Anger’s New Book to Explore Surrealism and Female Mental Illness

Professor of Art History Jenny Anger is studying how admiration for feminine “madness” has affected the reality of women artists with mental illness. She is writing a new book that will explore how the surrealist movement in art idealized women with mental illness. Male artists believed that women with “hysteria” had special access to truth that others did not, Anger explains.

The art world often considers male artists with mental illness geniuses, Anger says. Van Gogh is a good example. “Women are just thought to be mad,” she says.

Anger wants to explore how this attitude affected the lives of practicing women artists. “Did that myth prohibit the work of women artists with mental illness or was it somehow productive for them?” she asks. “That’s the big question of the book.”

She adds, “I think it could be interesting for the mental health community here at the College. It might be nice to see that you can, in fact, be successful with mental illness.”

Anger is focusing on the work of several women artists of the period, including Dora Maar (who fell into deep depression after a relationship with Picasso ended); Leonora Carrington (who had a psychotic episode while escaping from the Nazis); and Sonja Sekula (who had schizophrenia). The Grinnell College Museum owns three of Sekula’s works, which Anger says are stunning. She is working with Dan Strong, associate director and curator of exhibitions at the museum, to develop an exhibition of works by women artists with mental illness.

“I’m interested in different kinds of mental illness and how they may or may not affect people,” Anger explains.

Anger says that publication of the book, which could evolve into an anthology including the work of several other authors, is still in the future. She hopes to integrate her work on the subject with the next Exhibition Seminar, an art history class in which students stage an exhibition. The course would explore surrealism, women artists with mental illness, and how to build an exhibition, Anger says.