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Official YIFY movies site:
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What is madness?

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Madness is a shift from the norm

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and from reality.

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Madness can have multiple meanings, it is infinite.

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As is the norm.

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We have a view of madness today,

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but what was the view of madness

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in the 17th century, the 18th century,

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in the Middle Ages?

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Hieronymus Bosch depicts fantastical worlds,

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linked to madness and chaos.

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He shows the complete lack of reason

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of the world,

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populated by chimeras and monsters.

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In 1494, Sebastian Brant

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published The Ship of Fools.

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listing the vices

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of Brant's contemporaries,

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allegorically embarked on a drunken boat.

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The ultimate allegory of madness is the jester.

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He becomes the iconographic theme of

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the lack of reason of the world,

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of which he is a grotesque mirror.

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There is the greatest contempt for madness as an allegory,

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because the madman is by definition an immoral being.

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The stone of madness, or stone of the head,

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dates from the 16th, 17th century.

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It comes from the Flemish school of painting.

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The realism of certain scenes suggests that

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those operations may have taken place at fairs

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where people also went to get a tooth pulled out.

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Everything has been tried to cure madness,

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and nothing has succeeded,

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but it is precisely because nothing succeeded

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that they constantly tried other treatments.

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Which lead a madman of the 19th century to say:

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"the more skilled they are, the more they scare me".

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The melancholy figure is that angel,

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its face is leaning on its fist,

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surrounded by disturbing

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cabalistic and hermetic signs.

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There is also a disembowelled bat in the sky

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on which reads "Melancholia".

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Here are two much darker visions from Goya.

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One is a painting from 1794 that represents

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the Yard with Lunatics in Zaragoza,

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a violent scene with two naked men fighting.

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The other one is The Madhouse

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with similar scenes of naked, agitated men.

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They are left alone to themselves and their animality.

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In the Sainte-Anne asylum collection,

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the oldest works are

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representations of madness

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made by artists

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who were hospitalized at that time.

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The most famous one is

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the Monomania of Envy by Géricault.

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It was during Géricault's internment

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that his psychiatrist asked him

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to paint portraits of people around him.

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This is the beginning of activities offered to patients.

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Pinel and his assistant understood that

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when the patient was offered things to do

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or things to create,

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it was a huge step in giving them more freedom.

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This is also the beginning of a secret artistic production,

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as art therapy did not really exist then.

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This is the start of a lot of artworks

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that are now considered Art Brut.

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William Bouguereau, Oreste pursued by the Furies.

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Orestes killed the two murderers of his father for revenge.

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He is now pursued by the three Frinyes,

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the furies of the Romans.

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He is driven mad by their persistent screams.

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Orestes tries to escape

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while his mother collapses behind him,

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a dagger in her heart.

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This is The Mad Woman by Otto Dix.

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Otto Dix also painted Nocturnal Encounter with a Lunatic,

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and The Madwoman of St. Marie-à-Py in his series on war.

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No illness has been more

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represented in art than madness,

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it inspired artists to paint madness,

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but also inspired madmen to paint.

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It is a condition that still can't be cured today.

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We can channel it, try to suppress it,

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but we can't cure it.

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Instead of attracting compassion,

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madness sometimes attracts derision and scorn.

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We reject it because it scares us,

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as it can threaten any of us, at any time.

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So I understand why this strange condition,

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which is not foreign to us,

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inspired painters and artists so often.

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Some of these artists were visionaries.

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But does this mean they were mad?

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Some artists suffered from visions,

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and their art was a reflection

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of their unconscious,

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They painted in a completely different way,

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far from the rational view of the world,

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creating hallucinatory works.

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Goya became ill from 1793

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and he suddenly went deaf.

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He was completely locked up in his inner world

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because of his deafness,

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and this completely changed his iconography

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as he turned towards the dark side of himself.

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The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,

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we see Goya himself

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half asleep on his work table,

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with nocturnal creatures above him

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invading his space.

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They're an entry to the nocturnal world,

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the nightmare and the unconscious.

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The animals represented are all nyctalopes,

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they have nocturnal vision,

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they see what others do not see,

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and this visionary side

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is what Goya wants to show,

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the artist is able to see beyond reality

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and see what everyone else can't see.

