Louis Wain: a cat's a cat

I think I was in my teens when I first encountered the enigmatic, provocative cat paintings of Louis Wain. Throughout his life he was moved to represent his beloved cats in a wide variety of artistic styles, including a highly abstract form which was so original and unknown that it sometimes scared the hell out of people. As is so often the case, fear and ignorance hardened the public's  perception of the artist into a distorted and only partially-true stereotype.

Thus a brilliant and inspired, not to mention significant, contributor to 19th century art was jammed into a box of conventional belief and nailed there, a condition made infinitely worse by constant replication on that mindless Xerox machine of a communications system, the internet. So how much of it is actually true?

When I was about 16, I remember reading  a Time-Life coffee table book called The Mind which was full of (I realize now) ridiculous, stigmatizing untruths about mental disorders. Wain was used as a classic case of "the tragedy of mental illness", with his charming magazine cats slowly and hideously devolving into foul fiends from hell: surely, the authors claimed, a sign that Wain had gone irreversibly "mad".

This "madness" was labelled "schizophrenia", at a time when 90% of the population would define the term as "a split personality". Nobody who wrote about this had the first idea what they were talking about, but all at once Wain's work was cemented in a sort of immutable chronology, with the most representative and realistic cats at the beginning, followed by the whimsically naughty greeting-card-style cats, then those oddball wildly-colored-and-patterned things, and finally, the horrendous, scary, oh-my-we-don't-like-that-one cats trailing along at the end. This was proof positive that not only had Wain gone mad,  his very art had slowly but relentlessly deteriorated from drawing-room respectability into something no decent person would ever want to look at.

There is biographical evidence that Wain WAS sometimes difficult to deal with, even antisocial, and could be "inappropriate" (which in Edwardian times was almost synonymous with being a "madman"), and spent some time in an asylum when his sisters had had enough of his strange ideas and angry acting out. As in too many cases, he landed there in part because his funds had run out and he had nowhere else to go. For as time went on, his charming anthropomorphic cats went out of style, as everything else eventually does. 

Because he was an artist in his soul and not just an illustrator, Wain kept on painting, even while hospitalized - and yes, he DID paint his cats in a tremendous variety of styles, from the most purr-rumbling, paw-kneading, whiskery realism to the most wildly, even disturbingly abstract - but none of these works was ever dated. Thus there is no evidence at all that as his mind supposedly deteriorated, his conventional cats relentlessly and sequentially devolved from whimsical creatures to bizarre psychedelic ones, to (finally) those dreadful Satanic figures that barely resembled cats at all.

Art historians who have actually taken the time to research his life have concluded that Wain was likely not a schizophrenic at all, but may have lived with another condition that was even less understood. We now know much more about autism and Asperger syndrome and the many gradations of it, and are even beginning to unlock its artistic/creative significance. From existing records, it is likely he painted his conventional cats in parallel with the wildly imaginitive, even disturbing-looking cats he became famous for. Yes, he probably DID experience a chronic mental or perhaps social liability that sometimes separated him from his fellow humans. But he never once gave up on his beloved cats, portraying them in every conceivable manner, with a few that were so startlingly original that no one knew what to make of them. They just didn't fit anywhere. Happens sometimes with these artist types, as with that other fellow. . . you know, the "madman" who painted all those sunflowers.

The little arrangement I give you here is NOT in any kind of chronology. Nor is it completely random. These cats are here because I like them. The more extreme ones aren't here, not because I dislike them but because they're already getting enough (if not too much) play on websites called Psychedelic Cats! and Wain's Schizo Cats. Each inevitably includes a rectangular diagram cut into squares, with each cube representing a stage of successive deterioration rather than a phase of inspiration. I even found a few paintings with labels like "early stages". Obviously, Wain's originality was a sign of sickness. We are still poking the madman with sharp sticks.

Anyway, as I sigh in my usual  exasperation at what a lot of ignorant lunkheads human beings are, I found this snippet on an art site, and it clarified things a little bit for me. 

"Dr. Michael Fitzgerald disputes the claim of schizophrenia, indicating Wain more than likely had Asperger syndrome (AS). Of particular note, Fitzgerald indicates that while Wain’s art takes on a more abstract nature as he grew older, his technique and skill as a painter did not diminish as one would expect from a schizophrenic. Moreover, elements of visual agnosia are demonstrated in his painting, a key element in some cases of AS. If Wain had visual agnosia, it may have manifested itself merely as an extreme attention to detail.

