From Marginalia to the Museum: The Transfiguration of the Doodle by Gottfried Keller, Hans Prinzhorn, and Jean Dubuffet

Abstract:In 1922 German art historian and psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn published his groundbreaking monograph Bildnerei der Geisteskranken, which psychologically and aesthetically analyzed the art of the mentally ill. Tucked away in a footnote is reference to an episode in Gottfried Keller's novel Der grüne Heinrich (1855, 1879/80) when the title artist creates a monstrous web of doodles. This essay explores the implications of Keller's doodle for Prinzhorn's thesis along with the re-evaluation of doodling as a legitimate creative gesture. It concludes by following the doodle into the museum through the artworks of Jean Dubuffet, a pioneering force behind outsider art who was influenced by Prinzhorn's Bildnerei and wielded the doodle as critique against traditional notions of art. Doodles' journey from marginalia to museum-worthy artworks reveals their subversive power to give voice to those marginalized by society, while also exposing the weaknesses and paradoxes of an outsider art for effecting true institutional reform.