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''The Maze'' is a painting that Canadian artist William Kurelek produced while a patient at Maudsley Hospital in London. Kurelek was born in 1927 into a Ukrainian immigrant community in Alberta, Canada, and suffered through childhood from the oppression of his farmer father. As a young adult he grew mentally ill, and at Maudsley received not only treatment but a room to paint. ''The Maze'' can be interpreted as Kurelek's attempt to justify this privilege; as Kurelek writes, "I had to impress the hospital staff as being a worthwhile specimen to keep on."〔"William Kurelek (1927-1977): The Maze (Canada, 1953)"〕 ''The Maze'' was painted in gouache colors. Kurelek describes it as "a painting of the inside of my skull."〔Grubin & Young〕 That skull has been split open vertically to reveal various compartments inside. Through the eyes, nose, and mouth we can see the rest of the body lying in a wheat field. Inside the skull itself, each compartment holds a scrap of paper, representing a memory or thought. The center compartment, however, holds only a white rat, which represents Kurelek's spirit.〔"Kurelek, William (1927-1977)/The Maze/LDBTH149"〕 The rat is wound up and inert, having run through the maze of the skull chewing a piece of each scrap of paper and finding it undigestible.〔Kurelek, 309-10〕 The skull in the painting has been opened up by ribbon, to suggest the work of the doctors at the mental hospital, attempting to make a proper diagnosis. Kurelek depicted the rat spirit as inert, unwilling to leave his prison even though it has been opened up for him. This was Kurelek's way of showing his doctors what their job was. He writes, in his autobiography, "Now clean me out, I challenge you scientists, and put me back together again - a happy, balanced, mature, fulfilled personality. Lift that rat out and unwind him and let him run free!"〔Kurelek, 308〕 ==Background== After being disenchanted with several art schools in Canada and Mexico, Kurelek took a cargo ship from Montreal to London.〔"Biography"〕 He arrived in 1952 with, as he describes, "two express purposes." Those were to finish his art schooling and to be admitted into a psychiatric hospital, where he may find a cure for his depression and his chronic eye pains. He read about Maudsley's reputation in a Montreal library, so the day after his arrival in London he admitted himself.〔"In the Frame for June 2011"〕 In his autobiography, Kurelek writes that, leading up to the painting of ''The Maze'', he was growing disillusioned with psychotherapy and was desperate for a cure. Part of the anxiety came from the fear that he would not have enough money to stay much longer, so in his mind, "something () to be done." But his main doctor, Dr. Cormier, was unhelpful in his "serenity and aloofness." Kurelek writes, "Just as the protest marchers of today despair of attracting attention by peaceful means, and sometimes set themselves alight with gasoline or do physical damage to property, I decided violence against myself was the only recourse I now had." One evening Kurelek cut his arm, and when he revealed this to Cormier the next day, the doctor inquired into the circumstances but didn't panic.〔Kurelek, 304-5〕 After the episode Kurelek was invited back as an inpatient to be treated by a different doctor, Dr. Carstairs, who appears in the film ''William Kurelek's The Maze''. Carstairs provided Kurelek with a room that doubled as a studio where he could paint. Kurelek felt very strongly that he had to justify his being there for the doctors, so he commenced painting ''The Maze'', "depicting all () psychic problems in a neat package."〔Kurelek, 306〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Maze (painting)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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