‘Play It Again,Sam,and Again’: Obsession and Art

Abstract

Working under the premise that disability as an identity category cannot be ignored when addressing the role it plays in the production of art, and utilizing postmodern or biocultural notions of disease, this article traces the history of obsession as disease in five ‘outsider’ artists: Adolf Wölfli, Jay DeFeo, Max Klinger, Mark Lombardi, and Judith Scott. To these ends, this article explores obsession as a culturally acceptable and even desirable disease and one that relies on societal notions of madness, art, and normality. An interpretation of outsider art that takes into account the artist’s mental condition, whether it is to view the art as a ‘product of’ a particular mental condition or as something produced in spite of it, shows that obsession in art is deeply involved in the notion of art itself.