the dawn of the modern age, this great image echoes old depictions of the Temptations of St. Anthony, whose assailants have not gone away after all.

6. Theodore Gericault - Portraits of the Insane (1822)

In the Romantic age extreme states of mind and inner suffering were the stuff of poetry and art. This mood of introspection opens new eyes on mental health in Gericault's portraits of the "insane". He painted ten of these, of which five still exist, all depicting patients of his friend Dr Etienne-Jean Georget. In this painting, there is deep respect and human sympathy for a woman whose illness seems mostly visible as deep unhappiness. Escaping from stereotypes and prejudice, Gericault portrays mental illness as a part of the human condition that he himself - as an artist whose paintings dwell on death and violence - clearly feels close to.

7. Gustave Courbet - Self-Portrait (The Desperate Man) (c. 1843 - 45)

In a moment of Romantic exhilaration Courbet portrays himself as a "madman", his face ecstatic and terrified. His desperate state of mind is not a shameful sickness but a badge of artistic pride. In a tradition that goes back to Durer's Melancholia but reached new power in the Romantic age, he equates genius and madness. This face of desperation is the face of the 19th century avant garde, risking and even courting sickness with drink and drugs. Courbet looks like a character in one of Edgar Allan Poe's stories, his mind unravelling in a way the first modern artists were fascinated by.

8. Vincent van Gogh - Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889)

Vincent van Gogh was fascinated by a 19th century painting called The Madness of Hugo van der Goes. In this picture the medieval artist Hugo van der Goes - who in real life was confined to a monastery because of mental illness - broods in torment, while those around him despair of helping the afflicted man. Van Gogh wrote that he sometimes identified with this painting. Here, shortly after cutting off his own earlobe, he scrutinises himself as a man similarly afflicted. Or is he? Vincent's eyes are crystal blue, his gaze acute and penetrating. He looks at his wounded face objectively, with deep truth. He is neither "sane" nor "insane" but a fellow human being who speaks to us with courage and honesty.

9. Edvard Munch - The Scream (1893)

Madness is the modern condition in this work of art that has the clarity of a theorem. The Scream is universal. This is how life today makes us feel, says Munch. Far from a pathology afflicting individuals, the desire to scream out in pain and isolation under the wobbly sky is a sane response to an insane world. Munch takes the artistic revaluation of mental illness that started in the Romantic age to its logical conclusion: there is no Bedlam but the world itself.

10. Josef Forster - Untitled work in the Prinzhorn Collection (after 1916)

Once Munch and Van Gogh made "madness" a positive value in modern art, a key to visionary truth, it was only a matter of time before the medical profession too started to see new connections between art and the mind. Before his death in 1933, Dr Hans Prinzhorn assembled a collection of art by mentally ill patients that was the beginning of what is now known as "outsider art". This example has the eerie power of Goya. From something to be depicted by artists, "madness" has become a source of artistic originality in itself.

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A short history of mental illness in art

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Art has led the way in seeing mental illness not as alien or contemptible but part of the human condition - even as a positive and useful experience. Modern art has even celebrated mental suffering as a creative adventure.

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Bedlam in mind - seeing and reading historical images of madness

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Bedlam in mind - seeing and reading historical images of madness

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1367549411424949

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http://physiognomy.history.qmul.ac.uk/aboutphys.html

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Caracteres des Passions by Charles le Brun

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Caracteres des Passions by Charles le Brun

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Caracteres des passions, sur le desseins de C. le Brun. A drawing book of the passions, from the designs of C. le Brun : Le Brun, Charles, 1619-1690 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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Caracteres des passions, sur le desseins de C. le Brun. A drawing book of the passions, from the designs of C. le Brun : Le Brun, Charles, 1619-1690 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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Consists of 24 small engravings (incl. title) mounted on rectos of 24 leaves

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25/10/21 - Started Chapter on Physiognomy 

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25/10/21 - Started Chapter on Physiognomy 

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Physiognomy, The Beautiful Pseudoscience | Getty Iris

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What do the expressions "highbrow" and "lowbrow" have in common with saying a woman has "mousey" features? What does Homer Simpson have to do with photographs of sculpture in profile by contemporary artist Ken Gonzales-Day? All are contemporary manifestations of an ancient pseudoscience that permeated visual culture in European history, notably in the 18th and 19th centuries: physiognomy.

In Messerschmidt and Modernity at the Getty Center, there's a fascinating case of four books dating from 16th through the 19th centuries related to this magical pseudoscience, which assesses character and morality from outer appearance, applying the practice of "judging a book by its cover" to the human form.

Physiognomy has its roots in antiquity. As early as 500 B.C., Pythagoras was accepting or rejecting students based on how gifted they looked. Aristotle wrote that large-headed people were mean, those with small faces were steadfast, broad faces reflected stupidity, and round faces signaled courage.

David Brafman, rare books curator at the Getty Research Institute, told me that physiognomy-from the ancient Greek, gnomos (character) and physis (nature), hence "the character of one's nature"-really became popular again in 16th-century Europe, as physicians, philosophers, and scientists searched for tangible, external clues to internal temperaments.

In the early 1600s, Italian scholar Giambattista della Porta, considered the father of physiognomy, was instrumental in spreading ideas about character and appearance in Europe. Della Porta came up with the idea for physiognomy through his alchemical experiments, in which he attempted to boil down and distill from substances their "tincture," or pure essence. He made an analogy to the human essence, suggesting that one could deduce an individual's character from empirical observation of his physical features. His widely disseminated book on the subject, De humana physiognomia, was instrumental in spreading physiognomy throughout Europe. Illustrations in the book depict human and animal heads side by side, implying that people who look like particular animals have those creatures' traits.

