Image galleries
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The exhibition begins with a Viennese 'madhouse' and an eccentric sculptor from the 18th century. It then moves on to the architecture and patients of Steinhof, a state-of-the-art psychiatric institution built on the edge of Vienna in the early 20th century and partly designed by Otto Wagner, the leader of the modern architecture movement.
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This section focuses on the places where nervous ailments were treated in Vienna 1900. Freud's cluttered and personal consulting room is contrasted with the sleek modern design of the Purkersdorf Sanatorium, a clinic for nervous disorders designed by leading modern architect Josef Hoffmann.
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Two sections of the exhibition are devoted to portraits of Vienna's artists and intellectuals, interpreted by critics at the time as images of the mentally ill. Egon Schiele was profoundly concerned with his image as a 'pathological' artist. We show photographs of psychiatric patients in circulation at this time to show the possible influences on his distinctive representation of his 'diseased' body.
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The final section is devoted to art made by two patients who were confined in Viennese psychiatric institutions around 1900.