A series of five of his paintings is commonly used as an example in psychology textbooks to putatively show the change in his style as his psychological condition deteriorated. However, it is not known if these works were created in the order usually presented, as Wain did not date them. Rodney Dale, author of Louis Wain: The Man Who Drew Cats, has criticised the belief that the five paintings can be used as an example of Wain’s deteriorating mental health, writing: “Wain experimented with patterns and cats, and even quite late in life was still producing conventional cat pictures, perhaps 10 years after his [supposedly] ‘later’ productions which are patterns rather than cats.”

H. G. Wells said of him, “He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.”

His work is now highly collectible but care is needed as forgeries are common."

"I'm afraid of love!"

 

            

Snap out of it!

Whack jobs: or, why we still can't deal with mental illness

I’ve been having some thoughts lately, mostly triggered by some recent events in the news. It’s about people’s language around mental illness. I have just a bit of trouble with names like loony, whack job, etc. being casually tossed around to label someone who is in psychiatric pain. I hear this every day of my life, and it dismays me. We often talk about “the other”, and I can’t think of a worse example of ostracism for something that is not the person’s fault.

But I am also struggling with the fact that people still sometimes use terms like “committed”,“ arrested” and “incarcerated” when referring to someone who is in so much pain that they are a danger to themselves and, perhaps, those around them. 

Being in hospital because you’re suffering to that degree is not like being dragged off to jail. Even if a person is “committed” (which I didn’t think existed any more), they can sign themselves out after 24 hours. They are not in leg irons. They are not being unfairly labelled “crazy” for their personal beliefs and left on some archipelago with the rest of the raving loonies. This perception is a “snake pit” mentality that harks back to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. 

Sometimes people’s judgement is seriously “off”. What is the alternative for someone who has just said that he is going to kill himself? Just leave him there, send him home? If he were bleeding to death or had a heart attack or was in some other kind of life-threatening danger, I am sure he would be rushed to treatment. Why can’t we see suicide threats the same way? I think it’s because people are expected to just get it together on their own. Shape up. To accept help is to take on a stigma that might, perish the thought, hurt one’s career or standing in the community. (“You know what happened to him, don’t you?”) Some people, believe it or not, would rather die.

Why is a suicidal emergency so different? Because, I believe, we still look at mental illness with horror, paranoia and dread. Misinformation and ignorance is rampant. I’ve never heard of anyone being dragged off to the snake pit against his/her will, and it is extremely hard to get into the average psychiatric facility because there are never any beds (which should tell people something, but there’s an uncomfortable silence around it).

I watched an old TV show the other day, one of those black-and-white dramas, in which a husband and wife were accusing each other of being crazy. The term “put away” was used at least fifteen times. “Put away” is something you use to describe storing cups in a cupboard. But it also implies that you are “done”, that you will never live in the “real” world again. We don’t use this term any more – or at least, not often. But “incarcerated” is almost as damning.

The situation I’m writing about – and I’m sorry I can’t be more explicit, but I am not prepared to do that – seemed to trigger language that was, to say the least, dated, but also fraught with – what? Rage seemed to be uppermost, but I can’t tell for sure because I don’t personally know the people involved.

The first time I heard the term homophobic, I was very confused. Phobic means – fearful. Why would people be fearful of homosexuals? What did this have to do with their prejudice?

Everything. For fear comes of ignorance, and ignorance can be more willful than we want to know. I found this whole situation depressing because it also snagged into personal and professional hierarchies, elitism, and the unassailable power of the patriarchy, not to mention sweeping aside claims of sexual assault. (And where have I heard THAT one before?). 

We pay a lot of lip service to "reducing the stigma" (never eliminating it, as if that is just too gargantuan a task to even consider) and asking people to "reach out for help", neatly leaving it in THEIR hands when they may be too ill to reach out for anything. In cases like this, who will step up, who will be there to fill the void? In too many cases, no one, and the person decides life is too unbearable to continue with. Then it's "well, he just refused to reach out for help, so. . . "

I don’t know how much of this will be resolved (or even improved) in my lifetime. Looking at what has happened to women’s rights in the past few years, we might even go back to leg irons and snake pits. But for God’s sake, people, watch your language! Real human beings are involved. Equating a psychiatric facility with a prison implies some kind of crime, and there is no crime. The gulag is not part of anybody’s reality now.

in·car·cer·ate

inˈkärsəˌrāt/

1. imprison, put in prison, send to prison, jail, lock up, put under lock and key, put away, intern, confine, detain, hold, immure, put in chains, hold prisoner, hold captive; informal put behind bars
   

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Let's Talk: why we need it so badly

http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/lets-talk

There's a reason I post this link today.

