Oskar Kokoschka and Auguste Forel: life imitating art or a stroke of genius?
In the spring of 1910, Oskar Kokoschka painted a portrait of the eminent Swiss psychiatrist, neuroanatomist, temperance champion, and myrmecologist Auguste Forel. The painting is a remarkable psychological portrait but also appears to predict the strokes and right hemiparesis that affected Forel more than a year later. Although it is possible that Kokoschka shared a gift of psychic prediction with his mother and grandmother, a more likely explanation can be ascribed to a combination of the artist's acute perception and the presence of subclinical signs of stroke disease.
Huf
Veronika
V
Department of Medical Gerontology, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences, Adelaide and Meath Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.
O'Neill
Desmond
D
D001154:Art; D003405:Creativity; D005197:Famous Persons; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D020521:Stroke / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000266:history* / Q000503:physiopathology; D014796:Visual Perception