Images like these were powerful, and illustrations, sculptures, drawings, and other visual forms were key to the spread of physiognomy and its strange ideas.

In the second half of the 18th century, Johann Caspar Lavater became the new king of physiognomy. He blended an examination of silhouette, the profile, portraiture, and proportions into his best-selling book, Essays on Physiognomy, which included a detailed reading of the face broken down into its major pieces, including the eyes, brows, mouth, and nose. The expression "stuck-up" comes from this time, when a person with a nose bending slightly upwards was read as having a contemptuous, superior attitude.

Lavater often expressed an obvious cultural bias in his readings of the morality of people from other countries. "Lavater idealizes the familiar and praises what he knows," wrote one critic, "but finds 'deficiencies' in the faces of Africans, Laplanders, and Calmuck Tartars."

The connections between physiognomy and aesthetics were pointed in Essays on Physiognomy, as Lavater commissioned artist Johann Henrich Fuseli and poet William Blake to provide the illustrations. This artistic interest in physical appearance and character contributed to the development of theories of the ideal geometric proportions of the face in the late 18th century by theorists such as William Hogarth and Lord Shaftesbury.

The influence of physiognomy can be seen throughout 18th- and 19th-century European art. In the 18th century in particular, natural philosophers embraced the "ideal" features found in classical sculpture, which were mistakenly thought to represent how the ancients actually looked. The assumed cultural superiority of ancient Greece became attached to these features, which were adopted by European artists and depicted again and again. "Others"-such as Asians and Africans-were less not only less beautiful, but less moral.

Photographer Ken Gonzales-Day examined this phenomenon in his series Profiled, an example of which is on view in Messerschmidt and Modernity. He created photographs of portrait sculptures in museum collections, both to explore the tradition of portraiture in Western art and to critique the pictorial conventions and racial profiling advanced by Lavater-who believed the profile to be the best perspective to analyze human character.

Today, scholars are still studying the science of faces and how different traits, features, and expressions affect us. For example, it's well established that faces with rounded contours attract us, because they signal childlikeness and evoke parental instincts. We even have a tendency to view "baby-faced" people as less likely to commit premeditated crimes. Unfortunately, if you've got an angular face, you're probably a criminal.

So even though the term "physiognomy" no longer resonates, the assumption of physical appearance as moral indicator lives on. Homer Simpson must be ugly, because he is stupid. When Dorothy asks the good "white" witch in The Wizard of Oz why she's so beautiful, she replies, "Why, only bad witches are ugly." Though our consumer-driven world has increasingly substituted clothing and material possessions as signifiers of character, we continue to label our fellow humans as "thick-headed," and people get stopped on the street because they "look suspicious."

Physiognomy is uncomfortable, messy, and often racist, but I do understand its motivation. The urge to classify, study, and categorize people is based in the desire to understand ourselves more clearly. But for every ideal form, there's an "other" who also wants to explore herself on her own terms, without being profiled.

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How physiognomy, the dubious science of deducing mental character from physical appearance, influenced European art and culture in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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Giambattista della Porta's De humana physiognomonia libri IIII (1586) – The Public Domain Review

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Giambattista della Porta (1535-1615), also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta and John Baptist Porta, was an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Scientific Revolution and Reformation. These are pages from his book on physiognomy De humana physiognomonia libri IIII.

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Giambattista della Porta's De humana physiognomonia libri IIII (1586)

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Giambattista della Porta (1535-1615), also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta and John Baptist Porta, was an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Scientific Revolution and Reformation. These are pages from his book on physiognomy De humana physiognomonia libri IIII.

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Physiognomics in the Roman Empire on JSTOR

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Physiognomics in the Roman Empire on JSTOR

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Elizabeth C. Evans, Physiognomics in the Roman Empire, The Classical Journal, Vol. 45, No. 6 (Mar., 1950), pp. 277-282

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The Physiognomical Portraits of Johann Caspar Lavater on JSTOR

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The Physiognomical Portraits of Johann Caspar Lavater on JSTOR

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Lavater used a pseudo-scientific system to judge man’s character from physiognomy. His comments about the origins of an individual’s physiognomy and the...

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IMAGE : The Four Temperaments - Johann Caspar Lavater

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IMAGE : The Four Temperaments - Johann Caspar Lavater

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Sir Alexander Morison’s The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases | Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (rcpe.ac.uk)

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Sir Alexander Morison (1779-1866) was an early forensic psychiatrist who specialised in mental and cerebral illness. After studying at Edinburgh's Royal High School and the University of Edinburgh, he joined the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh where he practised for some years before moving south. While in England, Morison worked as Physician of Lunatic Asylums in Surrey and Bethlehem Hospital, and in 1838 became the personal physician to Princess Charlotte and her husband Prince Leopold. Following his knighthood and still working in London, Morison was appointed President of the RCPE, a position which he served from 1827 to 1829. Wishing to return to Edinburgh but without an official job offer or position, Morison gave a series of very popular lectures on mental illness, medical treatment, and physiognomy.

Morison's 1840 publication, The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases, which includes some of his famous lectures, is of particular interest due to the inclusion of several plates featuring patients Morison encountered throughout his career. Morison believed that it was possible to diagnose mental illness by looking at patients' faces and body language. He taught that there were "characteristic features" of the face which could be recognised to distinguish between different diagnoses and used to warn of "the approach of the disease" in people who might, he said, be predisposed to becoming ill. According to Morison, the face was a mirror of the state of the mind, and the muscles in the eyes and facial expressions could be very telling.

