Art from The Dementia Plague

From the article The Dementia Plague

By Stephen S. Hall. 

In MIT Technology Review. Vol. 115 No.6
(Thanks to Joan & Robert for sharing this article.)

ABOUT THE ART WORK: When he learned in 1995 that he had Alzheimer's disease, WIlliam Utermohlen, an American artist living in London, immediately began work on an ambitious series of self-portraits. The artist pursued this project over an eight year period, adapting his style to the growing limitations of his perception and motor skills and creating images that powerfully documented his experience of his illness. The resulting body of work serves as a unique artistic, medical, and personal record of one man's struggle with dementia. Mr. Utermohlen died in 2007.

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1995 Blue Skies - The first self-portrait completed after the artist's diagnosis shows a man whose world has become untethered. The artist clings to a table as if to anchor himself within a flattened, featureless space.

1996 Self-Portrait (Yellow and Green)

1996 Self-Portrait (Red)

1997 Self-Portrait (with Saw)
The artist learned that his doctors would be unable to definitively diagnose his disease until autopsy. The saw depicted here is an open allusion to this fact.

1998 Self-Portrait (with Easel)

1999 Erased Self-Portrait

2000 Head