CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Leni Van Goidsenhoven
The fifth and latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (also known as “the bible of psychiatry”) dismisses a number of categories that until recently were frequently used, including Asperger Syndrome, PDD-NOS, and Autism Syndrome. All are now classified under one big common denominator: “autism spectrum disorder.” As a result, “autism”1 is defined as a neurological developmental disorder that covers a broad spectrum.2 In the course of the 20th century, our knowledge and understanding of autism, deeply embedded in historical, social, cultural, and discursive contexts, underwent a remarkable evolution. Autism grew into a flexible and multivalent signifier, spurred on by continuous interest in circles of academic research and by unceasing attention from popular culture. Controversies about diagnostic criteria, medications or treatments attest to the prominence of this neuropsychiatric condition in public and professional imaginations. Along with deepening of academic research and widening of public debate, an industry arose to guarantee steady popularization of autism studies. It comprised fashionable alternative therapies and self-help books, autobiographies and blogs, adaptations in literature, cinema, and television.
At the start of the 20th century, Eugene Bleuler coined the term “autism” to explain specific behavior among schizophrenic patients, emphasizing the process of aversion from reality through withdrawal into a fantasy world. In the next three decades, the notion occupied a marginal position in psychiatric vocabulary. From the early 1940s on, however, autism managed to manifest itself as a distinctive diagnostic category and pathology, thanks to child psychiatrist Leo Kanner and pediatrician Hans Asperger, among others. The tone of the autism-discourse was set, and the notion lost every connection with fantasy, creativity, or imagination. The opposite aspect, a complete absence of fantasy, creativity, or imagination, became central to the discourse. Nevertheless, over the last ten years, the “autism landscape” has even witnessed a genuine artistic revolution. The condition, and the persons who have been diagnosed with it (those who are “living on the spectrum”), became the center of museum exhibitions, theater and dance productions, creative workshops, and artistic health projects. In Europe, and especially in Belgium, the so-called “ateliers” or creative workshops have established a close relationship with well-known museums of art brut and outsider art (notably, Museum Dr. Guislain, MADmusée, Art & Marges). These activities deserve a warm welcome, but have not yet achieved critical integration into the discourse of outsider art. Furthermore, it remains unclear what their influence would be on current thinking about outsider art or art brut, and how exactly such an influence would function.
The artistic “turn” also triggered the emergence of notions such as “autistic art” and “autistic aesthetics.” They appeared, and continue to appear, in contexts that have a higher degree of specialization, but also spread through popular media and communication channels. All this raises questions about the meaning and functioning of the notions, and about the status of “the autistic artist” implied in a concept of “autistic art.” Perhaps of fundamental importance is the question of whether the notions can form an obstacle to any valuing of autism as a potential enrichment of art and culture.
Ateliers, or Workshops
Workshops (ateliers) and creative courses have made their way into psychiatric buildings and care centers for quite some time now. Expressive therapy, music, dance, and theater are believed to stimulate inclusion, provide (reflexive) insights into the identity of “the other,” and help develop talents that lie dormant. This creative therapy frequently serves a larger treatment, is bound by a program, and answers to pedagogical objectives—after all, a trajectory needs to be covered. Apart from these “creative little hours” within the framework of more meaningful therapeutic guidance, there are also contexts created by organizations (so-called ateliers) in which the focus on art and creative expression is completely detached from the pursuit of specific solutions, remedies, or treatments.
One of the first workshops in Belgium that directly addressed persons with an artistic talent and a limitation was Créahm (1979, Liège). The workshop’s activities resisted all understanding within the rigid structure of hospital activities or other medical-mental treatments. The primary objective was the creation of a safe environment within which a vulnerable group was challenged artistically and was given the opportunity to develop. The workshop’s supervisors were not therapists or caregivers, but persons with an artistic background. They helped to create a clear structure and a relaxed, inspiring atmosphere. A central aspect of the workshops were project-related collaborations with contemporary artists, including authors, playwrights, and visual artists, which gave rise to intense and enriching collaborative relationships. Thanks to this method, Créahm established a solid reputation in Europe, being recognized as a pioneer in the field of inclusive projects. Following in the wake of Créahm, workshops mushroomed across the Belgian map. A few examples are De Zandberg (Harelbeke), La ‘S’ Grand Atelier (Vielsalm), and Platform K (Gent). A number of workshops, such as (W)onderweg and Aanbeeld Autimistisch Atelier (Puurs), focused specifically on persons with autism. Aanbeeld Autimistisch Atelier, for example, is an atelier for and by persons with autism. All these workshops were intended for people that have the common property of being vulnerable in society, yet they did not share one univocal method. Each possessed, and continues to develop, its own context, rhythm, method, and artistic discipline(s).
