artful-insanity

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Alberto Martini (1876-1954) - Folly, 1914

from the 'Misteri' series, published 1915

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Viktor Oliva - Absinthe drinker.

A similar painting, here

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“To the person in the Bell Jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream”

— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

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— Sylvia Plath, from “The Bell Jar.”

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Automaton doll possibly made by an unknown patient at Bedlam/ London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital, 1800s.

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Ophelia by Henri Lehmann (1847)

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Ophelia by Henrietta Rae (1890)

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Ophelia (James Sant, S. XIX)

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Ophelia Drowning by Paul Albert Steck (1895)

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Ophelia by Joseph Kirkpatrick (1896)

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Ophelia by Arthur Hughes (1865)

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Elektra, Sophocles Translated by Anne Carson

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There runs a crisscross pattern of small leaves Espalier, in a fading summer air, And there Ophelia walks, an azure flower, Whom wind, and snowflakes, and the sudden rain Of love’s wild skies have purified to heaven. There is a beauty past all weeping now In that sweet, crooked mouth, that vacant smile; Only a lonely grey in those mad eyes, Which never on earth shall learn their loneliness. And when amid startled birds she sings lament, Mocking in hope the long voice of the stream, It seems her heart’s lute hath a broken string. Ivy she hath, that to old ruin clings; And rosemary, that sees remembrance fade; And pansies, deeper than the gloom of dreams; But ah! if utterable, would this earth Remain the base, unreal thing it is? Better be out of sight of peering eyes; Out—out of hearing of all-useless words, Spoken of tedious tongues in heedless ears. And lest, at last, the world should learn heart-secrets; Lest that sweet wolf from some dim thicket steal; Better the glassy horror of the stream.

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Ophelia

Walter de la Mare  1873-1956

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Graphic - Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret  1852-1929

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Gustave Doré (1832-1883) "La folie" Oil on canvas Located in the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, Wales

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When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, from Don Quixote, 1605

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Two paintings of the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. First painting: "At the very end of the 18th century, the early humanitarian reforms in the treatment of the mentally ill were initiated here by Philippe Pinel (1745–1826), friend of the Encyclopédistes. The iconic image of Pinel as the liberator of the insane was created in 1876 by Tony Robert-Fleury." (wikipedia) Second painting: "The painting [...] depicts the eminent French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) delivering a clinical lecture and demonstration" of a "a woman convulsing and assuming the arc-in-circle, "the hysteric's classic posture". (wikipedia)