- Joined
- Feb 20, 2022
- Messages
- 14
- Reaction score
- 17
Bryan Charnley is by far my favorite artist. I find it hard to imagine a more compelling project than his final portraits. Charnley suffered from Paranoid Schizophrenia. His final portraits were accompanied with a journal that offered some context and interpretation for each portrait. The portraits start off as you would expect but they gradually become more distorted and symbolic as the grip of his illness worsened over the coming months. The fact that he was able to create these paintings and make notes about them with such clarity while deep in the throes of psychosis is a commendable effort in and of itself. What is greater about his work is how he offers such a fantastic account of his experience, or more specifically, his experience of your experience of himself.
The change in the following portrait depicts his torment of thought broadcasting - the delusion that his mind is broadcasting subliminal thoughts to other people giving them a privileged access to his innermost self.
In Charnley's journal he describes the experience as an ego crucifixion as his most intimate self is on display to those who mock him due to the thought broadcasting. He feels despair as other people know everything about him and criticize his every move but he knows nothing of them and feels utterly powerless and unable to express himself, hence the nail in the mouth in the following portrait.
The most powerful of his portraits is the image of two eggs that have been emptied of their contents, much like Charnley's experience of ego crucifixion, leaving nothing left that he can hold secret from other people as it has overflowed and spilled out.
This portrait depicts an empty self with only a red creature at the bottom that is unable to use its mouth - this creature is Charnley's rage. The eye lashes with mouths on the ends are like antennas which broadcast his every thought to other people. A creature controls his mind much like he is just a vehicle that is being driven. This image was according to Charnley, a closing in of the essential image of his schizophrenia.
This was his final portrait, seemingly unfinished but it is dated. It seems to leave only the color of his rage but the previous forms we are accustomed to have dissolved.
Charnley committed suicide a few days later.