Whenever there is talk of art within a framework of autism (and, by extension, of persons with vulnerabilities or disabilities of a psychiatric nature), the discussion invariably leads to the notion of art brut or outsider art (the Anglo-Saxon alternative notion). The ateliers, however, form a kind of Fremdkörper within the classic story of art brut, as they attempt to disrupt the discourse from the inside out. They raise questions about the initial definition of art brut, formulated by Jean Dubuffet shortly before World War II.3 It is true that workshops focus on vulnerable persons who, for one or the other reason, lead a life of isolation, yet they also offer a frame of reference, courses, and guidance. People can open up artistically, broaden the horizon, and attend further training, as well as enter into a dialogue with artistic paradigms and traditions. This collides with Dubuffet’s initial notions of “authenticity,” “naturalness,” and “spontaneity.” In addition, workshops regularly collaborate with contemporary artists. The exchange is characterized by an understanding of mutual influencing. Contemporary artists have stopped looking at “outsiders” as a potential source of inspiration for new directions chosen in their own artistic trajectory. The core of the exchange lies in the encounter, in the interaction with each other, and in the dialogues. Collaborations of this kind wipe the floor with the Romantic myth of the authentic, lonesome artist as a creative genius.
Exhibitions resulting from creative workshops are very interesting high-profiled events. In Belgium, museums specialized in art brut such as the Belgian MADmusée (Luik), Museum Dr. Guislain (Gent), Art & Marges (Brussel) and WIT.H (Kortrijk) have shown great expertise and professionalism in setting up productive collaborations with the workshops. Regretfully, there is still very little reflection on this complex practice. In the rare event of attention being paid to the projects, reflections quickly slip into the feeble and uncritical discourse that surrounds social-artistic work.
Autism as a Metaphor for the Creative Process
Creative workshop activities, exhibition projects, and the accompanying shift in focus toward capabilities are now manifest presences in the “autism landscape.” Overall, the practice is extremely praiseworthy, deserving support on a permanent basis. Still, the field also shows a trend that raises questions, particularly concerning the interaction with, and designation of, this creative work. In the last few years, for example, there has been a growing use of terms such as “autistic art” and “autistic aesthetics.”
Again, this is not the first new development in the conceptual history of autism, nor is it the first time that autism is employed as an adjective or as a metaphor. Since the 1990s, the term has lived its own life. Both in fictional and nonfictional worlds, autism often served an external goal, reducing the condition to the status of a prop or accessory. In the media, for example, the term was abundantly used to refer to unusual, strange, and even dangerous social or political situations and persons. Stuart Murray was right to claim that “the condition has become almost ubiquitous frame of reference for recent notions of difference….] Such usage is the product of a slippage of terminology, a widening of meaning, which displays the manner in which an idea of autism has spread through public culture.”4
“Autistic art” or “autistic aesthetics” initially appeared to be innocent terms, which mainly popped up in online contexts such as blogs, and intended to bring the creative work of persons with autism into the limelight. The existence of Facebook communities should be viewed along the same line (e.g., autistic artist, autistic arts, and autistic art space). These groups also promote the creative work (and by extension, talent) of people with autism, yet are mainly concerned with community building and, by extension, with managing the interests of persons with autism. Of a less innocent nature, however, is the growing frequency with which both art historians and psychiatrists make explicit mention of “autism and art,” as if it concerned a separate category. Thus, Out of Art: Magazine for Contemporary Outsider Art, one of the few (and therefore leading) journals about outsider art in the Low Countries, has already published two issues about the subject in less than a decade (2006, 2013). In the same way, the exhibition akku e.V., I See What You Don’t See. Art and Autism (2010), which explicitly and exclusively focuses on autistic art, has been traveling around the world for a number of years now. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue of over 300 pages containing essays by experts such as Elsen Volker, Roger Cardinal, and Sabiene Autsch. The volume would be quite a nut to crack, were it not for its frequent and conspicuous use of the term “autistic art” without ever offering an interpretation or throwing some light on what is to be understood with the term. The book also lacks every form of reflection about the discussed (therapeutic) ateliers or about their role within outsider art. Apart from this, the recent years were also marked by a swift rise of small-scale exhibition projects around autism and art that usually promote some form of charity. Because of this, the conceptual pairing of “autism” and “art” acquired a touch of obscurity and the connotation of lack of substance.
