The Maas Maze

Artist William Kurelek (Canadian, 1927–1977)

Date1971

MediumMixed media on panel

DimensionsImage: 35 3/4 x 47 3/4 inches (90.8 x 121.3 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of Professor James B. Maas

Terms

Paintings
Mixed media
Animals
Books
Dreams
Events
Illness
Insects
Mazes
Psychology
Sheet music
Skulls
Thought
panel
Canadian

Object number86.073

Label CopyWhen James Maas taught at Cornell, he sent thousands of his introduction to psychology students (sometimes seventeen hundred in one semester!) to the Johnson to see and write about the painting by William Kurelek that he had commissioned, The Maas Maze. When Kurelek was twenty-six, he sought psychiatric treatment in England, where art therapy was long established. Doctors, several of whom were also collectors, encouraged Kurelek to communicate through art. In 1969, Kurelek wrote: The Maze is a painting of the inside of my skull.... It is a story of my life, well in the sense that people tell stories by the fireplace to entertain their guests, trying to make them accept you. In this case I wanted to be accepted, as an interesting specimen. Kurelek carefully told stories as “everyman and visionary,” painting scenes of childhood memories, the agrarian lifestyle, and later works with didactic religious themes. ("This is no Less Curious: Journeys through the Collection" cocurated by Sonja Gandert, Alexandra Palmer, and Alana Ryder and presented at the Johnson Museum January 24 - April 12, 2015)

Collections