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The Sabbaths, the witches,

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but also madness and the madman,

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Goya explores the world of the extraordinary,

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showing a humanity that is always at the margin.

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The Romantics turn to themselves,

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give more importance to passion than to reason

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and give free rein to their imagination,

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and this also lead to the unconscious.

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We are far from knowing what happens

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in the brain during the creative process,

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but one theory is that there is

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an unconscious maturation that occurs

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during artistic activities or mathematics.

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We see it on brain imaging,

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a person can have a lot of brain activation,

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without consciousness.

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There is an extraordinarily complex system

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of unconscious activity

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constantly happening in the brain,

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which is partly responsible for ideas

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that arise suddenly in consciousness

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and take the form of artistic or scientific creation.

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Towards the end of the 19th century, psychiatrists

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started to take an interest in art made by their patients.

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They called it the art of the insane.

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They were open-minded doctors that

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saved these productions from being destroyed.

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Many simply threw them away

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or saw them as symptoms of degeneration.

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There is also the Scottish collection of

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the Crichton Psychiatric Hospital, from 1870.

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The Crichton Asylum is a two-tier asylum,

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like the English society of the time,

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where poor patients are kept busy

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with work, gardening and workshops,

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but rich patients couldn't be made to work

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so were kept busy with various activities,

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including of course art workshops.

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It's at the beginning of the 20th century

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that doctors really became passionate

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about the art of their patients.

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Marcel Réja published Art in Mad Men in 1907,

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and Dr. Marie, from the same department,

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also set up a museum in Villejuif.

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This gallery opened in Paris this week,

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resembling all other galleries

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But all their artworks were painted by lunatics,

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and some resemble the greatest masters.

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This is also the beginning of modern art,

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and people discover prehistoric art and African art.

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1907 is also the year Picasso paints Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon.

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He made a clean sweep of everything,

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he reinvented arithmetic, geography, metric systems.

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This epic story is supported by a very complex system.

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It all makes sense, albeit in a very delirious mode.

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The Prinzhorn Collection was then used

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by the Nazis in their degenerate art exhibitions,

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where the works of patients were shown

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next to art by avant-garde artists

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to demonstrate that these artists were madmen

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and that their works could be destroyed.

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Surrealism was born in the late 191 Os,

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with a certain number of artists, poets, painters,

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that gathered around André Breton,

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who published the Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924.

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Everything was possible,

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the Surrealists gathered

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and undertook rituals in Paris...

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People were meeting each other

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thanks to fortuitous chance.

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André Breton was, as Marcel Duchamp said,

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"the lover of love in a world where prostitution reigns".

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His ecstasy, his youth and

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his vitality of thought inspired the others.

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The definition is quite simple:

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Surrealism will be a pure psychic automatism

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by which one proposes to express,

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the actual functioning of thought.

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Surrealism will try to highlight

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the unconscious mind in their art,

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previously discovered by psychoanalysts

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and especially by Freud.

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Freud's discoveries about dreams showed

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that there was an unconscious part of our minds,

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that allowed us to visualize

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the psychic reality of dreams.

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"The ego is not even master in its own house."

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Without necessarily being psychotic or crazy,

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we all have this unconscious behavior

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in everyday life and in dreams.

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The unconscious produces images,

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and the Surrealists tried by different techniques

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to reproduce these images

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that originated from their psyche.

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Dali read Freud's writings on paranoia.

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From a psychoanalytic point of view,

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paranoia is a frenzy of interpretation,

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it is not a hallucinatory phenomenon

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where we imagine things.

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The paranoid individual

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creates an interpretation of reality

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with elements drawn from reality,

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guided by an obsessing idea.

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Dali recognized himself in this process

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and he self-diagnosed as paranoid.

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Dali produced many paintings

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in which hidden images

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questioned the functioning of the mind.

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This "Paranoiac-Critical" method let him

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translate the visions and hallucinations

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that he experienced

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He wanted to express his fantasies

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through painting.

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Dali goes back and forth between

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the rational world and the irrational world,

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between the conscious and the unconscious,

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without falling into madness.

