Pittura di un folle. Oskar Herzberg o l’impossibile fabbricazione del sé in uno studio di Günther Anders

Abstract

Paris, 1934: the exhibition of Oskar Herzberg (1844-1917) Peinture d’un fou. L’Art schizophrénique opens with an introductory lecture. Among the speakers is a young Günther “Anders” Stern (1902-1992) during his first exile. The philosopher raises the question of what is at an existential stake for a painter condemned by mental distress to a state of alienation, while probing the procedures used in his peculiar creative process. In an attempt to study the art of this illustrious representative of “art brut” - to use a term that will only emerge in 1945 -, Anders seems to mobilize part of the heritage of the notions transmitted by his parents, renowned psychologists, put to the service of his first reflections on philosophical Anthropology. The human being is built in experience: this difficult balance between the impossibility of completely grasping a world of which man has no prior knowledge, and the possibility, as a necessity and a freedom, to act, despite this lack, a posteriori, which is illustrated in an emblematic way by Herzberg’s pictorial production, it is at the center of the human paradox in Anders’ reflections. At the same time, Herzberg’s production also represents the former variation in Anders’ sketching in arts his “man without a world”. Peinture des fous is therefore one of the first opportunities for the thinker, despite the conciseness of the text, to argue, through an analysis crossing Aesthetics, Psychiatry and Phenomenology, on the impossible overcoming of a constitutive extraneousness. My essay intends to comment on these “raw” and still almost forgotten lines, which are thematically exceptional for their theoretical contribution in terms of research/fugue from the world, but also because Anders will not treat again either of the artist in question – whose artworks today are also part of the famous Prinzhorn collection - nor will he look to other representatives of “art brut”.