July 13, 2006

• Larger version of The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke. Couldn't make out crap on the first one.
• Yes, definitely a better size.
• I've seen it at the Tate, it is quite a remarkable piece of work, as was Dadd, who killed his dad.
• Yes -- an unusual piece, with paint laid on heavily. Find the lushness of Titania Sleeping satisfying as well as amusing. This picture makes good wallpaper, with grotesquely big bats lurking overhead, if you like it rococco and romantic. High drama.
• I don't particularly like the Romantics, & find the Pre-Raphaelites cloying & over sentimental, but I have a fondness for some of the work of that era. Dadd in some ways presaged the fin de siecle revival of myth, magic & occultism. I deeply enjoy the draughtsmanship of many of the Victorian artists, & literature of the time is replete with faeries & interest in Celtic myth.
• thanks bees. i know the titania sleeping painting, but knew nothing about the artist.
• Excellent. I bought a print of "The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke" several years ago, but Mrs P won't let me put it up.
• Nice post bees! Having not been familar with Dadd or his work, I'm surprised at the similarity to the work of a former friend of mine (who was as mentally ill as they come; the vast quantities of LSD he took probably didn't help matters).
• ((((! and just the right number of links
• A larger version of "The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke".
• "...but Mrs P won't let me put it up." Hmm? How interesting. Does she not like it?
• I remembered hearing a Radio Four play on Dadd a while back. A search confirmed there really was one, but sadly no longer on line. Was only dimly aware of the man and his life, so thanks for all this background bees, great post.
• Beautiful. The Titania painting is very atmospheric - I get more of a "peering in" feeling with the Fairy Feller's one. So when was this in relation to the Surrealists? Some of those faces could have been painted by Dali (and perhaps were).
• err meaning he may have painted them as he learned. Not that they were good friends or something. *checks that fly isn't open*
• A comment of the obvious: just like many movies cannot be enjoyed at home to the degree they would have in a theatre, I am sure these paintings are not done justice at 72 pixels per inch. Art galleries, people! Go! They're great!
• People online maintain Dadd was bipolar, but I don't know that that's correct. Difficult to make anything like an accurate diagnosis at such a remove in time. Understand schizophrenia is a condition where people hear non-existent voices telling them things, as Osiris seems to have done with Dadd. But what do I know? This is only a guess.
• Schizophrenia takes a lot of different forms. Schizophrenics are not always violent, though. Apparently he was having a serious psychotic break & thought his father was the devil, which does sound like a pretty clear schizophrenic delusion: it also sounds like he was terrified of him, since such an idea at that time would have been pretty scary. But schizophrenia involves a lot of disordered thinking, & it's not often you see the obsessive level of detail of his work in that of schizophrenics; their pictures tend to break down & become quite abstract the worse their illness becomes. The detail in his stuff is akin to the intensity of focus seen in bipolar disorder. I wonder if his father was particularly abusive, which would certainly play a big part in his perceptions of him if he was simply in a manic deluded phase. But you're right, it's impossible to say for sure. The thing with Osiris.. I have met bipolar people who have delusions of this nature, at the peak of their manic phase.. One guy thought he was Buddha. Also, in that era opium & other stimulants were in common medicines, & if he was exposed to some narcotic abroad, that can send a bipolar person totally off the rails, though that's a long shot. He had others in his family who went nuts, so from my experience I'd say that argues in favour of schizophrenia, as it blights families in this way. Bedlam was a very horrible place, too. Poor bastards.
• Yes, there were eleven siblings in all: two of his sisters and one brother also went mad. An unfortunate family. Dadd seems to have been better treated than many madmen in that he was allowed beer to drink and also to have paints and supplies, and occaisional visitors while he was both in Bedlam and Broadmoor. I've understood schizophrenia often manifests in adolescence and ealy adulthood. Dadd killed his father in 1843, when he was about 25 or 26. But he was not well-balanced for at least a year preceding that.
• Odd, Chy, I had that same thought about a possibly abusive father when I was reading his bio. Also wondered about the drugs--the painting with the hookah makes me think he may have been exposed to them in Turkey or Egypt. Pleg, share the link with Mrs. P. Perhaps it will give her a place to begin the appreciation. Wonderful post, Bees! and just the right number of links is there an echo in here ere ere ere
• The age it came on fits quite well with the usual onset of schizophrenia. He was probably better treated because of social status, I imagine, although I don't know what kind of conditions he would have endured in Bedlam, my memory fails me as to when & what reforms took place. At some point a more humane approach was taken toward loonies, but I don't remember if it was in the 1840s or somewhat later.
• "the painting with the hookah makes me think he may have been exposed to them in Turkey or Egypt." Quite so, my thoughts exactly. I've seen firsthand the awful effects of cannabis on someone with schizophrenia, it does make it much worse, & the fact he came back from a grand tour or whatever raving mad makes me think he was exposed to something out there. 'Round that period lots of artists & intellectuals were experimenting with keif & whatnot in the West, however. On the continent I believe it was popular, too.
• Reminds me of Crowley channelling Aiwass in Cairo, stoned out of his fucking gourd on hash, morphine & ether.
• *kief
• Ooooh, Dadd. I came across him when reading Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men. Pratchett describes a painting inside the book which he based on the "The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke". I've been wanting to google for his artwork, but it slipped my mind. Many thanks, bees!
• Perfectly possible in those days for the general populace to lay hands on opium, tincture of opium (laudanum), kif, Lydia Pinkham's Pink Pills for pale people and such. Common household items back then. But this is all supposition -- there's no indication Dadd took any drugs, there's just the fact of his madness.
• Does she not like it? share the link with Mrs. P... Just too dark and strange, I think - "it would give the children nightmares". I'm afraid she's perhaps slightly ambivalent about Monkeyfilter, too, given the way it prevents lawns being mown and shelves put up, etc.
• Ah, yes. A vile and dish-pikabel bunch we are. Just tell her you're viewing porn.
• we don't come here to be dish pickled monkeykind's so often strickled our grandest words are pontificalled I come here knowing I'll be tickled
• "I'm afraid she's perhaps slightly ambivalent about Monkeyfilter, too, given the way it prevents lawns being mown and shelves put up, etc." She sounds like Mrs Chy! I hope she doesn't shout at you as much as mine does, though. :(
• Just gorgeous, bees. I remember going to see an exhibition of Victorian fairy paintings a few years ago, and it was mindboggling-- some artists just used the fairy theme as an excuse to paint scantily-clad girls, but for others it seemed to unleash all the weirdness of their subconscious. Food for thought for many years after.
• Victorian undercurrents ... aye, here be muddled waters, Watson.
• Mmm. Indeed.
• Wow. Yeah, "wow" pretty much sums it up. Bananas to bees for this haunting trip. And the irony of the phrase "Dadd killed his father" made my day.