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He knows that some people did not manage to

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and have gone crazy,

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passing a point of no return.

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Thanks to Stefan Zweig,

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Dali meets Freud in London

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in July 1938.

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I brought Freud a painting, The Metamorphosis of
Narcissus,

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and he liked it a lot.

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I also brought him the text I wrote

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about paranoid-critical activity.

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And Freud didn't want to look at it,

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so I punched the table and said,

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you have to read it or the painting is worthless!

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Dali sought Freud's approval regarding

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the psychoanalytical depth of his painting.

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Unfortunately Freud refused to play this game.

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Freud told me that

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Surrealism didn't interest him much

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because the hidden meaning

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was already obvious in the paintings.

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Freud admits that after meeting

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this "fanatic Spaniard",

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his point of view on Surrealism changed,

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Freud no longer took them for lunatics

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but thought there may be something interesting about them.

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André Breton worked as a psychiatric nurse from 1916,

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and he is sent to Saint Dizier

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in a neuropsychiatric center.

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He meets soldiers coming back from the front,

271
00:45:13,964 --> 00:45:16,524
transformed by the experience of war.

272
00:45:17,964 --> 00:45:21,284
Breton discovers madness through their words

273
00:45:22,324 --> 00:45:24,684
and think their psychic dysfunction create

274
00:45:25,204 --> 00:45:27,924
an extremely interesting form of poetry.

275
00:45:29,084 --> 00:45:32,564
André Breton was especially interested in poetry.

276
00:45:32,844 --> 00:45:35,364
One of the thing that played a big role

277
00:45:35,644 --> 00:45:37,404
in the history of Surrealism

278
00:45:37,684 --> 00:45:40,404
was his approach of psychiatry

279
00:45:40,684 --> 00:45:42,644
and mad people.

280
00:45:44,124 --> 00:45:48,084
He focused on what we can call alienation,

281
00:45:48,364 --> 00:45:52,564
which is often close to both genius and poetry.

282
00:46:00,324 --> 00:46:04,204
Their creative process meant that

283
00:46:04,684 --> 00:46:08,364
madness was not just something destructive

284
00:46:08,644 --> 00:46:11,644
but sometimes enabled the creation

285
00:46:12,124 --> 00:46:15,324
of totally unconscious and superb work.

286
00:47:28,844 --> 00:47:31,324
Breton and Philippe Soupault decided

287
00:47:31,604 --> 00:47:34,044
to quickly write everything

288
00:47:34,324 --> 00:47:36,684
that passed through their heads.

289
00:47:37,084 --> 00:47:39,644
Those sentences and words formed

290
00:47:39,964 --> 00:47:43,484
a poetry of spontaneity and chance.

291
00:47:45,964 --> 00:47:47,644
A consciousness that lets itself go,

292
00:47:47,924 --> 00:47:50,244
far from any acquired morality,

293
00:47:50,524 --> 00:47:52,124
far from all culture,

294
00:47:52,404 --> 00:47:54,564
the conscious self must express itself,

295
00:47:54,884 --> 00:47:56,844
the real becomes the surreal.

296
00:48:15,844 --> 00:48:18,404
Breton takes a great interest in the experiments

297
00:48:18,764 --> 00:48:21,884
that Charcot conducted at the Salpétriére hospital,

298
00:48:22,324 --> 00:48:25,284
experiments on hypnosis and hysteria.

299
00:48:43,324 --> 00:48:47,204
Charcot's work showed that madness and hysteria

300
00:48:47,524 --> 00:48:50,484
weren't just hereditary conditions

301
00:48:50,844 --> 00:48:54,364
but were pathways of dysfunction of the psyche

302
00:48:54,844 --> 00:48:59,404
that could be understood differently.

303
00:49:30,364 --> 00:49:33,004
Many Surrealist experienced

304
00:49:33,284 --> 00:49:36,044
periods of internment in asylums:

305
00:49:36,684 --> 00:49:38,484
Leonora Carrington,

306
00:49:38,884 --> 00:49:41,284
Hans Bellmer's wife, Unica Zürn,

307
00:49:41,564 --> 00:49:43,844
and Antonin Artaud,

308
00:49:44,164 --> 00:49:46,564
one of the great figures of Surrealism.