Though it has gotten a certain amount of coverage by the mainstream press, mostly telling lame versions of "the clown story" ("But doctor, I AM Pagliacci!"), Let's Talk (sponsored, let's not forget, by Bell) is always well down on the list, because mental health simply isn't news. The fact we're just beginning to "talk", "break the stigma", etc. (or "reduce" the stigma, as it's usually expressed) in 2015 horrifies me. The fact that we have to set aside a day for it (but only one - let's not get carried away here) is discouraging, but it's better than nothing, I suppose. But I think we still have an Amadeus-cage/snake pit/cuckoo's nest mentality, or at least scorn, contempt and mortified silence.

I don't know what I'm going to do about all this, so I'll post this excellent link to many good videos, then re-run a piece that it cost me something to write.  Will it do any good? Will anyone even see it?

Let's not "reduce" the stigma: let's throw it out!

Every day, and in every way, I am hearing a message. And it's not a bad message, in and of itself. 

It's building, in fact, in intensity and clarity, and in some ways I like to hear it.

It's about mental illness, a state I've always thought is mis-named: yes, I guess it's "mental" (though not in the same class as the epithet, "You're totally mental"), but when you call it mental illness, it's forever and always associated with and even attached to a state of illness. You're either ill or you're well; they're mutually exclusive, aren't they?

So the name itself is problematic to me. It seems to nail people into their condition. Worse than that, nobody even notices. "Mentally ill" is definitely preferable to "psycho", "nut case", "fucking lunatic", and the list goes on (and on, and on, as if it doesn't really matter what we call them). But it's still inadequate.

There's something else going on that people think is totally positive, even wonderful, showing that they're truly "tolerant" even of people who seem to dwell on the bottom rung of society. Everywhere I look, there are signs saying, "Let's reduce the stigma about mental illness."

Note they say "reduce", not banish. It's as if society realizes that getting rid of it is just beyond the realm of possibility. Let's not hope for miracles, let's settle for feeling a bit better about ourselves for not calling them awful names and excluding them from everything.

I hate stigma. I hate it because it's an ugly word, and if you juxtapose it with any other word, it makes that word ugly too. "Let's reduce the hopelessness" might be more honest. "Let's reduce the ostracism, the hostility, the contempt." "Stigma" isn't used very much any more, in fact I can't think of any other group of people it is so consistently attached to. Even awful conditions (supposedly) like alcoholism and drug abuse aren't "stigmatized" any more. Being gay isn't either. Why? Compassion and understanding are beginning to dissolve the ugly term, detach it and throw it away. 

"Let's reduce the stigma" doesn't help because it's miserable. It's the old "you don't look fat" thing (hey, who said I looked fat? Who brought the subject up?). Much could be gained by pulling the plug on this intractibly negative term. Reducing the stigma is spiritually stingy and only calls attention to the stigma.  

So what's the opposite of "stigmatized"?  Accepted, welcomed, fully employed, creative, productive, loved? Would it be such a stretch to focus our energies on these things, replacing the 'poor soul" attitude that prevails?

But so far, the stifling box of stigma remains, perhaps somewhat better than hatred or fear, but not much. Twenty years ago, a term used to appear on TV, in newspapers, everywhere, and it made me furious: "cancer victim". Anyone who had cancer was a victim, not just people who had "lost the battle" (and for some reason, we always resort to military terms to describe the course of the illness). It was standard, neutral, just a way to describe things, but then something happened, the tide turned, and energy began to flow the other way.

From something that was inevitably bound to stigma in the past, cancer came out of the closet in a big way, leading to all sorts of positive change that is still being felt. But first we had to lose terms like "victim", because they were unconsciously influencing people's attitudes. We had to begin to substitute words like "survivor" and even "warrior". 

One reinforced the other. The movement gave rise to much more positive, life-affirming, even accurate terminology. That's exactly what needs to happen here. We don't just need to "reduce the stigma": we need to CAN that term, spit on it, get rid of it once and for all, and begin to see our mental health warriors for who and what they really are. They lead the way in a daring revolution of attitudes and deeply-buried, primitive ideas, a shakeup and shakedown of prejudice that is shockingly late, and desperately needed.

Why do we need to do this so badly? We're caught and hung up on a negative, limiting word that is only keeping the culture in the dark.  I once read something in a memoir that had a profound effect on me: "Mental illness is an exaggeration of the human condition." This isn't a separate species. Don't treat it as such. It's you, times ten. It's me, in a magnifying mirror. Such projections of humanity at its finest and most problematic might just teach us something truly valuable. Why don't we want to look?

