Barbara Suckfüll

Farmer Barbara Suckfüll, at the age of 50, started to hear voices. In 1910, under their command, she began to draw outlines of dishes and cutlery. Writing along and in between the outlines, Suckfüll captures in words her everyday life in the Heidelberg asylum: what she thought, did or ate, her rows with the nurses and what the voices told her. Every word is followed by a full stop, resulting in a dense net of marks that dissolves into abstraction. All Suckfüll’s drawings, which have an aerial perspective, depict the domestic objects that were brought to her cell. There is no three dimensional space and each flattened object is outlined with a succession of 2s, crosses or pinpricks which form chains in an attempt to establish boundaries. (Dissolving of the ego in psychosis leads to the inability to determine where the subject ends and the Other begins.) Suckfüll, it appears does not have the co-ordinates with which to understand the physical world. As there is no fixed view point she found it necessary to turn the paper as she worked. With both the object and the name placed on the paper via the gesture she attempts to stop meaning from sliding off.In an attempt to build herself a structure each word is pinned down with a full-stop. Here the nurse or ‘Red Devil’ brings in a washbasin: 

And.Today.It.Is.Sunday.Too.The.First.Sunday.After.The.Assumption.Too.And.So.It.Will.Be.The.Twentyfirst.This.Is.Fine.I.Think.And.That.Is.the.Washbasin.You.See.I.Have.Drawn.That.Too.One.Time.Too.And.Then.Today.The.Redhead.Brought.Cold.Washing.Water.It.Was.Too.Cold.What.She.Brought.Today.And.The.Second.Devil.Was.On.The.Lookout.I.Heard.That.Myself.Too. 

The words are carefully written in and around the linear image of the washbasin. All space is filled and even the spaces between words are punctuated.

Johann Fischer

Johann Fischer was born in Kirchberg am Wagram, a small town west of Austria, in 1919. While he initially trained and worked as a baker, in 1940 he enlisted in the military. Held captive during WWII, six years later he returned home and began to work on his parent’s farm. This marked the beginning of the deterioration of his mental health, and in 1967 he was hospitalized for hallucinations. For Fischer, this time represents a death of the outside world followed by a “rebirth” in the hospital. He believes that his previous life was not his own but someone else’s whom he has named his “predecessor”. He states: “I was made-created-made on June 16th, 1967, at the cemetery of the Kierling-gugging hospital, between 6:30 and 10:00 PM, by the father of my predecessor god the father almighty. And from a little seed, drawn from the well of proper seeds, following an additional wish.” Johann Fischer joined the Gugging house of artists in 1981. Inspired by the artwork of the other residents of Gugging, he began to draw himself. He is always the first artist to be working on his drawings every morning. His early drawings were of isolated animals and people, but with time his compositions became increasingly complex. Most of his later works include text that Fischer scripts beautifully on the page. In his artwork he tells stories about winemaking, farming, politics and life in the Gugging house of artists.

Emma Hauck

On February 7th of 1909, a 30-year-old mother of two by the name of Emma Hauck was admitted to the psychiatric hospital of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, having recently been diagnosed with dementia praecox. The outlook improved briefly and a month later she was discharged, only to be readmitted within weeks as her condition deteriorated further. Sadly, the downturn continued and in August of that year, with her illness deemed “terminal” and rehabilitation no longer an option, Emma was transferred to Wiesloch asylum, the facility in which she would pass away eleven years later. It was around this time that a heartbreaking collection of letters, some of which can be seen below, were discovered in the archives of the Heidelberg hospital; all written obsessively in Emma’s hand during her second stay at the clinic in 1909, at a time when reports indicate she was relentlessly speaking of her family. Each desperate letter is directed at her absent husband, Mark, and every page is thick with overlapping text. Some are so condensed as to be illegible; some read “Herzensschatzi komm” (“Sweetheart come”) over and over; others simply repeat the plea, “komm komm komm,” (“come come come”) thousands of times. None were sent.

Johann Knüpfer

Johann Knüpfer was a schizophrenic outsider artist and one of the "schizophrenic masters" profiled by Hans Prinzhorn in his field-defining work Artistry of the Mentally Ill. Knüpfer was a baker's apprentice for three years as a youth before moving to a large city where he worked in a cement factory and learned the trade of locksmithing. His friends persuaded him to marry, but the union was unhappy from the start. He was an alcoholic and an abusive husband, and mistrusted not only his wife but everyone he knew. He attempted suicide in 1902 and was committed soon afterwards. It became evident that he had been having paranoiac delusions for years, and visions in which Christ explained why he was being persecuted. He told psychiatrists that "no one had suffered as much, not even Christ". His works can be divided into two categories, the formal religious images covered with oracular inscriptions and the paintings of memories from his youth. Both categories display a preoccupation with symmetry and a fascination with circles.

John Bennett. Las Agne.

las agne

yr cheese sneeze foc

us nekkid negck  st

reaked with foam the

thick beach

rabb its tw

it,chin,,,g

.d..u...s....t................

Gregory Corso. Original drawing 1970

Eoin McHugh