| Author: Klaus Podoll | 15. March 2005 |
| Edited by: Klaus Podoll |
Migraine Art Exhibitions
Numerous exhibitions, both in the the UK and abroad, have provided opportunities for members of the general public, as well as the medical profession, to view many original pieces of Migraine Art, so allowing them to experience the visual and emotional impact of the pictures.
Dame Vera Lynn and Derek Robinson visiting the Migraine Art exhibition in the City of London Migraine Clinic, 1st July 1981.
The first National Migraine Art Competition, jointly sponsored by The British Migraine Association and WB Pharmaceuticals Limited (the manufacturers of Dixarit), was an unqualified success, with well over 300 entries received from adults, children, schools and colleges.
Following a prize giving ceremony at the City of London Migraine Clinic, Postgraduate Medical Centres throughout the country were offered the opportunity of mounting a display of Migraine Art. [more]
(Derek Robinson, Migraine Art Exhibition, Migraine Newsletter 1982; (no. 3): 15-16.)
Dr Egilius L.H. Spierings, Dr Marcia Wilkinson, Derek Robinson and Dr John R. Graham (from left to right) celebrating the official opening of the John R. Graham Headache Centre at the Faulkner Hospital in Boston, 2nd November 1987.
In 1987 the Headache Research Foundation at Boston's Faulkner Hospital presented an exhibition 'The Art of Migraine', and in 1991 a selection of 90 Migraine Art pictures was shown at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, in an exhibition entitled ' Mosaic Vision', which had among its visitors Oliver Sacks, who subsequently visited Derek Robinson's Bracknell office to view the complete Migraine Art collection. Stimulating thoughts and insights produced by Oliver Sacks' sophisticated reception of Migraine Art can be found in the revised and expanded edition of his monograph on migraine.
In cooperation with Derek Robinson, Jane Roberts Gill, a clinical social worker at the Headache Research Foundation at Boston's Faulkner Hospital, daughter of psychologist Cecilia Brinton Bogner, performed a study on the lives and headaches of 25 participants in the National Migraine Art competitions, examining "What kind of people could paint such extraordinary vivid pictures of their experiences with migraine headaches?" (Gill and Robinson, 1989)
Derek Robinson (left) with Oliver Sacks (right) in his Bracknell office at Boehringer Ingelheim Limited, November 1991.
"A few years ago, I attended an exhibit at the Exploratorium in San Francisco of Migraine Art... I found it FASCINATING! This was before this newsgroup existed and when I saw a visual record of what other migraineurs went through, I had an incredible sense of relief, that I wasn't the only one. Many of the images were so disturbing that I felt grateful that my migraines aren't that intense. Some of them were pretty close to home for me. I took my husband with me and it opened up some good discussions of migraines. He is a non-sufferer and never really understood what a migraine is like (of course, he still doesn't, but the art helped him gain some insight). I wish there was a book that reprinted the art. I wrote to the Exploratorium and never got a response."
(Deborah Hartzman, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, March 16, 1995)
"Did anyone see the exhibition of art by migraine sufferers that appeared in San Francisco about 6 - 7 years ago? I was absolutely stunned to see these paintings of what the world looked like when their aural disturbances were happening − it was just what I had been trying to describe! We are in this together."
(Barbara, Ronda's migrainepage on-line journal, 1996 Journal Entries - July 1996 [4/5])
Tina Vogtmann, Derek Robinson and Georg Bollig preparing the opening of the exhibition 'Art inside the Head' at the Department of Neuropediatry in the Evangelical Hospital in Oberhausen, Germany, 12th November - 3rd December 1997.
In 1997 the first exhibition of Migraine Art in Germany was mounted at the Department of Neuropediatry in the Evangelical Hospital in Oberhausen.
Georg Bollig, Klaus Podoll and Eva Undall preparing the opening of the exhibition "Migraine and Art" at the Hospital Telemark in Skien, Norway, 18th October 2004. (Reproduced from Gjertsen, 2004.) © 2004 Ola Kr. Gjertsen / Varden (see here)
Georg Bollig demonstrating Migraine Art paintings from the exhibition "Migraine and Art" at the Hospital Telemark in Skien, Norway, 19th October - 11th November 2004. (Reproduced from Fragell, 2004.) © 2004 Roger Neumann/Verdens Gang
In 2004, a Migraine Art exhibition dedicated to the memory of the late Derek Robinson was organised by Eva Undall and Dr Georg Bollig from the Pain Unit of the Hospital Telemark in Skien, Norway. The opening of the show "Migraine and Art" was celebrated by a symposium featuring lectures delivered by Drs Tore Mørland, Georg Bollig and Klaus Podoll (Bollig et al., 2005; Fragell, 2004; Gjertsen, 2004).
Logo of MAGNUM: Migraine Awareness Group: A National Understanding for Migraineurs, conceived in 1993 and incorporated in 1994 to bring public and government awareness to the medical seriousness of the migraine disease. © 2007 M.A.G.N.U.M., Inc.
