Art Criticism - The State University of New York

patients. Charcot was often to be found sketching his patient's physiognomic
features and bodily positions when they were having hysterical episodes, and
he frequently had professional photographers photograph his hysterical patients.
All this was done in an effort to compile a visual reference library for
himself and his students.
Furthermore, Didi-Huberman,in his book, Invention de l'hysterie:
Charcot et l'/conographie photographique de la Salpetriere, explains that
the "stylized sculptural positions" of the women in the photographs "mimic
the emotions of terror, disgust, lust, and surprise."16 The long exposure times
necessary for photographs at this time furthers the argument that these "hysterics"
are essentially posing. The patients seem to be deliberately deceiving
their doctors by striking poses, although it could be argued that the patients
are merely responding to the prompting of the photographer. Whichever the
case, due to their wide circulation these photographs played a major role in
shaping the "ideals" of hysteria for patients, society, and those in the medical
fieldP
For example, a famous painting by Andre Brouillet depicts Charcot
giving one of hIS Tuesday Lectures and Charcot's star patient, Blanche Wittman,
giving a hysterical "performance" to the aU-male crowd of Charcot's neurology
department at Sal petri ere in 1887. It has often been noted that on the wall of the
lecture hall, behind the crowd of men, hangs a drawing of a hysteric's body
convulsing with seizures. The drawing is the only representation of a hysterical
fit in the room, and only the women (Blanche Wittman and her nurses) are
able to see it. Charcot looks off to the left,. perhaps answering a student's
question, while the man holding Blanche inconspicuously glances at her bared
chest. It has been noted that the true subject of this painting may in fact be the
powers of suggestion that representations of hysteria may have had on the
female patients at Salpetriere. Blanche herself would have seen the drawing as
she entered the room-before she entered her hysterical fit. Her posture clearly
echoes the drawing and suggests that she may only be mimicking it in order to
please the crowd and Dr. Charcot. The painting may also depict the sexual
curiosity the male doctors had in the female patients, which could be seductive
to them.
In order to compile a history of historical images of hysteria Charcot
collaborated with the artist Paul Richer to publish Les Demoniques das l' art in
1887.18 In this work they declared their desire to show "the place that the
external form of hysterical neurosis took in art at the time when [hysteria] was
not considered an illness but rather a perversion of the soul, due to the presence
of demons and their agitations."19 In the preface to the book the "great
hysterical neurosis" is called the "illness of the century."
Although Charcot played a major role in freeing hysteria from its
previous interpretation as an exclusively female disease, his downfall, as Elaine
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Art Criticism