The study of the features of the face, or of the form of the body generally, as being supposedly indicative of character; the art of judging character from such study.

The College library and archives hold collections of Morison's publications and the drawings he commissioned. The collection of original drawings were presented to the library by Sir Alexander Morison in 1862. Featured below are some of the striking images of patients suffering from mental illnesses, split into Morison's four categories: Mania, Monomania, Dementia and Idiocy. The terms used here are taken from Morison's 1838 work, based on the contemporary thought of the day, and do not reflect modern medical practice or opinion.

Mania

According to Morison and other nineteenth-century psychiatrists, Mania included symptoms such as excited imagination, lack of attention span, poor judgement, violent emotions, impulsiveness, restlessness, and insomnia. The drawings of patients with Mania were designed to showcase the "peculiar expression of the countenance and eyes".

The above drawings show the same patient, F. W., suffering from an attack of Mania on the left and "in his sane state" on the right. The patient was described as suffering from frequent attacks of "violent rage and fury," and had killed someone during one of his ill periods. The drawings are by A. Johnston and are captioned "intermittent mania - very violent" (left) and "recovered - remains well for one or more years" (right).

The above drawings display patient A.H. of Bethlem, aged 60, who was subject to periods of Mania and epilepsy. Morison found that in most cases Mania was aggravated by epilepsy, but with this patient, his extremely noisy and violent periods of Mania abated after fits of epilepsy. A. Johnston's 1837 drawings were captioned as "Mania - Excited . . . committed murder" (left) and "lucid interval" (right).

Monomania

Morison was opposed to the term Melancholia, believing that such a diagnosis was often incorrectly given when the patient was grieving or desolate but not actually ill. Instead of classifying mentally ill patients as melancholic, he used Dr. Esquirol's label Monomania, which is defined as "a form of mental illness characterized by a single pattern of repetitive and intrusive thoughts or actions." Within The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases, Morison described Monomania as a form of mental illness where the mind is affected by peculiar overwhelming ideas, such as love, fear, and grief. According to Morton, Monomania was the most prevalent mental illness, often co-occurring with other disorders. In terms of physiognomy, those diagnosed with Monomania were described as having a fixed and focused expression due to their obsession with whatever was occupying them at that moment.

The following patients were both diagnosed with what Morison referred to as Monomania with Love: Erotomania when they were overly sentimental, and Nymphomania or Satyreasis when they became overly sexual. The first set of images show an unnamed "elderly female, in whom lascivious ideas predominated". She was diagnosed with Nymphomania and was admitted to Aberdeen Asylum. On the left is the original drawing, with the plate which features in The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases on the right. The drawing is unsigned and its artist is currently unknown, but the plate was engraved by W. H. Lizars.

The patient below, M.S.P. aged 22, was highly educated and worked as a governess until she developed a delusion that she was the Virgin Mary, pregnant with the Holy Ghost. She was diagnosed with Erotomania and admitted to Bethlem. Only the picture on the left is included in The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases, but Morison's collection of drawings includes an additional sketch of patient M.S.P., "recovered in five months" (right). Both drawings have been attributed to A. Johnston.

The following patients were diagnosed with Monomania with Fear. Patients with this disorder were described as being afraid of one or more objects, afraid of everything, or filled with "a vague and undefined terror". Many patients with this illness were thin, weak, restless and anxious due to their fears. The patient on the left, M. A. R, aged 40, believed that she saw dead people and was afraid of hurting her husband. She recovered after 18 months in Bethlem. The patient on the right, unnamed, was diagnosed with Panaphobia, due to her fear of every object and person. She was under constant watch in St. Luke's in case she harmed herself. The left drawing is by A. Johnston, and the right by Rochard.

Monomania with Grief is the condition which was previously termed as Melancholia, and what would now be referred to as depression. According to Morison, this was one of the most common mental illnesses, and had a well-defined physiognomy with contracted facial muscles; sad, suspicious or scared expressions; and eyes often pointed to the ground.

The patient on the left, A. K., aged 20, was diagnosed with Monomania with Grief attributed to overzealous religious study. She never spoke and would not move at all without encouragement, but there was hope for her recovery. The patient on the right, T. C., aged 50, was determined to commit suicide after a dramatic change in financial circumstances. Both patients were at Bethlem and the drawings have been attributed to A. Johnston.

Dementia and Idiocy

According to Morton and his peers in 1838, Dementia and Idiocy were terms used to describe the mind when "its manifestations are enfeebled or abolished". According to Scottish clergymen, 3,495 of 4,647 mentally ill patients suffered from Dementia-like illnesses. The term Dementia was used when the mind was "previously in a sound state," and Idiocy when the state remained the same from birth or a young age. The term Dementia was used equally for patients whose mental facilities deteriorated after trauma and those who were treated after they had reached old age. Those suffering from Dementia illustrated within Morton's book were found to have relaxed features, unfocused eyes, and sometimes a shocked expression. Those termed as having Idiocy were described as having vacant expressions with wandering eyes and restless bodies.

