The Work of Oskar Herzberg-Did Psychosis or the Residence in a Psychiatric Institution Serve as a Catalyst for Creativity?: A Thought-Provoking Impulse to Reconsider the Interrelationship Between Mental Illness and Art.

ABSTRACT: In the 1920s, the Heidelberg psychiatrist and art historian Hans Prinzhorn collected pictorial works by "mentally ill people"-today's Prinzhorn Collection.His colleague Paul Schilder sent him works by Oskar Herzberg thereto, which Prinzhorn included as "Case 355" in his famous work Bildnerei der Geisteskranken.Using Herzberg as an example, we approached the general issue of the relationship between mental illness, creativity, and art from a historical psychiatric perspective.It was not before his admission to the Leipzig clinic due to his schizophrenic illness that Herzberg began to paint. Prinzhorn and his doctor Ernst Jolowicz considered this late start of artistic activities to be the expression of an immanent creative urge caused by exceptional psychotic experiences. Our study intends to view such artworks outside a rather pathological context. Therefore, we discuss being secluded in psychiatry, supplied painting utensils, and released from his daily constrains as other possible triggering factors for Herzberg's artistic development.

Random-phase-shift Fizeau interferometer.

A new and potentially cost efficient kind of vibration-tolerant surface measurement interferometer based on the Fizeau-principle is demonstrated. The crucial novelty of this approach is the combination of two optoelectronic sensors: an image sensor with high spatial resolution and an arrangement of photodiodes with high temporal resolution. The photodiodes continuously measure the random-phase-shifts caused by environmental vibrations in three noncollinear points of the test surface. The high spatial resolution sensor takes several "frozen" images of the test surface by using short exposure times. Under the assumption of rigid body movement the continuously measured phase shifts of the three surface points enable the calculation of a virtual plane that is representative for the position and orientation of the whole test surface. For this purpose a new random-phase-shift algorithm had to be developed. The whole system was tested on an optical table without vibration isolation under the influence of random vibrations. The analysis of the root-mean-square (RMS) over ten different measurements shows a measurement repeatability of about 0.004 wave (approximately 2.5 nm for 632.8 nm laser wavelength).