309
00:49:47,524 --> 00:49:49,684
These artists had the experience

310
00:49:49,964 --> 00:49:51,804
of both being in the norm

311
00:49:52,444 --> 00:49:54,564
and at the same time

312
00:49:54,844 --> 00:49:57,684
of being interned

313
00:49:57,964 --> 00:50:00,524
in asylums.

314
00:50:02,164 --> 00:50:05,844
They tried to transcribe this experience

315
00:50:06,164 --> 00:50:09,364
into their art.

316
00:50:10,564 --> 00:50:11,484
Breton used to say:

317
00:50:11,764 --> 00:50:14,084
"Be careful not to go too far when painting,

318
00:50:14,564 --> 00:50:18,124
when searching for the unconscious, for automatism"

319
00:50:18,404 --> 00:50:21,244
as there was sometimes a point of no return.

320
00:50:21,764 --> 00:50:25,484
These experiences could be dangerous psychologically.

321
00:50:57,724 --> 00:51:00,684
Leonora Carrington was completely

322
00:51:00,964 --> 00:51:03,204
inhabited by her art,

323
00:51:03,604 --> 00:51:06,684
Her work draws on esotericism,

324
00:51:06,964 --> 00:51:09,004
magic and occultism.

325
00:51:09,404 --> 00:51:12,444
It's a door to the wonderful world

326
00:51:12,764 --> 00:51:16,444
of Carrington's universe.

327
00:51:22,364 --> 00:51:24,724
There was a similar context for Unica Zürn,

328
00:51:25,004 --> 00:51:27,084
she met Hans Bellmer,

329
00:51:27,404 --> 00:51:29,124
moved to Paris,

330
00:51:29,404 --> 00:51:32,044
and got involved in Surrealism.

331
00:51:32,964 --> 00:51:36,684
Her works reflected an unease and her madness

332
00:51:37,004 --> 00:51:39,324
and she was interned in psychiatric hospitals.

333
00:51:40,524 --> 00:51:42,604
In a book called Dark Spring,

334
00:51:42,884 --> 00:51:43,884
Unica Zürn

335
00:51:44,164 --> 00:51:46,524
experiences with a writing

336
00:51:46,804 --> 00:51:49,084
that goes through more or less normal phases

337
00:51:49,364 --> 00:51:52,484
but also into a descent into schizophrenic crises.

338
00:51:52,964 --> 00:51:56,204
We can see in her writing this crossing of borders

339
00:51:56,564 --> 00:51:59,884
between madness and non-madness.

340
00:52:00,804 --> 00:52:02,924
She talks about her illness

341
00:52:03,204 --> 00:52:04,844
with clarity and a lot of humor,

342
00:52:05,204 --> 00:52:07,364
she also describes her hallucinations.

343
00:52:07,644 --> 00:52:09,564
Both her book and visual productions

344
00:52:09,844 --> 00:52:11,284
are beautiful.

345
00:53:26,204 --> 00:53:27,484
Antonin Artaud said:

346
00:53:27,764 --> 00:53:31,484
"I am already dead, but I accept madness as life."

347
00:53:31,764 --> 00:53:33,644
Madness was his life.

348
00:53:48,244 --> 00:53:51,924
He wanted to challenge the official culture,

349
00:53:52,244 --> 00:53:55,444
specific to our Western way of thinking,

350
00:53:55,724 --> 00:53:58,164
where culture is placed in a dominant position,

351
00:53:58,564 --> 00:54:01,724
This culture is inhibiting, especially for art.

352
00:54:02,164 --> 00:54:05,044
It cuts you off from your creative roots.

353
00:54:57,684 --> 00:55:00,484
Augustin Lesage was at the bottom of a coal mine in 1912

354
00:55:00,764 --> 00:55:02,324
when he heard a voice telling him

355
00:55:02,604 --> 00:55:03,884
that he must become a painter.

356
00:55:05,724 --> 00:55:07,324
He told one of his friends

357
00:55:07,604 --> 00:55:09,444
and they joined a spirit circle.

358
00:55:09,724 --> 00:55:12,244
During a seance, Lesage's hand takes a pencil,

359
00:55:12,524 --> 00:55:14,564
and starts drawing without control.

