Artists like Caravaggio, Cellini, Pollock and Dali, demonstrated volatile, violent—sometimes murderous—behavior. Some, like Goya, Beckmann, Picasso, and Vann Nath, created amazing works ...
MoreArtists like Caravaggio, Cellini, Pollock and Dali, demonstrated volatile, violent—sometimes murderous—behavior. Some, like Goya, Beckmann, Picasso, and Vann Nath, created amazing works despite—or because of—the global destruction and overwhelming societal conflict that surrounded them. Great Britain’s notoriously violent inmate channeled his impulses once he began to draw. Heinous multiple murderers like Gacy, Manson, and Rolling drew and painted works that society finds repelling
and compelling. For 30 years as an art therapist working with violent offenders, the author has subscribed to the notion that the impulses that drive one to destruction may be the same that compel one to create, while simultaneously recognizing that making art mitigates and redirects destructive energy.
The Frenzied Dance focuses on one charge: to explore and understand this interrelationship between art and violence. To inform this dynamic, this book relies on various psychological and sociological perspectives of violence and aggression, psychobiographies of violent artists and those whose work emerged from violence, the art of multiple murderers and violent offenders, and the author’s own reflections as an art therapist with people who are violent This book also explores society’s fascination with the products of violent perpetrators, how others have used art to foment peace and combat violence, and how art can be used as a therapeutic tool to assuage violence and aggression. The resultant series of essays provide a far-reaching examination of this dynamic interdependence.
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