Over the course of nearly 40 years, patients at Great Britain’s Netherne Hospital for the mentally ill produced art. Some of the time it was done on the sly, as people craving a creative outlet doodled in the margins of books from the hospital library, or even on strips of toilet paper. In the early days of the 1940s and ‘50s, “crazy people” were sometimes kept immobilized and even blindfolded.
Not being able to express yourself in any way would certainly drive anyone crazy.
As time went on and the doctors and staff became a little more enlightened, they stopped trying to prevent the patients from doing art and actually encouraged it, providing artistic materials for painting, sculpture, etc.
What to do with all that art? It accumulated, and accumulated… until the hospital closed, and there were more than 100,000 pieces of art stored up. What to do with them?
Unfortunately, the attitude toward the mentally ill was much the same as the things they produced: they were sent away, or lost, or just tossed out.
Fortunately about 5,500 pieces remain and are the subject of “Abandoned Goods,” a documentary directed by Pia Borg and Edward Lawrenson. They use archival footage and photographs, including film of the patients themselves talking about what they do. One woman, who creates eye-grabbing sculptures, often self-portraits, says she never wanted to display them because she felt they weren’t good enough.
Today those works are gathered in the Adamson Collection, and are often displayed in prestigious museums. They range from simple penciled figures to elaborate sculpture and drawing.
It’s often been said that the minds of great artists are not terribly different from those of the deranged, and looking at these pieces suggests that the line may be fuzzy, or non-existent.
Even at 37 minutes, “Abandoned Goods” could’ve stood to be shorter. The filmmakers use a lot of pregnant pauses and lingering shots to heighten the effect of looking at all these amazing works of art. But it gets a bit repetitive at times, especially when we’re seeing the same piece several times.
But despite the loose edit, it’s still a thought-provoking documentary about how we as a society value art … and the mentally challenged.