There is still more. The examples do not only show that “autistic art”—because of its name or because of the diagnosis?—does not belong to the corpus of outsider art or art brut, but also that plain commercial interest lies in wait (these days, autism seems to hold great attraction for people). Furthermore, there is the clear and present danger of what can be called a “savant rhetoric.”
In the context of autism, savant rhetoric implies speaking about autism in terms of “intellectual disability” combined with “very sizeable talent or extreme giftedness” that exceeds “the limits of normality.” It also covers the use of the terms “idiot savant,” “learned idiot,” or “knowledgeable idiot.” The idea that persons with autism possess a spectacular talent but otherwise remain completely context-blind and alienated was avidly picked up by popular culture and its fictional worlds. It also occurred in contexts that involved art and autism.5 Famous examples of “autism celebrities” or “phenomena” are Nadia and Stephen Wiltshire. At the age of three, Nadia was able to draw perfect perspectival drawings, while Stephen, also known as “the living camera,” drew cities from a bird’s eye view or in panorama. Wiltshire only needs to see the cities for a few seconds to memorize them and to be able to draw them by heart, even in the smallest details. The architectural artist has his own gallery and is prominently present on YouTube, where possible skeptics can become eyewitnesses of this “abnormal talent.” Nadia and Wiltshire are never approached as artists per se. As far as their spectacular talent is concerned, the emphasis is always on their condition of autism. Just as the view that focused too heavily on deficit, this approach to the savant disengages autism from every sense of humanity. What’s more, the mode of thinking feeds the idea that everyone on the spectrum must possess an outsized talent or extreme giftedness, which in turn reinforces a contradictory inclusion story and adds curious value judgments.
Terms such as “autistic art” and “autistic artist,” which regularly pop up in social media, exhibition catalog, and academic texts, implicitly feed the savant discourse. Furthermore, the terminology of “autistic art” is something of an oddity in the context of outsider art, in which there are no other categories based on disorders, conditions, or syndromes of the artists involved. It is as if the designation of autism serves no other purpose than flirting with the popularity (and, by extension, with the commercial dimension) of the condition in popular culture.
Apart from this, the central problem with a term such as “autistic art” is that hardly any clarity exists about its meaning, or the function it fulfills. Thus, “autistic art” could refer to the Romantic idea that art or creative expression is an extraordinary way of getting to see the “true person.” The term would then function as a diagnostic category, implying that the disorder or mental condition can be detected and understood through the art. This view, however, was eclipsed long ago. More than likely this is not what is currently meant by the term “autistic art.” What seems to be the case, rather, is that “autistic art” is being employed as an aesthetic category. Researchers such as art historian Roger Cardinal (2010) and psychologist Ilona Roth (2014), for instance, are seeking the “typically cognitive autistic style” through fixated aesthetic qualities such as trueness to life and nature, sense of detail, and repetitiveness. Working from a medical perspective, physicians like Kyle Hunter (2012) attempt to connect cognitive elements with aesthetic views, in order to construct a profile of the “autistic artist.”6 These understandings, however, are also not without problems. By creating a category of this sort, autism is watered down to a metaphor of the creative process. Consequently, it detracts from its complexity as a neurological condition, and evidently also from the essence of art and creative expression.
