Madness and Modernity
Architecture, Art and Mental Illness
in Vienna and the Habsburg Empire, 1890-1914
2004-2008
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Grants scheme, this project examined the emergence of the relationship between the visual arts and mental illness in Vienna and the Habsburg Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. Avant-garde movements in the arts concerned themselves throughout the modern period with mental illness, with the experience of it, the objects it produces, the science and myth surrounding it, and systems developed to relieve or cure it. This project took a new approach to the study of this complex nexus that integrated, for the first time in this area, the fine arts, design, architecture and urbanism.
'Madness and Modernity: Mental Illness and the Visual Arts in Vienna 1900', a major international loan exhibition curated by Gemma Blackshaw and Leslie Topp, will be at Wellcome Collection, London from 1 April to 28 June 2009. For more information see please visit the Wellcome Collection website |
