Louis Wain.

Have you heard of him? 

I learned about him in my film history class in regards to postmodernism. His story is very intriguing and freaky, so I thought I'd share. Louis Wain was an English artist who specialized in drawing animals and serene country life. He also frequently drew anthropomorphized (giving human characteristics to non-human things) cats. 

Cute right? For the next thirty years he became a pretty influential artist. Then, at the beginning of the 1900's, his popularity started to decline, his mother passed away and he had no money. He had always been considered a nice guy but just a little "off." But then, he started behaving in erratic ways all of the sudden. He began having delusions, locking himself in his room to write incoherently and he became hostile towards his own sisters saying, "the cinema screen has robbed the electricity from their brains."

His sisters couldn't handle him anymore so they admitted him to a mental hospital where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia (which may have been triggered by a parasite). Wain continued to paint and his work that follows is all representative of his progression into insanity. 

And here is a montage of it all...

These paintings are frequently shown in psychology classes because it is such a vivid example at the kind of mental wildness that schizophrenia causes. It's kind of scary but at the same time so fascinating that he couldn't visualize a "normal" cat through his illness.