La colección Prinzhorn: Una relación falaz entre el arte y la locura. Prinzhorn: a fallacious relation between art and madness

Abstract

This article intends to show how psychiatry, along its history, has kept a fallacious relationship with art. The authors use, from the early twenties, the study about the art of the insane by doctor Hans Prinzhorn. The tradition interested in the relationship between creativity, art and insane goes back to antiquity, and arrives until the appearance of psychology and psychiatry. Distinguished authors studied the psychology of art in depth and influenced Prinzhorn and, similarly, he influenced on 20th century vanguards artists. The main difficult on his study is the impossibility of art and psychology to belong to the same scientific methodology. Different variables individual believes; currents of thought; social, political and artistic movements…- conditioned the most part of the Prinzhorn's scientific conclusions. Finally, the Prinzhorn's study influence on 20th century art is analysed, and also it is how has changed the conception about the art of the mentally ill until being understood as a tool for communication and expression.