Inspired by 'insane art'

artist Max Ernst showed it to his contemporaries in Paris. Many were fascinated by the theories of Sigmund Freud and saw the collection as a window into the subconscious.

This 'art of the outsider' led French painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet to form the Art Brut movement, a term that also came to be associated with Hitler’s notion of "degenerate art".

Despised by Nazis who sought to promote a heroic form of German culture, examples of ‘modern art’, including some of Prinzhorn’s collection, were put on display as evidence of this degeneracy. It was a prelude to censorship and the destruction of artworks.

Another sickening consequence was Aktion-T4, the Nazi policy to eradicate those who did not fit their notion of 'the norm'. More than two dozen of the artists featured in Prinzhorn's book would be murdered in ‘nursing homes’ set up to kill those regarded unfit to be citizens of the Third Reich. Bristol artist Liz Crow explored this in her short film Resistance, which can be found at www.roaring-girl.com/ work/resistance.

The patients’ fate was sealed when Prinzhorn was replaced at Heidelberg hospital by Carl Schnieder, a Nazi sympathiser. Prinzhorn himself would throw in his lot with the National Socialists, evidence perhaps of his naïveté.

By contrast, the sophistication of the artworks prepared for Looking To The Light adds meaning to the structure, history, and artefacts of Glenside Museum. They are reflective pieces based on what the artists saw and thought about

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The exhibition’s title was inspired by a photograph taken in 1897 of bearded local furniture salesman Charles West looking towards the sky during a short stay at the hospital. He features in several of the artworks, which range from drawings and photographs to textiles, and installations. Despite many dissimilarities, there are some extraordinary resonances with items from Prinzhorn’s collection.

On the reverse side of Anna Rathbone’s quilt, made from cutup images photographed in the museum, is a poem stitched into an NHS sheet:

From the tangle of infinite fragmented echoes we tug at the threads of what might be stories fraying with each retelling trying to stitch a knotted history of a person, a place, a thing into a fabric of guesswork unravelling as we sew fibres pulled loose by time, memory, perspective leaving a single strand of truth How can we ever really know?

The concept and the content reminded me of a handmade jacket on display in the Prinzhorn Collection. By Agnes Richter (18441918), it is embroidered inside and out with memories from her life.

There is great wit in the Glenside artists’ pieces, as there is in many of the Prinzhorn artefacts.

The fact that some of their creators were commenting on the madness of the world outside the asylum appears to have been lost on their curator. He would die of typhus, a recluse, just as Hitler came to power in 1933.

The exhibition booklet Looking To The Light is on sale at the museum, which is open on Wednesdays 10-11 pm and all day on Saturdays.

• Extended versions of these history columns can be found at www.mikejempson.eu