The patient on the left, E. W., aged 24, was diagnosed with Dementia caused by terror. She would not speak or move, though she accepted food, and may have stayed silent throughout her stay in the asylum had a Bible not been accidentally placed in her hand. She was described to have read a few verses almost without thought and walked up and down the hall, but this action gradually faded and she returned to her previous state. The patient on the right, J. A., 9 years old, was diagnosed with Idiocy. He was described as being "good-tempered, though, at times, a little mischievous," and was said to have enjoyed music and the company of another patient in the asylum. The original drawings are captioned "Acute Dementia" (left) and "Idiot - Salpêtrière" (right). Both drawings are unsigned.

Author: Isla Macfarlane, Intern, University of Edinburgh, MSc Book History and Material Culture.

References

Doyle, Derek. "Notable Fellows: Sir Alexander Morison (1779-1866)." Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, vol. 41, no. 4, 2011, p. 378. doi:10.4997/JRCPE.2011.420.

"monomania, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, 2018. www.oed.com/view/Entry/121474.

Moore, Norman. "Morison, Sir Alexander (1779-1866), alienist." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19264. [All quotations in the above article are from this book.]

Morison, Alexander. The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases. London, 1838.

"physiognomy, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, 2018. www.oed.com/view/Entry/143159.

If you'd like to find out more about these, or any other items in our collections, you can email us at library@rcpe.ac.uk

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Sir Alexander Morison's The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases

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Sir Alexander Morison (1779-1866) was an early forensic psychiatrist who specialised in mental and cerebral illness. After studying at Edinburgh's Royal High School and the University of Edinburgh, he joined the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh where he practised for some years before moving south.

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Physiognomy and the arts: A rich but neglected relationship - Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, & the Arts (div10.org)

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Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, & the Arts

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Back to contents
A face perceived as friendly or hostile is a typical example of physiognomy, and so, too, are objects (a brooding mountain, a peaceful glen) and events (an expectant crowd, a threatening movement). These affective and cognitive meanings, in phenomenological terms, emerge naturally, spontaneously, and without delay. In this essay, the place of physiognomy in the arts is introduced, both in general and for specific forms, along with its relevance to creativity and aesthetics. As an overview the review is selective, given the limited space available. (For a broader treatment of physiognomy, including its history, theories, methods, findings, and research possibilities, as well as an in-depth examination of its role in the arts, artists, and arts audiences, together with extensive references, see Lindauer, M. S. [2013].)

The topic of physiognomy has a marginal if not unsavory status in psychology because of its historical excesses and fakery; its close association with phrenology; and following the popular writing of Lavater in the late 18 th Century, its use as a parlor game (Crabtree, 2000). Consequently, neutral labels like non-verbal behavior (or communication), interpersonal space, body language, gestural psychology, and kinesics are substituted for physiognomy in order to avoid its negative connotations. However, physiognomy's preeminence in the arts (Gombrich, 1960), unlike its faint presence in ordinary objects, layered as they are by familiarity and habit, as well as its relevance to artistic creativity and aesthetics, makes it hard to ignore.

Artists are especially attuned to the physiognomic overtures of people, objects, scenes, and events that "demand a hearing." Their evocative pulses challenge artists, to translate visual, auditory, written, and textural messages imaginatively. Colors, shapes, sounds, words, and movements are manipulated and transformed into music, paintings, literature, and other artistic forms. Hence, a positive correlation between creativity and physiognomy (e.g., Dailey, Martindale, & Borkum,1997). Creative artists, open to the physiognomic wisps of sounds and other stimuli, discern what is difficult for most of us to hear, see, touch, and notice. The expressive undercurrents of a painting and the other arts supplement if not transcend literal, concrete, explicit, and denotative meanings .

Physiognomic undercurrents capture and hold the attention of arts audiences, including readers of literature, who are sensitive to the subtle nuances of artistic works. What they see in a painting or sculpture, read in a story, observe in a dance, hear in a theater, and listen to at a concert are facilitated and enhanced, readily attended to and perceived, strongly felt, and assigned greater meaning with physiognomic undercurrents. Non-art rarely prompts such emanations. (Notable exceptions are sporting events and scenes in nature.) A heightened sensitivity is especially welcome for art that is unfamiliar, abstract, and avant-garde, like a Cubist painting by Picasso or an early Stravinsky piece, where little is clear and conventional reference points are minimal, irrelevant, or non-existent.

Arts audiences are open to and unselfconscious about reacting to physiognomic effusions, in contrast to their typical approach to non-art, which is matter-of-fact, pragmatic, rule-bound, routine, stereotyped, and utilitarian. Reactions to art, moreover, are not burdened by an implicit pressure to be correct. Unlike everyday objects, art is not meant to be taken literally. Hence, audiences feel little discomfort in calling a portrait by Rembrandt "reflective"; a character in a story by Poe "malevolent"; a Chopin interlude "dreamy"; a Rodin sculpture "solid"; or a Graham dance "exuberant." Similarly, they are not hesitant in calling a painting "frenzied," a chord "ominous," and a word "loaded." With unfamiliar works, where knowledge, memories, and expectations are minimal or inappropriate, physiognomic resonances may be the only basis for responding in a meaningful way.

Each of the arts has its unique physiognomic penumbras. Take the visual arts. A Japanese watercolor with a "hurried" brushstroke depicts an insignificant figure hunched next to a turbulent waterfall tumbling down an overpowering mountain. In paintings by Kandinsky and Klee, lines, shapes, and colors are childlike, playful, and lighthearted. A portrait by Rembrandt is reflective and brooding. The colors of a portrait by Matisse and a landscape by van Gogh are wild and unruly. The swatches, bars, swirls, drips, and strips of pigments in a Jackson Pollock clash and collide. With non-figurative works, like the wide bars of vertical or horizontal swathes of colors by Kline, physiognomy is perhaps the only basis for responding.