360
00:55:20,644 --> 00:55:22,284
Mediumnic artists fascinate me,

361
00:55:24,244 --> 00:55:27,284
these great delirious artists inhabited by God.

362
00:55:27,564 --> 00:55:30,044
Their hand move freely,

363
00:55:30,564 --> 00:55:32,564
inspired by spirits and the dead.

364
00:55:32,884 --> 00:55:35,804
This is not far from big psychotic delusions.

365
00:55:39,764 --> 00:55:43,724
George Widener has the same syndrome as Rain Man:

366
00:55:44,124 --> 00:55:47,204
the extraordinary memory capacity.

367
00:55:47,564 --> 00:55:49,684
You give him a page and in a split second

368
00:55:50,084 --> 00:55:51,724
he memorizes it all.

369
00:55:52,724 --> 00:55:55,444
George Widener tries to predict the future,

370
00:55:55,724 --> 00:55:57,284
having invented

371
00:55:57,564 --> 00:55:59,484
a whole system of grids of numbers

372
00:55:59,764 --> 00:56:02,244
to anticipate what will happen.

373
00:56:03,364 --> 00:56:05,724
In his artwork called Sunday Crash,

374
00:56:06,004 --> 00:56:08,084
he wrote down all the plane crashes

375
00:56:08,524 --> 00:56:12,124
that will happen on Sundays during the next 100 years.

376
00:56:17,644 --> 00:56:20,204
Henry Darger's great work is

377
00:56:20,564 --> 00:56:23,284
this 15,000-page novel,

378
00:56:23,564 --> 00:56:25,804
The Realms of the Unreal,

379
00:56:26,364 --> 00:56:30,644
which is a great saga with a war between two clans.

380
00:56:31,684 --> 00:56:34,724
The story is centered around the Vivian Girls,

381
00:56:35,124 --> 00:56:37,884
seven little princesses who fight

382
00:56:38,244 --> 00:56:39,324
against the bad adults,

383
00:56:39,684 --> 00:56:40,604
the Glandelinians.

384
00:56:44,604 --> 00:56:46,444
All the clichés about the purity of the artist

385
00:56:46,724 --> 00:56:48,764
are actually true for Darger,

386
00:56:49,284 --> 00:56:52,284
he is the ultimate self-taught outsider

387
00:56:52,564 --> 00:56:55,324
and his work was discovered after his death.

388
00:57:38,524 --> 00:57:41,884
People who are considered marginals or abnormals

389
00:57:42,164 --> 00:57:46,684
are suddenly the best example of individual freedom.

390
00:57:48,644 --> 00:57:50,844
Art brut can even remain secret.

391
00:57:51,684 --> 00:57:53,844
This is the freest act of creation.

392
00:57:54,644 --> 00:57:56,524
The artists do not create to be recognized,

393
00:57:56,844 --> 00:57:59,444
they do not create to sell or to eat,

394
00:57:59,924 --> 00:58:01,244
the artists only create to exist.

395
00:58:01,524 --> 00:58:03,764
It's an extraordinary lesson on a human level.

396
00:58:27,644 --> 00:58:29,724
These artists invent a new system,

397
00:58:30,284 --> 00:58:32,804
the ability to invent

398
00:58:33,084 --> 00:58:34,924
new forms and languages.

399
00:58:39,724 --> 00:58:40,724
It appeals to us because

400
00:58:41,004 --> 00:58:42,844
I think that this system

401
00:58:43,164 --> 00:58:45,604
uses ancient mental structures

402
00:58:45,884 --> 00:58:48,324
that we all have when we are babies.

403
00:58:51,764 --> 00:58:54,444
The mind of these artists function

404
00:58:54,724 --> 00:58:57,484
in a complete different way than ours.

405
00:59:00,564 --> 00:59:03,684
Normal people compartmentalize everything:

406
00:59:04,164 --> 00:59:07,324
history, geography, God, science, etc.

407
00:59:07,764 --> 00:59:09,044
Psychotics don't.

408
00:59:11,164 --> 00:59:14,764
We performed experiments on schizophrenic patients.

