Visibility in a Psychiatric Hospital’s Museum

I wished long ago that J. K. Rowling had permitted Harry Potter to sell me his invisibility cloak. Then I could have made myself or others invisible or visible at will. Lacking that magical power, many of us simply turn to spending energy, time, and resources trying to render visible those whom we favor and render invisible others who, for one or another reason, confound us.

On a visit to a Caribbean island, I toured a beautifully restored plantation house. The guide took me from a medium-sized bedroom through a door with a latch on it into a smaller area, just barely large enough for a single occupant. The guide asked me to guess how this inner alcove was used, but I was stumped. It turned out to be where the owner sequestered a relative who suffered from a psychiatric illness.

In earlier days, some families preferred this type of physical control of an individual suffering from these illnesses. The explanation was that while the patient was rendered invisible to outsiders, it was a way of keeping the patient safe and protected from untoward events like teasing and accidents. Hospitalization in a psychiatric facility was costly in terms of stigma and its own form of invisibility. The plan of action was often reconsidered if the patient repeated violent behavior or otherwise embarrassed the family.

Despite this history of rendering psychiatric patients invisible, transformative progress continues. Organized efforts have focused on attempts to normalize community living of individuals with psychiatric illness and enhance their access to privileges of citizenship.

I toured an art exposition at Paris’s Sainte-Anne Psychiatric Hospital that ended last month. Titled “Rien à voir: Quand la création échappe au symptôme” (“Nothing to see: When creation escapes symptoms”), the presentation christens the new status of the hospital’s art collection as formally a “Musée de France.” Thus, the history of this psychiatric hospital and the artistic designs of a cross section of its patients are now under formal protection in the vast French museum system, under the title of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de l’Hôpital Sainte-Anne. This exposition and the act of creating a national museum in a public hospital form a unique landscape. In it, the hospital’s patients can see the possibility of their being artists.

The exposition introduces visitors to 13 artists who painted their works between 1960 and 1970. Anne-Marie Dubois, author of the explanatory text (carrying the same title as the exposition) and the exposition’s curator, dives directly into the heart of the matter. How do we look at these paintings done by people who obviously have had significant experience with psychiatric illness? What about the old-time labels (“l’art des fous,” “les productions artistiques des maladies mentaux,” “l’art brut”)?

Dubois reminds us that psychiatrists joined the debate, too, and between 1945 and 1950 conjured up the label of “l’art psychopathologique.” This was to make the point that the painters’ aesthetic productions were linked to their psychopathology. That statement, for me, reverts to the theme often repeated in recent years about whether people should be defined and limited by their illness. I expect the debate, especially linked to art, will continue.

I include in this column, with the museum’s permission, a photo of the painting used as the thematic reference point of the exposition. It is an untitled piece done by Toubal in 1967. Her first name is unknown, and the work was discovered during inventory of the hospital’s reserve collection. It is possible to conclude that she had spent time as a patient in the hospital, but little else. However, she serves well as catalyst for the questions raised by Dubois. Are the paintings in the museum documents of psychopathology only to be studied? Or may they also be aesthetic objects, a form of art? And are the artists not free to make of their creativity what they wish? I certainly noticed their celebrity and enhanced visibility. ■