Genius And Madman
OVARTACI (1894-1981) hasn’t obtained the fame he deserved. Somehow he hasn’t been able to make it internationally even though he was a renowned artist in his homeland of Denmark. I think the reason is that he wasn’t only a brilliant and very unique artist, but also a psychiatric patient, committed to the Asylum of Risskov for many, many years. He takes some rethinking to assess and unfortunately almost nothing has been written about him except in Danish.
He started out, sane and sound it seems, as the young painter assistant Louis Marcussen, but after a journey to Argentina with a friend he became stark raving mad. Nobody knows what happened or what triggered this serious illness, but when he returned he was committed to a mental asylum at once. He was diagnosed a schizophrenic which seems likely when the symptoms are being taken into account.
In the asylum he started to paint what he saw as the true world, i.e. as the backdrop for an endless string of lives as his strong belief in reincarnation made him paint his earlier incarnations in Spain, Egypt, China, etc., etc.. He said that he remembered more than 1000 of these incarnations, some as an animal and some as a man. Well, actually, most of his human lives were as a woman and on the 22nd of July 1951 he tried to return to this state of womanhood by cutting off his penis. This was something he had wanted to do for some time and it actually made him feel much better. Now that he had become what he himself called a “virul” - a third gender or a special kind of woman - he seemed very happy. He professed himself a “prophet”, he painted, made sculptures, wrote poems and talked to visitors and admirers and little by little he grew more and more “normal”. That is, never QUITE normal, but more and more so even though he refused to take medicine for his illness.
By now he was quite well known for his strange paintings of dog like women in mythological landscapes. Some of them are rather uncanny, but all of them quite unique. He dug deep into Eastern religions, old mythology and the like, but first and foremost he painted his own visions and his perceptions of his former incarnations.
As his art had a definite healing effect on him he might not have had to stay for 56 years in mental hospitals, but although he tried to escape, e.g. by a self made “helicopter”, these attempts didn’t seem whole hearted escapes. Perhaps part of him wanted to stay as he lead a good and rather pampered life as the “super loon” he called himself. Everybody else first and foremost saw him as the wonderful painter he was.
The Lancet 2006; 368: S10-S11
http://www.theimagerefinery.com/Week%20of%2009-05%20Psych%20Museum.htm
http://members.tripod.com/hansen.janerik/ovart/index.htm
Psychiatric History Museum and Art Museum
Tags: asylum, emasculation, insane, painter, personality, reincarnation
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Filed under: Arts and Entertainment