Main description:

Some artists have an inclination towards violence, with art helping to mitigate or redirect their destructive energy. For others, their art helps them gain power over or make sense of violent environs. Finally, for some violent perpetrators, art simply mirrors and even perpetuates their psychopathic cycles. Through it all, The Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence explores - and seeks to understand - these interrelated paths of destruction and creation.

To inform this dynamic, Dr. David E. Gussak relies on various psychological and sociological perspectives of violence and aggression. Beginning with brief psychobiographies of violent artists, such as Caravaggio, Cellini, Pollock, and Dali, and those whose work emerged from violence, such as Goya, Beckmann, Picasso, and Vann Nath, among others, Gussak illustrates a potent dual nature of art-making: as a way to mitigate violent inclinations and as a tool to regain control amidst turmoil. From
here, the book provides an in-depth look at our society's fascination with the products of violent perpetrators in the form of murderabilia, as the art of serial killers such as Gacy, Manson, and Rolling finds its way to art collections, feeding into perpetrators' narcissism and psychopathy. The book
concludes with Gussak's reflections from his thirty years as an art therapist working with violent offenders on how art can be used as a therapeutic tool to assuage violence and aggression and promote peace in volatile situations. The Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence is a far-reaching and thought-provoking examination of the competing and complex impulses motivating artwork and those who make it.

Contents:

Prologue: Just What is This Dance?

Part I: The Dance Between Creation and Destruction

Introduction: Art of Violence/ Violence of Art

Chapter 1: Angelic Demons: The Capricious Creators

Chapter 2: Creating in Conflict: Art Amidst Environmental and Societal Violence

Chapter 3: Art of the Perpetrator and the Oppressed: Unveiling the Art of the Holocaust

Part II: Art of Psychopathy

Interlogue: Examining Psychopathy

Chapter 4: Wielding a New Weapon: Perpetuating the Multiple Murderer's Psychopathic Cycle Through Art

Chapter 5: Extremes on the Same Continuum: Comparing the Art of Gacy and Manson

Part III: Art for Change

Chapter 6: Charles Bronson Becomes Charlie Salvador: 'The Most Violent Inmate' Liberated through Art

Chapter 7: Guernica: Painted From Violence, A Palette for Peace

Chapter 8: Continuing the Dance: How Art Therapy Can Reveal and Mitigate Violent Tendencies

Epilogue: Bringing the Dance to a Close