Caricatures and political cartoons, exaggerated and distorted, are nonetheless recognized and given significance with physiognomy. With Op(tical) or geometrical art (called retinal art by Duchamp), stationary geometric shapes and patterns seem to pulse and quiver. Physiognomically suggestive, too, are the titles, sizes, frames, placement, and lighting of paintings. So, too, is the presence or absence of crowds in a gallery and the arrangement of rooms that direct viewers' movement.

In photography, many photos are taken in order to find a singular shot, the one that hints at what lies beyond its specific content. Iconic examples are Ansel Adams' photographs of Yosemite National Park, Mathew Brady's of the civil war, and Rosenthal's raising of the U.S. flag on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II.

Physiognomic resonances abound in literature as well. The Bible: "A man's wisdom makes his face to shine" (Ecclesiates 8:1). Mythology: The face of Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships. Ancient writings: There are often voices and words in a silent look (Ovid). Shakespeare: Cassius, the betrayer in Julius Caesar, has a "lean and hungry look." The fictional dectectivc Sherlock Holmes attends to faces, bodies, and speech for clues to who done it.

For readers, literary characters behave as befits the lengths of their chins and shapes of their mouths. Stooped or slouched postures, hands raised or pointing, dwarfish or statuesque height, and loud and profane language portend character, temperament, and status. Beauties have snow-white skin and delicate nostrils; heroines have freckles and turned up noses. The nose in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and the teeth in novels by D. H. Lawrence foreshadow the narrative. In works by Poe the flaneur observes people and their appearance in order to gain insight into their personality. The uncapitalized poems of e. e. cummings illustrate the effects of words, qua words, and of sentence structure, on the meanings readers attribute to a work. hysiognomically redolent, too, are the covers and titles of books, and whether hard- or soft-bound, thick or thin. So, too, are the first line or two (the "hook"), the names of characters, even a blank page at the end of a chapter. Mattering physiognomically as well are an author's workspace and whether she uses a pen or computer.

In musical performances, conductors communicate the metrics of a work by marking the beat with their hands and body. They also add a dynamic sub-text by waving their arms and hands, twisting fingers in the air, hunching shoulders, changing posture, and shifting their stance. Members of the orchestra reflect and augment the emotional tone of a piece by swaying, stiffening, rising up on their toes, moving to the edge of their chairs, and varying positions. Audiences react to these movements. They also hear the initial chords of Beethoven's Fifth's powerful announcement of what is to come and opera voices as cold, brittle, coarse, dark, heavy, and rough.

Audiences here and elsewhere show signs of surprise, alertness, and pleasure, of being visibly stirred or stunned. They fidget, squirm, and gasp audibly to indicate satisfaction or disapproval. These tremors are sensed by musicians (and other performers) who either rise to the occasion or become deflated (emotionally "flat").

In theater, including mime as well as dance, audiences react to suggestive movements. Gestures without speech have "a voice" that conveys emotions. Spoken words are supplemented if not supplanted by an actor's lifting of a finger, waving a hand or arm, and raising an eyebrow. A voice is insistent or resigned; a stance signals intimacy or distance, warmth or coldness; a glance hints at hostility or friendship. Stock characters behave according to "type," augmented by a pronounced jaw line, a characteristic swagger, or a casual posture.

In dance, performers leap, twirl, bend, run, and skip alone or together in a line or circle. Each pattern of movements throws off physognomic nuances to audiences. Presaging further developments are how dancers enter the stage: as soloists, pairs, a group, or as the entire company.

Physiognomic forebodings occur even before a performance begins as the curtain rises, lights dim, and the audience hushes. With the sudden stillness, the air is pregnant with anticipation as audiences become alert with expectations. Something similarly preparatory occurs when we enter an art museum, concert hall or theater; open a recommended book; and approach an architecturally distinguished building. The latter, along with bridges and churches, have mass; they also "thrust," and "soar." A structure hints at its function, the kinds of people who might work or live there, what its owner could be like, and whether it challenges, resists, or fits into a neighborhood. Office size, view, and location speak of power, wealth, and position. The silence of an empty room is heard.

Sculptures, without speech or movement, stationary and untouched, nonetheless radiate a textural "feel," apparent movement, and implied spatiality. They exude massiveness, weightiness, and immovability-or their opposites. The carved face in the Lincoln Memorial is noble, melancholic, and thoughtful. The type of material (marble, bronze, wood, metal, stone), along with scale (tiny, realistic, huge), have a physiognomic impact. Observers often feel impelled to touch a sculpture despite warning signs not to do so. Physiognomic tremors also arise from a statue's placement, whether crowded with other sculptures, placed among paintings, or by itself in the middle of a museum floor, square, or park.

In the movies, actors are photographed from high or low angles, close-up, or within a panoramic backdrop. Lighting is bright or dim; shadows prominent or absent, as in film noire. Good or bad guys have tiny or large eyes, gaunt or full cheeks. Silent films exaggerated facial features in order to clearly and forcefully convey evocative meanings. Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin is a powerful, and frightening portrayal of the brutality and fear evoked by the Nazis.

In summary: Physiognomic reverberations run through all of the arts. A painting, sonnet, and symphony look, read, sound, and seem "right" or "fitting." Creative artists observe, feel, and communicate evocative tremors that trigger expressive meanings in aesthetically perceptive observers, listeners, and readers. When art doesn't "work" it may be that it lacks a physiognomic aftereffect, leaving audiences cold and indifferent. Ironically, people open to the physiognomic ambiance of the arts are often oblivious to the slight evocative sights and sounds lurking in non-art. No wonder they welcome the refreshing interlude brought to them by the arts.

Explanations of physiognomy range from Darwin (evolution) through Gestalt psychology (the figural qualities of what they called tertiary perception) to J. J. Gibson's affordances (what retinal patterns afford or demand). Closer to the arts are Kurt Koffka's (1940) emphasis on the inherent requiredness of sensory input; Arnheim's (1972) belongingness, goodness, and rightness of visual stimulation; and Heinz Werner's primitive or "magical" nature of perception, especially among creative people and children. (Werner, 1956; see also Crosby, 2001).

Space permits only a few suggestive starting points for research on physiognomy within an artistic framework. One is comparing the physiognomic sensitivities of different types of artists (realistic or abstract) and audiences (those that prefer music, theater, and so forth). Another is exploring the relationship between physiognomy and synesthesia (Lindauer, 1991, 2009; Marks, 1982). For example, when we say a musical piece is "hot, cool, or leaves me cold" we are simultaneously experiencing synesthesia (a sensory crossover) and physiognomy. Open to exploration, too, is physognomy's possible ties to neuroaesthetics (Buchtel, 2001; Ramachandran & Hubbard,2000). Physiognomy's origins may lie in the emotional limbic system, the cognitive cerebral cortex, or the visual occipatal lobe-or all three simultaneously.

Physiognomy is a broad and integrative framework within which to study art, artists, artistic creativity, the venues of art, arts audiences, and aesthetic experience. Of more general relevance is how it gives order to the multiple and ambiguous streams of input that bombards us from things, events, and people. We select what is perceptually significant, at least in part, by imbuing stimuli with physiognomic meaning (albeit occasionally at the price of fidelity).

Important qualifications need to be kept in mind. Not all artists and audiences depend solely or primarily on physiognomy or do so to the same degree. Errors of the past in promoting physiognomy, including overgeneralizations and simplifications, must also be avoided. Nonetheless, the pervasive presence of physiognomy in the arts and related areas like aesthetics enhances its credibility as a legitimate subject for scientific inquiry, a focus that deserves greater attention than it has so far received.
References Cited
Arnheim, R. (1972). The Gestalt theory of expression. In Arnheim, R., Toward a psychology of art: Collected essays (pp. 51-73). Berkeley, University of California.

Buchtel, H. A. (2001). Left and right hemisphere contributions to physiognomic and verbal discrimination. Neuropsychology, 15, 597-606.

Crabtree, A. (2000). Lavater, Johann Kaspar. Encyclopedia of psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 492-493). Washington, DC/NY: American Psychological Association.

Crosby, W. (2001). Heinz Werner: Mapping the territory between scientific and poetic understanding. Encounter, 14, 44-55.

Dailey, A., Martindale, C., & Borkum, J. (1997). Creativity, Synesthesia, and Physiognomic Perception. Creativity Research Journal, 10, 1-8.

Gombrich. E. H. (1960). On physiognomic expression. Daedelus, 89, 228-242.

Koffka, K. (1940). Problems in the psychology of art. In R. Bernheimer, R. Carpenter, K. Koffka, M. Nahm (Eds.), Art: a Bryn Mawr Symposium (pp. 180-273). Bryn Mawr: Bryn Mawr College.

Lindauer, M. S. (1991). Physiognomy and verbal synesthesia: Affective and sensory descriptions of nouns with drawings and art. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 6, 183-202.

Lindauer, M. S. (2009). Literary creativity and physiognomy: Expressiveness in writers, readers, and literature. In S. B. Kaufman & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), Psychology of Creative Writing (pp. 117-130). New York: Cambridge University Press

Lindauer, M. S. (2013). The expressiveness of perception: Physiognomy reconsidered. Netherlands: John Benjamins.

Marks, L. S. (1982). Synesthetic perception and poetic metaphor. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 8, 15-23.

Ramachandran, V. S. & Hubbard, E. M. (2000). Psychophysical investigations into the neural basis of synaesthesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B, 979-983.

Werner, H. (1956). On physiognomic perception. In G. Kepes (Ed.). The New Landscape in Art and Science (pp. 280-283). Chicago: Paul Theobald and Co.

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Physiognomy and the arts: A rich but neglected relationship - Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, & the Arts

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Back to contents A face perceived as friendly or hostile is a typical example of physiognomy, and so, too, are objects (a brooding mountain, a peaceful glen) and events (an expectant crowd, a threatening movement). These affective and cognitive meanings, in phenomenological terms, emerge naturally, spontaneously, and without delay.

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Potential title:
“Physiognomy and how it influenced art in the 18th and early 20th century”

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Half my work I have written so far has vanished. So I have to re write half the chapter.

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Johann Caspar Lavater - Museum für medizinhistorische Bücher Muri (mmbm.ch)

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SCIENTIFIC CREED

The doctrine of physiognomy assumes that the character of a person can be deduced from their facial features. Lavater viewed this theory as a science based on the measurements and proportions of the skull, face and its "measurable" parts (nose, chin, ears and eyes).

Lavater's four volumes contain numerous portraits of famous men who each represent a certain character. He interprets the individual face ultimately as a sign of God which had to be dicovered. In doing so, he relied on semiotics, the doctrine of signs that allows internal characteristics to be inferred from external forms.

This is based on the deeply religious core idea that God created man in his own image. In Lavater's eyes, therefore, the resemblance to Jesus became the absolute standard of judgement, which is why he understood his physiognomy as the "disclosure of the good that is in God." With this, Lavater elevated his theory to a creed.

EXERCISE BOOK FOR THE KNOWLEDGE OF HUMAN NATURE

Lavater's "Physiognomic Fragments for the Advancement of the Knowledge of Human Nature and Philanthropy" appeared every year between 1775 and 1778. Because of the numerous illustrations, the four volumes were amongst the most expensive publications of the 18th century. The German first edition was followed by English, French, Dutch and Russian translations, each with new engravings and silhouettes.

Many artists, such as Johann Heinrich Füessli and Daniel Chodowiecki, copied and painted silhouettes, copies of famous portraiture and drawings of ancient heads from all over Europe for Lavater's physiognomic collection. Even Johann Wolfgang von Goethe made a significant contribution to the first two volumes with drawings and explanations. The collection itself ultimately comprised over 22,000 pages and is located today in the National Library of Vienna.

Lavater pursued the goal of "presenting to the reader and researcher as many diverse heads as possible to exercise his physiognomic sense. - Anyone can check whether his sense agrees with the judgement presented to him?" However, it remains unclear which character traits are indicated by what signs in the four volumes. After the appearance of the "Physiognomic Fragments", many people turned to Lavater for help. They sent silhouettes of friends, relatives and acquaintances, future spouses and business partners to gauge their character. Lavater's doctrine also drew heavy criticism, however. In light of the enthusiastic reception of the Physiognomic Fragments, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg spoke of a "physiognomics mania".

FAMOUS PIETISTIC PASTOR

Johann Caspar Lavater was born in Zurich as the twelfth child of the physician Johann Heinrich Lavater and Regula Escher vom Glas in 1741. A rebellious and patriotic phase in his youth was followed by a pious phase. He studied theology and was first a deacon of the Church of Orphanage, and later a pastor at the Church of St. Peter. In 1769, Lavater called on the well-known Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn from Berlin to either refute the statements of a Christian work or to convert. The resulting correspondence was followed closely by many contemporaries.

Lavater authored over 130 writings. However, his main work, "Physiognomic Fragments", was the first to bring him renown far beyond the borders of the Swiss Confederation. Eminent figures from politics, business and art visited him, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who distanced himself after a few years, however.

In 1799, Lavater was captured by Napoleon's troops and brought to Basel, where he remained in custody for a few weeks. In the same year, he was shot, and died in 1801.

PHYSIOGNOMICS THROUGH THE CENTURIES

The doctrine of physiognomics dates back to ancient times and exerted a strong influence on medieval painting. With the printing press, authors such as Giambattista Della Porta spread the theories to wider circles. In 1586, Porta's work "De humana physiognomia" assigned analogous traits to similarities between animals and humans. The courageous, honest and powerful man is contrasted with the anxious, devious and weak woman to distinguish gender characters, and they are compared with corresponding animals. Even this early work contained numerous illustrations.

In the 17th century, Charles Le Brun's richly illustrated Doctrine of the Passions was linked to this tradition, which, however, focused on facial expressions. In contrast, Lavater applied physiognomy exclusively to unchangeable parts of the face, pushing physiognomics into an unprecedented revival in the 18th century.

A continuation of his theory can be seen in Franz Joseph Gall's phrenology, which derived character features from skull shapes. Other areas of 19th century knowledge were built on Lavater's teaching: anthropometry, which purported to recognise mental patients and criminals by their body measurements, followed by criminology as the study of criminals, with Cesare Lombroso's creation of the topos of the "born criminal" in 1876, and the constitution typology of Ernst Kretschmer in 1921. Physiognomy reached its perverted high point in race hygiene.

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Johann Caspar Lavater - Museum für medizinhistorische Bücher Muri

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SCIENTIFIC CREED The doctrine of physiognomy assumes that the character of a person can be deduced from their facial features. Lavater viewed this theory as a science based on the measurements and proportions of the skull, face and its "measurable" parts (nose, chin, ears and eyes).

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Drawing the human animal | Wellcome Collection

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While the 'science' of physiognomy defined character by physical characteristics, a series of extraordinary 17th-century drawings goes a step further. Melding animal and human features, what do these images have to say about our hidden inclinations?

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While the 'science' of physiognomy defined character by physical characteristics, a series of extraordinary 17th-century drawings goes a step further. Melding animal and human features, what do these images have to say about our hidden inclinations?

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Attended Zoom class on 'Putting a Dissertation together and what is an Appendix?'

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New Source, found when finding a online copy of a physical report I have 

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New Source, found when finding a online copy of a physical report I have 

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Insanity in the Frame by Caroline Smith - Understanding British Portraits

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Harriet Jordan (left) might well be seated in her sitting room interrupting her sewing to look up at the camera. In reality, she was photographed when a patient at Bethlem Royal Hospital . This photograph and others like it could, at least on first viewing, have been plucked from a family album, so far removed is it from the asylum mug shots of the 1880s and '90s. Even those which show obvious distress have a quiet dignity about them (below right).

This collection of around 60 photographs taken between 1857-59 by the Regent Street photographer Henry Hering, has fascinated me since I began work at Bethlem, both for its subject matter and because it represents such an early period in the history of photography. Though they are not on permanent display, when we are able to show them to visitors, they too are equally engaged. Each photograph provides a unique, often moving window on the life of an individual who will probably have left behind no other record.

