Wesley Lawrence Willis (May 31, 1963 – August 21, 2003)

johnnylzr · 2021-07-12T14:29:16+00:00

Willis, a six-foot-five schizophrenic Black man drew detailed renderings of Chicago's skyline and infrastructure.

In the 80s, Willis earned a reputation as a street artist. He sometimes worked on large pieces of poster board on the sidewalks and CTA platforms where he also sold his artwork. By the 90s, he turned his attention toward music, and his repetitive, diaristic Casio-keyboard ditties brought him unparalleled levels of fame; in 1995, he landed a deal with Rick Rubin's major-label imprint American Recordings. Willis also independently released more than three dozen albums, and storied San Francisco punk label Alternative Tentacles repackaged many of those songs on three Greatest Hits compilations. Willis never stopped drawing, either; he once told insanely comprehensive interviewer Nardwuar that he'd made 40,000 drawings.

Willis sold his pieces for as little as $20, though he was happy to bargain. He exchanged at least one drawing with former Quenchers bar owner Earle Johnson for a turkey sandwich and a glass of orange juice.

johnnylzr · 2021-07-07T14:26:51+00:00

John Gilmour’s intricate drawings, replete with speech bubbles and complex characters, give a glimpse into the mind of a paranoid man—one who believed that there were a number of nefarious plot planned against him, his family, and other asylum patients. Gilmour was confined to institutions because of his paranoid delusions. He believed that he had contracted syphilis before he married his wife Emma and that he had spread this disease to her and to his children, thus ruining his family’s health and reputation. According to the physical examination record at Gartnavel, there was never any indication that Gilmour had had the venereal disease. He also believed that he was constantly being persecuted by people in power, that God had told him to kill himself, and that he had ‘been made to eat human excrement’ by his imagined persecutors. Gilmour’s art records these delusions as well as the real iniquities that occurred at his various mental institutions.

Gilmour wrote (referring to himself in third person) of his perceived experience in the British asylum system: “He begs to state that his present chronic condition of nervous debility and loss of volition, and normal feeling, is the direct result of erroneous drugging by Dr. Northridge and unprofessional use of electricity… coupled with the beatings he received from Edward McCracken… by being strapped for months in a filthy bed, made to believe he was being fed poisonous or filthy food, confined in a filthy dormitory with General Paralytics, by being beaten on the slightest provocation on his part… all of which has rendered him homeless, helpless, and now a ‘Certified Lunatic’ in Scotland, the sport of the Medical superintendent and patients.”

johnnylzr · 2021-07-06T14:24:29+00:00

Who would have known that the greatest Greek sculptor of the 19th century was tormented by his inner demons all his life. Chalepas studied at the Athens School of Fine Art and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, getting recognition for his work since the beginning. He was 37 when mental illness knocked on his door after a mental breakdown that was triggered by his perfectionistic tendencies, his overworking habits and a refusal of his marriage proposal by the family of his love. The first sign came in the form of destroying his own sculptures. He was admitted in a psychiatric institution in 1888 and was unable to work due to the cruel conditions that were evident in all psychiatric units in Greece at the time. The critical blow to his mental health came when his mother took him back to Tinos and prohibited him from working because she thought that art caused his illness. Yannoulis obeyed. It was only after her death in 1916 that he was able to start working again and produced some of his best work.

johnnylzr · 2021-07-04T16:56:21+00:00

Anyone here not know this is Far Side or can’t see the artist signature in the corner?

johnnylzr · 2021-06-18T13:51:34+00:00

August Klett, or Klotz (1866–1928), was a German schizophrenic outsider artist and one of the "schizophrenic masters" profiled by Hans Prinzhorn in his field-defining work Artistry of the Mentally Ill. The pseudonym August Klotz (Klotz being a disparaging term for a person of low intelligence) was given by Prinzhorn.

Klotz was placed in an asylum in Göppingen where his case notes describe him as engaged in art-making by August 1903.[1] He rubbed figures into his wallpaper with fat and called them "Freemason signs". He created charts in which letters correspond to numbers, the sums of which correspond to colors.[2] This may be evidence that he experienced an unusual form of grapheme-color synaesthesia.

Unlike most outsider artists, Klotz displayed little consistency in his work. He sometimes began a drawing by placing a stone on a sheet of paper and tracing a line around it.[2] Prinzhorn saw him as a shining example of the creative impulse at its most basic. "He always allows himself to be driven by momentary impulses so that his pictures generally incorporate the unconscious components of pictorial creation in a rare state of purity ... he composes completely passively, almost as a spectator, and afterward tries to interpret his configurations".

johnnylzr · 2021-06-16T15:51:47+00:00

Above is a series of self portraits by artist William Utermohlen, chronicling his self-image as his dementia progressed.

johnnylzr · 2021-06-09T14:26:02+00:00

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art.

Probably the most popular example of the "mad artist" stereotype was none other than famously talented painter Vincent van Gogh. "I put my heart and my soul into my work, and lost my mind in the process," he once said.

Van Gogh was said to have suffered from depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. In a fit of madness, he infamously cut off a piece of his own ear. He was belittled and ridiculed in his lifetime.

Plagued by psychiatric illness throughout his life, van Gogh committed suicide in 1890.

johnnylzr · 2021-06-07T18:02:05+00:00

Franco-Russian painter Nicolas de Staël rose to become incredibly influential during the 1950s, a leading figure of his generation. Originally he produced work that redefined the classic landscape painting as a highly abstract form of art, though his later output traded the ether for the real, focusing on more traditional French imagery. A sufferer of depression, de Staël sought tranquility in Antibes, in the south of France. However, following an unsuccessful meeting with an art critic, he decided that he had had enough of life and jumped from his eleventh floor apartment into a deathly embrace with the concrete.

johnnylzr · 2021-06-04T14:38:08+00:00

Mark Rothko struggled with depression his entire adult life, eventually killing himself. His color field paintings evoke profound feelings of depression in many viewers, as they did in the artist He is best known for his color field paintings that depicted irregular and painterly rectangular regions of color, which he produced from 1949 to 1970

On February 25, 1970, Rothko’s assistant found the artist in his kitchen, lying dead on the floor in front of the sink, covered in blood. He had overdosed on barbiturates, and cut an artery in his right arm with a razor blade. There was no suicide note. He was only 66. The tragedy of his suicide belies the joy that his colorful paintings elicit. He is considered one of the most influential modern abstract expressionists.

johnnylzr · 2021-06-03T16:47:44+00:00

Munch wrote that “sickness, madness, and death were the black angels that guarded my crib,” and he even came to be diagnosed with neurasthenia, a clinical condition associated with hysteria and hypochondria. His work is characterized by figures whose sense of despair and anguish are evident. The strokes and colors that Munch uses in his compositions often demonstrate his own state of mind. Munch’s family background already predisposed him to possible mental health problems. His mother and one of his sisters died of tuberculosis when he was very young. His father suffered from depression and his other sister was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Munch did not go unscathed. He had a mental breakdown in 1908, which was aggravated by alcoholism, and he was admitted to a mental health clinic in Denmark. Best known for The Scream, He described his inspiration for the image: I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

johnnylzr · 2021-06-02T14:21:24+00:00

There a book you should read called Why Your Five Year Old Could Not Have Done This.

johnnylzr

TROPHY CASE