The British Journal of Psychiatry (2001) 179: 0
© 2001 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatry in pictures
ROBERT HOWARD
2001: A Mind Odyssey is a celebration of the arts, psychiatry and
the mind. For further information see http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/campaigns/2001/
or e-mail: awedderburn@rcpsych.ac.uk
A Fisk out of Aqua
Presumably an oblique and distorted expression of the artist's experience
of his or her situation, A Fisk out of Aqua is an
imaginative and witty psychotic realist painting. The picture is
one of the most popular with both staff and visitors to the Bethlem Royal
Hospital Art Collection. We know only that it was painted at Bexley Hospital
in the 1950s and that the artist was somewhat dismissively described as a
"chronic paraphrenic". Meaning in the picture remains as enigmatic
as the artist, and the image fascinates and baffles the
viewer.