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And he glittered when he walked

Richard Cory

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

I remember that we "took" this poem in school, way back in Grade 7 or thereabouts, and the chagrin, the consternation of the class: "But why did he DO that?" "He had everything." "Everyone envied him." "It's not fair." "It's a joke, isn't it?" " That would never happen."

My "favorite" was this lovely statement, which I have heard echoed many times and from many people - I mean adults who should know better, not kids:

"You kill yourself because you're crazy, and you're only crazy if you want to be."

I wonder now, if that kid is still alive, whether he thinks the same way.

I'm not supposed to think about any of this, of course. As one writer said, Robin Williams' death caused many people to suddenly come out of the closet and proclaim, "Yes, me too". But where are they now? No doubt they have retreated in terror, hoping against hope that no one remembers their foolishness.

I've written about this before. Halloween is coming, and in the past I've seen "mental patient" costumes, often with restraints and lurid "nurses" with syringes full of "sedatives". It's funny, isn't it? Come on. Come on, don't you have a sense of humour?

No. If that's what humour is, then no.

My brother was in these "loony bins", "nut wards", etc., on and off for years. I loved him dearly, and by his own admission he was not just crazy but "ca-RAZY". Eerily, I used to compare him to Robin Williams in his madcap ability to riff on outrageous themes, putting on characters and taking them off like masks, only to change at light speed to another subject entirely. One time he did a riff on the '60s TV show The Real McCoys, doing every voice from Grandpa to Luke to Little Luke to Hassie to  Kate to - his personal favorite - Pepino. Some of it was so x-rated that we fell out of our chairs.

He died in 1980, not of suicide as almost everyone assumes, but an accident. Two months later, John Lennon was shot and killed. It was a point of despair in my life.

So what is it about people who seem to have everything, who do themselves in anyway? I think of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, relapsing most awfully into a habit he thought he had beaten. I think of Amy Winehouse drinking a gallon of vodka and poisoning herself at age 27. I think we think they are immune. Not just that they are rich and famous, but loved - aren't they loved, too, I mean by friends and family?

Are they? Is there - is there balm in Gilead?

I have already published a couple of eerily similar photos of Robin Williams with dear friends who hold him so tenderly, he looks like a baby bird fallen from the nest. I once read that people who don't feel loved are like sawdust dolls with a tiny hole in the bottom. It keeps trickling out, almost imperceptibly, until the person is desperate for more supplies to keep from bleeding out.

What got all this started again? Well, it's close to Halloween which makes me think of all those awful mental patient costumes, totally dehumanizing but seen as ghoulishly funny, and CERTAINLY not anything to be offended about.  (You're too sensitive, you know? That's your whole problem.) We don't have Parkinson's or MS or ALS Halloween costumes, but then again, these illnesses are "physical", "real", no one's fault, with the sufferers seen as dignified and courageous, and therefore not frightening or subject to mockery. After all, it would be in very poor taste. 

 It's also from remembering Williams, who seems to have died a very long time ago (but at the same time, only yesterday), but most of all it's because yesterday I bought Billy Crystal's memoir, Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys? It's typical self-deprecating Crystal humour, but not excoriating, with a sweetness, a gentleness that I have always loved about him. In fact, he is my favorite comedian.

He and Robin Williams were best friends. Closer than brothers, in many ways. This book was written and published before his suicide, but on the back is a quote from Williams that now seems poignant and unsettling: "This book is kick-ass funny and truly unique. A Hollywood autobiography with only one wife, no rehab, a loving family, and loyal friends."

I wonder if Williams secretly feared he had none of those things. It's a bit scary that he focused on that, as if to shame himself for having three wives and multiple trips to rehab.  To imply, almost, that Crystal was a superior version of himself - or, at least, not so scarred, not so vulnerable.

I don't want to go much farther into this because I don't fancy triggering off a lousy day of depression. It wouldn't do anything to change the situation. But oh how I wish people would wake up. I thought of a scenario that might have saved him - everyone has a theory, so here goes, here is mine:

He is pacing the floor, both despondent and frantic, knowing there is no way out of the crushing adversity that is coming at him from all sides. Soon he will be paralyzed from Parkinson's, his career will be over, and he won't be able to take part in the cycling that has kept him sane. Rehab did no good at all and made everything worse. He looks back with shame over the battlefield of his life, and for that moment he can't see anything good about it. At all. He has made a mess of things, and there is only one way out.

