Van Gogh. A Victim of Society

This small essay, awarded the St. Beuve Prize, was written by the French writer, poet, and playwright Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) after his stay in a psychiatric hospital. He dedicates his text to a man who is a classic example of the mad genius in our culture, Vincent van Gogh. Artaud's own experience allowed him to create a personal, vivid, and poignant manifesto against psychiatry as a discipline and its punitive methods. The author refutes the thesis of Van Gogh's madness, asserting that society, which rejects nonconformity and any otherness, itself generates those whom it labels as mentally ill, and sometimes, as in Van Gogh's case, even drives them to suicide.