of Correction's Art Therapy in Prisons program. As an art therapist for almost 30 years, Gussak has presented and published extensively internationally and nationally on forensic art therapy and art therapy in forensic settings. These include, among others, Art on Trial (2015) and Art and Art Therapy with the Imprisoned (2019). He is also the co-editor, with Marcia Rosal, and contributing author for The Wiley Handbook of Art Therapy (2015).
Gussak applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, The Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence, and reported the following:
Page 99 of The Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence is in the middle of chapter 2 which features artists impacted by situational and societal violence whose work seemed to emerge from a need of comprehension, control and resistance. The top half of this page is filled with Felix Nussbaum’s final painting, Death Triumphant, created shortly before he was arrested, deported and ultimately murdered by the Nazi regime. Yet the text on the page primarily refers to his self-portrait that appears on the previous page which conveys “…a sense of furtive insolence, the subject doing everything he can to maintain his humanity and identity [in the face of violent oppression]. Unfortunately, it is already too late.” The bottom of the page begins its reflections of Death Triumphant, which “depicts many skeletons playing and dancing to music among the ruins,” concluding its summary on the following page, ultimately reminding the reader “[i]n destruction nothing is sacred; all will eventually disappear.”Follow Dave Gussak on Twitter.
This page is paradoxically an excellent encapsulation and a meagre fragment of the entire book—it captures its essence, illustrating in depth the infamous work of one of many featured artists, relying on it to help tell his volatile story. Like all of the examinations throughout, it reflects deeply on the artist’s work to convey how it might reflect, contain, resist or sublimate their violent tendencies or volatile experiences. Yet it is just one of 85 examples depicted throughout, either by notoriously aggressive and violent creators, courageous resistors, psychopathic murderers who wielded their art as a weapon, or those whose creations facilitated peace and well-being for even the most incorrigible.
This page does indeed underscore the role that art has in maintaining and reinforcing one’s identity in the face of barbarism, and the artists’ ability to exhibit and express the volatility held within and experienced without. Yet, in exploring the complex interrelationship between art and violence, the book can’t help but provide an intricate, complicated and thought-provoking examination. Thus, while this single page can help draw the reader in and provide a sense of the book’s narrative rhythm, it can’t fully contain in a nice, neat parcel the frenzy ensued within.
--Marshal Zeringue
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