LA CLINIQUE — Todd Becraft

“Over all these endeavors on the part of clinical thought to define its methods and scientific norms hovers the great myth of a pure Gaze that would be pure Language: a speaking eye. It would scan the entire hospital field, tanking in the gathering together each of the singular events that occurred within; and as it saw, as it saw ever more and more clearly, it would be turned into speech that states and teaches…” (The Birth of the Clinic, Michael Foucault)

Patients become their disease in the clinic. The psychiatrist and the artist can become the pure Gaze as people become things - a container for their disease that reflects color and light. Can an artist still paint a portrait that pierces the Gaze? What if the artist has struggled with his own depression and alienation - does that lessen the objectification? The subjects in these portraits, patients at a psychiatric center in upstate New York, were encouraged to make their own art as well to level the exchange.

1993, 8" x 12", Oil on board

1993, 8" x 12", oil on board

1993, 8" x 12", Oil on board

1993, 8" x 12", oil on board

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