Uncanny images as a diagnostic tool: the case of Artaud’s late portraits
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4396/20250312Parole chiave:
Artaud, portrait, face perception, uncanny, diagnosisAbstract
This article examines the late portraits of Antonin Artaud through an integrated psychopathological, aesthetic, and phenomenological approach, arguing that these works serve as a matrix for identifying core features of schizophrenic experience. Produced in the artist’s final years, the drawings consistently present asymmetrical, disjointed, and violently disfigured faces, which are interpreted here as markers of a specific form of dissociation, or disembodiment. More specifically, the study develops a theoretical model in which the fragmentation embedded in the formal structure of the portraits is understood as the visible expression of what Deleuze calls the “breakdown of surfaces” in schizophrenia, as well as of a disturbance affecting five fundamental dimensions of the self: vitality, activity, coherence, demarcation, and identity. After framing Artaud’s portraits as the manifestation of a profound disruption of these dimensions, the paper delves into the uncanny character of the images, which emerges from their tendency to blur the boundaries between human and non-human, self and non-self, animate and inanimate. These properties are interpreted in light of the phenomenology of schizophrenia, with particular reference to disturbances of mirror self-experience and forms of self-estrangement. By treating the drawings as “diagnostic” material, the article ultimately argues that Artaud’s late work offers a distinctive perspective on altered embodiment.
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