On the Couch

Modern art was on the couch last week. A Viennese psychiatrist, Dr. Eva Henrich, had shown 30 pictures to a panel of 158 rank & file Viennese. Half the works were by modernist painters--Picasso, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Enrico Donati and Joan Miro. The other half were by schizophrenic patients in mental hospitals. Asked to decide which were the outpourings of patients and which the works of artists, the panel scored a perfect zero. They were right half the time, wrong the other half--or no better than they might have been if they had closed their eyes and left it strictly to the laws of chance.

Picassophobes could take grim delight in Psychiatrist Henrich's findings. For them, the test proved that moderns are mad. Picassophiles would be forced to conclude that the average Viennese layman is no judge of art.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.