409
00:59:15,164 --> 00:59:18,564
Their unconscious treatment of information was fine,

410
00:59:18,844 --> 00:59:20,404
even slightly increased,

411
00:59:20,684 --> 00:59:22,644
but their awareness of conscious information

412
00:59:22,924 --> 00:59:24,324
was abnormal.

413
00:59:24,764 --> 00:59:27,804
It means that reality always appears abnormal,

414
00:59:28,124 --> 00:59:29,924
at all levels of the brain.

415
00:59:32,644 --> 00:59:35,004
The consequence is that

416
00:59:35,284 --> 00:59:37,444
patients start confabulating,

417
00:59:37,724 --> 00:59:40,284
thinking there are hidden levels of reality,

418
00:59:40,564 --> 00:59:42,684
that they are being spied on,

419
00:59:42,964 --> 00:59:45,564
that people know too much about them,

420
00:59:46,084 --> 00:59:47,484
a certain sense of paranoia.

421
00:59:51,724 --> 00:59:52,724
We can speculate

422
00:59:53,084 --> 00:59:55,484
on what it does to their mind:

423
00:59:55,964 --> 00:59:59,284
a liberation of some unconscious behaviors,

424
00:59:59,564 --> 01:00:02,084
that are repetitive and automatic.

425
01:01:26,844 --> 01:01:28,884
You very rarely find representations

426
01:01:29,284 --> 01:01:31,884
of the suffering mad man in art brut.

427
01:01:32,924 --> 01:01:34,484
In the history of art,

428
01:01:34,764 --> 01:01:37,044
this extreme pain has been shown many times.

429
01:01:38,684 --> 01:01:41,444
When Goya paints madness,

430
01:01:41,724 --> 01:01:43,444
he shows the anguished madman,

431
01:01:43,724 --> 01:01:45,324
the hallucinated madman,

432
01:01:46,684 --> 01:01:48,524
but they never showed

433
01:01:48,884 --> 01:01:51,684
the psychic, creative richness

434
01:01:52,004 --> 01:01:54,244
of this ability to create.

435
01:01:54,564 --> 01:01:56,284
Only mad people can.

436
01:01:58,644 --> 01:02:01,164
Art and madness have always coexisted.

437
01:02:01,524 --> 01:02:03,924
It is obvious that there is often

438
01:02:04,204 --> 01:02:08,804
a form of creativity in psychiatric conditions.

439
01:03:14,484 --> 01:03:16,844
Alienation can lead to creativity,

440
01:03:17,164 --> 01:03:20,244
which reminds me of Edgar Poe's famous statement:

441
01:03:20,564 --> 01:03:22,484
"Men have called me crazy,

442
01:03:22,804 --> 01:03:25,244
but science has not yet decided

443
01:03:25,524 --> 01:03:27,284
whether madness is, or not,

444
01:03:27,564 --> 01:03:29,484
the greatest intelligence.

445
01:03:50,724 --> 01:03:52,444
Madness is not fun or enjoyable,

446
01:03:52,724 --> 01:03:54,364
so we must also demystify it.

447
01:03:55,324 --> 01:03:57,844
It fascinates me, because it allows me

448
01:03:58,164 --> 01:04:00,244
to understand areas of the brain

449
01:04:00,524 --> 01:04:02,324
that are extraordinary

450
01:04:02,844 --> 01:04:04,724
but that does not mean

451
01:04:05,004 --> 01:04:06,604
that it is wonderful to be mad.

452
01:04:09,244 --> 01:04:11,164
One can have a rejoicing view of madness

453
01:04:11,444 --> 01:04:12,524
through Art Brut,

454
01:04:12,804 --> 01:04:15,884
but the artists suffer from their difficulty

455
01:04:16,284 --> 01:04:19,404
to fit with the reality of the world.

456
01:04:20,004 --> 01:04:21,684
But they also have an experience

457
01:04:21,964 --> 01:04:23,884
and understanding of the world

458
01:04:24,164 --> 01:04:25,724
totally different from ours,

459
01:04:26,004 --> 01:04:28,524
and at times, what comes out of these experiences

460
01:04:28,884 --> 01:04:31,324
is magical, a great work of art.