Today, the terms “autistic art” and “autistic artist” still impede any richness and multidimensionality that autism could inject into art and culture. The question of what would be a different way of addressing the matter is difficult to answer. Perhaps artists who are working implicitly or explicitly with or around the matter can shed some light. In this respect, the author of this contribution had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Schipper Landschip [Skipper Land-Shipe], a Belgian artist who has built a commanding oeuvre. Landschip has autism and does not shy away from communicating this. He often toys with autism in his work, applying the category or label on a meta-level. Contrary to Nadia and Wiltshire, Landschip is not an artist who is the result of some spectacular talent owing to his condition. His autism simply belongs to his identity—nothing more, nothing less. Precisely because of this, it is also part of his artistic practice, which has no place for sensational talents or exceptional gifts.
Since the 1980s, Landschip has exhibited under various pseudonyms, such as Ndizi Zinatosha, Efflux, or The Joseph Boys. He has worked with different materials, and his earliest work is distinctly different from what he would create today. Yet, there is one constant and recognizable element: a raw, ironic, and direct style. One of the recurring elements in Landschip’s earlier work was a form of hieroglyphs, which gave evidence of the degree in which an expressive form of communication matters to him. Later, the hieroglyphs disappeared, and the artist started combining text and image. The work, however, never lost its recalcitrant and committed dimension. In 1986, when flamboyant art curator Jan Hoet wrote history with the exhibition Chambre D’amis, Landschip set up his own Antichambre. Although he was never part of the official exhibition, he expressed his opinion and willful response to the establishment by making a chambre on a run-down industrial site. Together with a friend, he also formed the duo The Royal Givers. Raising his voice in protest against the global arms race, he made weekly visits to the Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts, bringing in his own paintings to fill up the vacant spaces of permanent collection works that were removed for restoration or were on loan. In fact, throwing spectators into confusion is a leitmotif in Landschip’s art. It is never entirely clear whether his actions are dead serious or ironic. This confusion is heightened by the fact that the artist seems to incarnate a kind of “character.” This impression is brought about by the use of pseudonyms, but also by the fact that he is hardly ever or never available for interviews or reflections on his own work. Only a handful of people really know the artist. Undoubtedly, this can be linked to his autism. At the same time, it succeeds in giving a twist to it. The aspect of “character creation” and “inaccessibility” is turned into a critique of the inner workings of an artistic field that sometimes succumbs to commercial motives.
Autism only becomes a theme in Landschip’s later work, even then rather “sneaking” inside, instead of “imposing” itself. In 2002, Landschip wrote—or rather drew—the booklet The Invisible Autist, in which he proposed an elegant, delicate definition of autism. Now, the artist makes two paintings on a daily basis, usually little self-portraits, and immediately posts these on his blog, thus creating a form of expressive diary. The constant choice of small square canvases is interesting in itself, because it demonstrates his love of details. Using oil on canvas, the self-portraits raise a critical voice in social debates. At the same time, Landschip manages to mock his own autism and certain ways of representation. Slowly but surely, the artist is building a complex oeuvre that addresses issues of self-representation and autism, yet avoids every external label.
The Arts and Their Fascination with Autism
So far, this short contribution has remained silent about a recent and interesting development, which places autism right in the middle of the artistic landscape. Apparently, a group of contemporary artists has grown fascinated with autism. Representations of autism in literature and cinema have been frequent and various, even to such an extent that there is now a small commercial industry dedicated to it. Still, there are artists who have no interest in the representation of autism, but are genuinely fascinated by a form of autistic (and, by extension, neurodiversity) thought. They try to question, and even distrust, their own “language,” working with what they do not know. Obviously, the interest of artists in cognitive processes is far from new. A similar movement can be observed in the humanities, where the development is often designated as “the cognitive turn.” The interest can originate from a personal experience, or it can be associated with a critical view of a society in which overstimulation has become a matter of course, a theme that has an obvious and strong connection with autism.