In spare moments over the years, I have attempted to find out more about this part of our collection. It has been great to have the opportunity to research other medical collections and compare our photographs with theirs and also with other more mainstream portraits of the time. My research aimed to better locate the Bethlem photographs within the context of medical images and to try to unpick reasons for why they were taken.

A small number of asylum doctors seem to have been early adopters of the new technology; one of their purposes to document what was then known as the physiognomy of insanity. Hugh Welch Diamond, the superintendent of Surrey County Lunatic Asylum commented on how photography could give 'certain indication of internal derangement, and exhibits to the eye the well known sympathy which exists between the diseased brain and the organs and features of the body' (1).

It had always been assumed that this was one of the motivations behind the Bethlem photographs. A number were reproduced in articles by John Conolly of Middlesex Asylum (2) in 'The Medical Times and Gazette' where features are analysed with reference to a changing mental state. Conolly's erstwhile colleague, Charles Hood was superintendent at Bethlem from 1852 and the commission of the photographs may, at least in part, have been a result of Conolly's interest. However, case notes and doctors' journals from the period make very little mention of physiognomy in actual clinical practice. If documenting the face was the primary objective, it might be expected to be the focal point in each image, clearly seen for analysis, but this does not appear to be the case. Although long lenses for close shots were available, they don't appear to have been used here and much attention appears to have been given to the overall composition, to posture, props and occupation.

As with a great deal research, mine has been useful as much for the further questions it has raised as well as those it has helped answer and the question of just why these photographs were taken needs further investigation. I'm looking forward to finding a few more spare moments.

(1) On the Application of Photography to the Physiognomic and Mental Phenomena of Insanity, High Welch Diamond, read before the Royal Society, 1856.

(2) John Conolly, resident physician at Middlesex Asylum 1839-44 and visiting physician 1844-52.

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Insanity in the Frame by Caroline Smith - Understanding British Portraits

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Harriet Jordan (left) might well be seated in her sitting room interrupting her sewing to look up at the camera. In reality, she was photographed when a patient at Bethlem Royal Hospital. This photograph and others like it could, at least on first viewing, have been plucked from a family album, so far removed [...]

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I left my part time job as I was finding I didn't have enough time to write.

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- Read the Formative Feedback.
- Good use of images.
- Excellent Research.
- Use more images of Gericault's work? for context.
- Are there similarities.

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https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1510&context=asc_papers

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Finished Chapter 1 - Physiognomy

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This is an important part I need to include include in my Physiognomy chapter as it at to the more contemporary aspects of the study

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Colin Harding looks at one of the major figures in early British photography.

For the next step of my alphabetical wander through the history of photography, I have chosen the work of one of the most important figures in early British photography. Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond is now best known for his pioneering use of photography as a medical tool, and for his haunting portraits of the mentally ill.

Diamond made his first photographs in April 1839, just three months after the announcement of photography's invention. In the 1840s he befriended one of his patients, Frederick Scott Archer, and subsequently became one of the first people to use Archer's collodion process.

Diamond published articles on photography in several journals and, in 1853, became one of the founder members of the Photographic Society. Technically accomplished, he was active as both a landscape and still life photographer. However, he is now remembered primarily for a remarkable series of portraits he took in connection with his work with the mentally ill.

In the 1840s, Diamond studied psychiatry at London's Bethlem Hospital (from where we get the word 'bedlam') and in 1848 he was appointed Superintendent of the Female Department at the Surrey County Asylum. Diamond combined his photographic expertise with his medical training and began to photograph his patients in simple poses against a plain background-poignant echoes of conventional studio portraits of the time.

In 1856, Diamond presented a paper to the Royal Society of Medicine, entitled 'On the Application of Photography to the Physiognomic and Mental Phenomena of Insanity' and his portraits were reproduced in medical journals. They were also shown in photographic exhibitions where they received mixed reviews. Neither art nor science, people were unsure how to respond to them.

In 1858, Diamond left his post at the Surrey County Asylum to open a private asylum in Twickenham, which he operated until his death in 1886. He seems to have stopped taking portraits of his patients at this time. What was acceptable in a public institution for the poor was viewed as a breach of propriety for the families of well-off private patients.

As both a doctor and a photographer, Diamond embodied the new humanitarianism and the belief in scientific observation of the Victorian age. Through his portraits he sought to reveal a connection between his patients' disturbed minds and their physical appearance.

Today, they still reach out to touch us-mute yet eloquent testimony to compassion and suffering. As Diamond wrote:

The photographer needs in many cases no aid from any language of his own, but prefers to listen, with the picture before him, to the silent but telling language of nature.

Further reading and interesting links

Dr H.W. Diamond, On the Application of Photography to the Physiognomic and Mental Phenomen of Insanity, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1856

Adrienne Burrows and Iwan Schumacher, Portraits of the Insane: The Case of Dr Diamond, London, Quartet Books (1990)

Sander L. Gilman (Ed), The Face of Madness: Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography, New York, Brunner/Mazel (1976)

Roger Taylor and Larry Schaaf, Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860, Yale, Yale University Press (2007)

List of photographs exhibited by Hugh Welch Diamond

The Royal Society of Medicine Archive Collection

Information about Diamond's home in Twickenham

Short video incorporating Diamond's photographs

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D is for... Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond: Photography and the pseudoscience of physiognomy

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Colin Harding looks at one of the major figures in early British photography.

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Henry Hering blog posts by Bethlem Museum of the Mind

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Finished Chapter 2 - Psychiatric Photography

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Half way through chapter 3 - Bethlem Royal Hospital, Felt like I was losing what I was writing about this week but think I have got back on track.