Title:
Untitled ("Miracled Birds")
Creator/Contributor:
Nayland Blake (artist)
Date:
1989
Identifier:
1989.6
Format:
mixed media
This work is based on the life of Daniel Paul Schreber, who documented his own experiences of delusional paranoia in Memoirs
of My Nervous Illness (1903). Schreber's book was the subject of much interpretation, especially regarding the causes of homosexuality,
by psychologists such as Freud, Jung, and Lacan.
Blake's tableau attempts to strip away a century of analysis and return to explore Schreber's own extraordinary imagination.
The framed texts allude to some of the numerous "realms" that Schreber described as existing in the world of his hallucinations.
The disembodied wings echo his belief in the existence of "miracled birds," which, along with "devils" and "fleeting improvised
men," occupied the "Posterior Realm."