Examples of artists who look beyond the representation of autism are, among others, theater stage director and playwright Robert Wilson, painter Yves Velter, dance performers and choreographers Gabriel Schenker and Sonja Jokiniemi, and filmmaker Olivier Smolders. As early as 1989, Smolders codirected with Thierry Knauff the 12-minute short Seuls, a controversial film that depicts autistic children in a way that calls to mind the work of Fernand Deligny and Renaud Victor. From the 1960s until his death in 1996, Deligny took care of autistic children who had been given up by psychiatry. In South France, assisted by Victor, he searched for a way of understanding them. He filmed and transcribed their movements, moves, and acts (lignes d’erre), without ever focusing on a narrative aspect or any form of telos. Deligny’s approach seems to reverberate in the film made by Smolders and Knauff.
In 2015, Sonja Jokiniemi created a dance performance called Hmm, which was based on her collaboration with autistic youngsters. The latter taught her how to shuffle and stumble in a world that shows little cohesion, in which objects and sounds do not seem to have any meaning. Autism is never an explicit subject in the performance, yet it is integrated in a larger whole of reflections on Jokiniemi’s artistic practice. The artist is primarily fascinated by other forms of meaning-giving and of bodily experience. Specialized literature usually perceives the autistic body in a negative way. Some of the clichés hold that it is a fortress in which the “real person behind autism” is imprisoned, that it reacts as a machine, or that it is deprived of a delicate motor system. Jokiniemi, by contrast, detects poetical aspects in the body and bodily experience of persons with autism.
The works of these artists are of high quality, and the same qualitative excellence is maintained in the ways of integrating autism in their creative practice. Nevertheless, these artists walk a very thin tightrope. The danger of slipping back into the perverse story of inclusion lurks behind every action. At the time that all normality thinking has been terminated, it has become fashionable to focus on differences or otherness. In addition, autism may quickly be reduced to aesthetics or even mobilized for specific aesthetic purposes.
A Multivalent Signifier
The connection between autism, creativity, and art remained unnoticed for a long time, partly because of a medical canon that assumed persons with autism did not possess imagination and that based its actions on a deficit-model. Nevertheless, autism does not exist outside of culture, as was argued by Roy Grinker.7 Autism enriches the cultural and artistic landscape on various levels. Cultural filters that provide context and representation have a positive effect on the identity building and empowerment of persons with autism. In addition, they contribute to the creation of a broader basis that puts forward autism spectrum as both a multivalent, complex, and extremely interesting multitude, and as a flexible and multivalent signifier. Nevertheless, some caution is warranted when terms such as “autistic art,” “autistic aesthetics,” and the “autistic artist” are used since these have the potential of curtailing creativity and reducing autism to a univocal and static category of aesthetics combined with diagnostic criteria.
Notes
1. The term “autism” covers the full diversity of autism spectrum disorder. This article is a revised version of a Dutch essay.
2. American Psychiatric Association (APA), Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. (Washington, DC: APA 2013). The release of the DSM-V met with a storm of criticism, see: Stijn Vanheule, Diagnosis and the DSM: A Critical Review, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
3. Leni Van Goidsenhoven and Arnout De Cleene, “Brizzolari’s Dismantling of The Romantic Outsider Myth: Inclusive Strategies Seen from a Belgian Perspective,” Elsewhere—The International Journal of Self-Taught and Outsider Art, 3.1, (2016): 25–39.
4. Stuart Murray, Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative, Fascination (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008), 9.
5. Leni Van Goidsenhoven, “Playing with Autism and Outsider Art,” Psychoanalytische Perspectieven 32.3, (2014): 263.
6. Roger Cardinal, “Outsider Art and The Autistic Creator,” In Autism and Talent, eds. Francesca Happé and Uta Frith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 181–194; Ilona Roth, “Imagining Differently: The Cognitive Style in Autism,” Conference Paper at Cognitive Futures in the Humanities, 2nd International Conference University of Durham, (Durham, April 24–26, 2014); Kyle Hunter and Deborah Barnbaum, “Pragmatic Aesthetics and the Autistic Artist,” The Journal of Aesthetic Education: 46.4, (2012): 48–56.
7. Roy Grinker, Understanding Minds: Remapping The World of Autism (New York: Basic Books, 2007).