"It's interesting to note that the concept of Migraine art exhibits has been with us for many years. The original format has been asking artists or non-artists to express the suffering of their Migraines through their art in their various mediums. The best example of this format are the well received National Headache Foundation's Migraine Masterpieces Contests. About a decade ago, leadership in the then newly formed NGO (non-government organization) MAGNUM included one of the founding officers who happened to be a well known practicing artist who was himself a Migraineur. That founder is feature artist Michael John Coleman, currently showing with McKenzie at the Italian Cultural Institute. It was at that time that the leadership at MAGNUM, drawing on Coleman's life experience with the disease, wanted to use the power of art itself, created by artists who were Migraineurs to raise public awareness about a very misunderstood disease. This strikingly different concept takes a totally different approach as it focuses on the power and elegance of art created by living artists much in the tradition of the incredible paintings of Migraineurs Vincent Van Gogh or Pablo Picasso, for example. The reason MAGNUM chose to take this approach was that they wanted to use the beauty and excitement of award winning art to bring people out to exhibits that weren't based on suffering, but rather on the positive emotion and life experience of the artists themselves as reflected in their artwork."
© 2003 About, Inc. / Teri Robert (Teri Robert, Migraine Aware Art at Italian Institute, March 2003, see here)
Susan Madden in front of her painting Self Portrait With Migraine at the exhibit Suffering in Silence: Creativity and Migraine, Art Access Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT, May 1999. © 1999 Susan Madden
"Art Access Gallery presents Suffering In Silence: Creativity and Migraine, featuring migraine-inspired artwork by Ed Dolinger, Bonnie Sucec, Susan Madden and Jennifer Martinsen along with text by Mary Dickson.
The impetus for the exhibit came last year after Dolinger discussed his condition with a fellow migraine-suffering artist. For Dolinger, gathering his fellow migraine-suffering artists was a revelation. 'The sharing and exchanging of our stories has been quite moving, with descriptions that rival poetry or literature,' he explained. The resulting exhibition uses art to bridge the myths surrounding migraine's medical and scientific realities. [...]
Suffering In Silence expands public awareness of the effect migraine headaches have on loved ones and close acquaintances. The exhibit also allows fellow sufferers a common forum for exploring and expressing their own relationships with migraine headaches, Dolinger says. 'I feel strongly that this reservoir of expression must be tapped and shared with the public, particularly for other migrainuers.'
'By describing the pain in words and images, we hope to help people who are headache-free understand what it means to live with migraine,' Dickson says. 'Or we hope to help those who aren't so lucky know that they're not alone, they're not crazy, unbalanced or weak. They're just unlucky enough to dwell in the land of migraine.'"
(Lance W. Duffin, Hole in the Head, Salt Lake City Weekly, May 13, 1999) © 1999 Copperfield Publishing
Exhibition "ARTeMICRANIA: opere e parole tra mal di testa e metafisica?" (Migraine Art: Works and Words Between Headache and Metaphysics?), Rome, September 10-17, 2003. © 2003 Galleria Cà d'Oro
Opening of the Exhibition "Migraine Art: Works and Words Between Headache and Metaphysics?", Rome, September 11, 2003. From left to right: "Gloria Porcella, Prof. Giuseppe Nappi, On. Pino Nisticò, Avv. Paolo Picozza." (see here) © 2003 Galleria Cà d'Oro
A painting exhibition "Migraine Art: Works and Words Between Headache and Metaphysics?", was organized by the Accademia Romana del Mal di Testa (A.Ro.Ma.T), Alleanza Cefalalgici (Al.Ce.Group - CIRNA Foundation) and the University Center for Adaptive Disorders and Headache (UCADH) as an event accompanying the XI Congress of the International Headache Society (IHC 2003) in Rome, Italy, 13th - 16th September 2003. The show was displayed at the Circolo Brutium at Via IV Novembre 152, curated by the Cà d'Oro Gallery, in collaboration with the Giorgio and Isa de Chirico Foundation − with 18 oil paintings and four calligraphies by Giorgio de Chirico.
"Did you enjoy the migraine art exhibition?" I asked her. "It was very... interesting," she replied. My eyes came to rest on her face as she was flipping through her magazine, when suddenly she became aware I was looking at her. "What? What's wrong?" she asked. "Nothing," I replied, "I just wanted to know about the exhibition." Something was different. [more]
(Anonymous, Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.sex.stories, July 30, 2002)
References
Anonymous. Akut-Kopfschmerz-Therapie. EKO Echo [Informations for patients, staff and visitors of the EKO - Evangelical Hospital Oberhausen, Germany] 2/98, S. 18.
Bollig G, Undall E, Mørland T, Podoll K. Migrene og kunst. [Migraine and art. In Norwegian] Tidsskr Nor Lægeforen 2005; 125: 777-778.
Duffin LW. Hole in the Head. Salt Lake City Weekly, May 13, 1999.
Fragell G. Tegner migrene. Verdens Gang [Oslo, Norway] October 24, 2004; (no. 282): 54.
Gill JR, Robinson D. Twenty-five migraine artists: Their lives and their headaches. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Headache, Boston, MA, June 16-18, 1989. Quoted from: Biological Abstracts/RRM, BioSciences Information Service of Biological Abstracts, 1989.
Gjertsen OK. Migrenekunst og åpent møte. Varden [Skien, Norway] October 19, 2004; 130 (no. 251); 22-23.
Nicola U, Podoll K. L'arte emicranica come strumento di studio dell'ispirazione artistica. [Migraine Art as a tool for studying artistic inspiration. In Italian] Confinia Cephalalgica 2001; 10: 137-144.
Podoll K. Derek Robinson's audiovisual programme 'In the Picture - A Personal View of Migraine': The cradle of the Migraine Art concept. Neurol Psychiat Brain Res 2001; 9: 17-22.
Sacks OW. Migraine. Revised and expanded. University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford 1992.
Stipp D. If you want to know how migraine feels, just take a look at it. At art show, sufferers give glimpse of awful world; The shock of bagel vision. The Wall Street Journal, 9th November 1987, 1, 20.
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