Though it is agonizing to do, though he has to stand up to an immense shame that is nearly overwhelming, he goes over to the phone, picks up the receiver, dials 9-1-1.

"Hello. I'm going to kill myself. Come get me, please. NOW."

CODA. From Leonard Bernstein's Mass. I used to carry this around written on a little piece of paper. Once a counsellor took it from me and read it in a sing-songy, Betty Crocker voice, then handed it back to me saying, "Oh, that's nice."

I don't know where to start

There are scars I could show

If I opened my heart

But how far, Lord, how far can I go?

I don't know. 

What I say I don't feel

What I feel I don't show

What I show isn't real

What is real, Lord

I don't know 

No, no, no. . . I don't know.

I'm pregnant again (it just can't be so!)

This can either be seen as a sociological treatise - and God knows, I've written more than my share of those - or just a headshaking, gasping peek at life in the mid-1960s.

I don't for a minute think this song was meant to be serious, and the video is even less so. Most likely it was a sendup of Roger Miller's huge hit King of the Road.  Never mind the sexy and semi-glamorous images in the video: the lyrics bespeak domestic drudgery, shabbiness and unquestioning self-sacrifice. (I was sort of hoping they'd dramatize all that, rather than go with all this bustier/leg-lifting stuff.) The acrobatic flips of - who is that guy, the ice man? - help jazz it up a little, and to me the guy looks uncannily like a pre-Star-Trek George Takei.

This song/video sprang from a specific genre, probably beginning with the jaw-dropping 1950s TV program Queen for a Day. Four broken-down housewives would come on the show each week and pitch their tale of woe, after which the audience would determine who was most worthy of financial rescue using an applause-o-meter. This always looked rigged to me, but it was considered sufficiently accurate to determine which horror story was ghastly enough to warrant an array of Lovely Gifts.

There are snippets of this horror on YouTube, jerky, smudgy old kinescopes that look like something out of a bleary dream. People actually took this show seriously and wanted to be on it, desperately. No doubt many of the sob stories were fabricated, but the point is, the show proved to us all that, just like every dog, even the everyday housewife could have her day.

The genre of the downtrodden yet celebrated matron of the house took many forms, including the dreary Loretta Lynn song, Pregnant Again:

Pregnant again oh where will we go
Pregnant again it just can’t be so
But I never could count when the lights were down low
And I’m pregnant again (pregnant again)

There goes the new washer we needed so bad
There goes the vacation that we never had
There goes the new TV I thought we’d enjoy
Oh honey who cares I hope it’s a boy

Now THAT'S a save, embracing noble martyrdom in the very last line (in case anyone thought for a minute she was considering
the last refuge of many an overburdened mother-to-be).

The other one that pops into my head is even more melodramatic. I think Glen Campbell sang it. I remember my mother being quite angry about this one. "What does he mean, 'the good life'?" she would cry. "This IS the good life!" Obviously, her conditioning, positively Orwellian in nature, had taken, and taken completely.(I don't think it's a coincidence that she was also a heavy user of those little yellow pills.)

She looks in the mirror and stares at the wrinkles

That weren't there yesterday
And thinks of the young man that she almost married
What would he think if he saw her this way?

She picks up her apron in little girl-fashion
As something comes into her mind
Slowly starts dancing remembering her girlhood
And all of the boys she had waiting in line

Oh, such are the dreams of the everyday housewife
You see everywhere any time of the day
An everyday housewife who gave up the good life for me

The wrinkled old drudge who stares into the mirror like something out of that bleak Auden poem ("O look, look in the mirror/O look in your distress") once was a fair flower just ready to be plucked by some handsome young man, a man of class and means, and instead - ? He doesn't spell out how ghastly her life is now, and what kind of loser she got stuck with, probably by getting pregnant. 

And nobody really talked about what a bomb pregnancy could be for a young woman then, an explosive that could blow her life and her dreams to bits. The expression "she had to get married" used to puzzle me, along with an even more incomprehensible term, "shotgun". 

Which, when you think about it, has some pretty ominous connotations of its own.

(Blogger's note. I made these gifs from an old YouTube clip from Queen for a Day. The winner, looking morose even in her supposed victory, was a clear choice because her husband had been paralyzed in a hunting accident and had to lie on his stomach, completely immobile. She won some sort of fancy bed that cranked up and down and a week's stay in a luxury hotel, a dubious prize for someone forever chained to a man who couldn't move.)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm