As an Art Management major at Purchase, I have an interest in Art History so every semester I try to take at least one art history class. This semester I am taking this really interesting class called Madness and Modernity. We look at the art depicting, influenced and created by those who are considered insane, whether they really were crazy or not.
Right now we are covering a section called "Art of the Insane." We are looking at many different examples of art done by inmates of varies asylums across Europe and the art done by those who were influenced by it. One of the artist we looked at is Paul Klee.
Paul Klee was born near Bern, Switzerland but moved to Munich. What interested me about his 
work is his philosophy. He studied the art made by the insane and of children and used it in his own art. He looked at the art of the insane and of children not because related to them or was insane himself which many critics at the time wrote about him and other artist who took interest in the art of the insane, but saw that their art helda kind of creative purity that most art lacks. He believe that as a result of all the training artist went through and looking at their predecessors, there was a disruption of the free-flow of creativity. He argued that the art of children and the insane opened a door that was closed to most artists too early. So by studying the art of the insane he hope to re-open this door and create art of free-form and rebel against more accepted forms of art. By no means was it about emotions, most of his art has a sense of control but it is more about non-conformity and flowing through different forms of reality. Also, I think that the element of different realities comes from looking at art of the asylum inmates since some people who are mentally unstable often talk about seeing or believeing in other levels of realities different from the one we live in like what Paul Schreber wrote about in Memoirs of My Nervous Illness 
(good book though some of the stuff he writes about is pretty out there).
work is his philosophy. He studied the art made by the insane and of children and used it in his own art. He looked at the art of the insane and of children not because related to them or was insane himself which many critics at the time wrote about him and other artist who took interest in the art of the insane, but saw that their art helda kind of creative purity that most art lacks. He believe that as a result of all the training artist went through and looking at their predecessors, there was a disruption of the free-flow of creativity. He argued that the art of children and the insane opened a door that was closed to most artists too early. So by studying the art of the insane he hope to re-open this door and create art of free-form and rebel against more accepted forms of art. By no means was it about emotions, most of his art has a sense of control but it is more about non-conformity and flowing through different forms of reality. Also, I think that the element of different realities comes from looking at art of the asylum inmates since some people who are mentally unstable often talk about seeing or believeing in other levels of realities different from the one we live in like what Paul Schreber wrote about in Memoirs of My Nervous Illness 
(good book though some of the stuff he writes about is pretty out there).His style is very spastic so it makes it hard to actually place he in any particular movement though he had interactions with artist in the German Expressionist movement. In some of his pieces flip-flops between three-dimensional and two-dimensional figures which goes back to going between differnt realityies. He also uses recognizable symbols like in Wildman (at the right) he uses an arrow in place of a penis (kind of random if you ask me). Sometimes his work was just unsettling and piercing and then there are others where you can definitely see the influence of child art (like the image above) because he does a great job of capturing that child-like visual without it being sloppy or looking like a kid actually did it; it is very controlled and intentional. This is one of the reasons I like his stuff. In the end, I think his stuff, more than anything, represents the outsider looking at what is going on around him/her and interpreting what they see.
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