1514522307Richard Saholt19242014Richard Saholt grappled with the hellish terror of the world; in his collages he remixed blaring headlines and searing images of modern horror and violence from magazines, tabloids, and newspapers. Working on themes such as the stigma of mental illness, the brutality of war, and death, Saholt dedicated hours to finding fitting images to include in these anguished cacophonies. The collages on cardboard, as well as his dense scrapbooks, also visualize his experiences of daily life with schizophrenia. Among them, <em>THE CHEMISTRY OF MADNESS</em> turns a blank photo album into a chronicle of coming to terms with his inner turmoil; it is composed of articles on schizophrenia and hypoglycemia augmented with collage and writing, such as his annotation of the term for his illness as “a word often spoken in whispers.” Saholt spent much of his life in Minneapolis, where he was born in 1924. An abusive childhood was compounded by his struggles with undiagnosed learning disabilities and a speech impediment. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942, joining the 85th Mountain Ski Troop Division that fought in the Italian Alps during World War II. He returned home with back and leg injuries and was psychologically traumatized. His earliest collages were small pieces made to express the rage at what he experienced as the military’s failure to disclose his schizophrenia diagnosis on enlistment and the subsequent neglect by the Veterans Administration. Over time, he worked on a larger scale. “I can make people see and understand things they never could before,” he told the <em>Minnesota Star Tribune</em> in 2001. “So in a way, my mental illness has been a gift. Without it, I wouldn’t have amounted to a row of beans. I would have been a total zero.” An essential supporter was his wife, Doris, whom he met while taking singing lessons to improve his stutter and married in 1952. He achieved recognition for his work by the 1980s, starting with inclusion in a 1981 group show of artists with disabilities in Washington, D.C., organized by the Sister Kenny Institute of Minneapolis rehabilitation center. Saholt died in 2014. The American Folk Art Museum holds a large collection of works by Richard Saholt and extensive related materials donated by the art critic Michael Bonesteel. Allison C. Meier, 2025 Text written as part of “Rethinking Biography,” an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). RichardSaholthttps://collection.folkartmuseum.org/internal/media/dispatcher/5140/fullCombat veteran Richard Saholt survived World War II relatively unscathed physically, but he barely made it through emotionally. In addition to frequent blackouts stemming from concussions that he received while serving in Italy with the U.S. Army, he suffered injuries to his back and legs. They were minor problems compared to the monumental psychological trauma that he experienced during the war. When he finally was able to gain access to his military records in 1969, he discovered that upon enlistment he had been diagnosed with chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia and had never been told about it.The anger that Saholt felt from the army’s deception, compounded with its refusal to award his disability benefits, found their way into the small collages that marked the beginning of his art-making practice in the mid-1960s. Among his collage works dating from the late twentieth century are several appropriated and repurposed books. One of them is an elaborately enhanced photograph album, The Chemistry of Madness—a title that refers to Saholt’s attempt to understand the physiological causes of his mental and physical illnesses. He used the blank pages of the photo album to attach newspaper and magazine articles on the subjects of schizophrenia and hypoglycemia, as well as his own handwritten notes, plus collaged images and words. The cover of the album wastes no time informing the viewer about how incompetent, veteran hospital doctors denied that he had hypoglycemia. The plethora of articles packed into the collages within the album may have been a way for him to explain and validate his condition to an intended audience that he hoped would read them. On the inside surface of the front cover, Saholt attached an article on schizophrenia, including a list of “schizophrenia’s danger signs,” to which he has added reproductions of Louis Wain’s famous portraits of cats that presumably marked the stages of Wain’s mental illness. Words from other sources are collaged over the cat pictures and article’s text: “sordid life,” “hell,” “madman,” “worrying,” “monsters,” “crazies,” “deadly,” “damned,” and “tragedy.” Areas of the printed article are circled and underlined in red and black ink. In every area of white space, Saholt adds his own handwritten sentences.The album continues for some forty more pages with texts and images collaged together chock-a-block in obsessive compositions. Fine print and bold headline texts dominate the pages, sometimes collaged sideways so that the viewer must turn the book in various directions to read it. Occasionally, a page will contain predominantly images, but this is rare. Saholt seemed bent upon using the printed word as his primary vehicle of expression. As his collages grew to their most regular, frequent, and standard size, he continued to incorporate numerous blocks of newspaper or magazine text along with bolder words and images. However, as he became more confident using images and individual words alone to convey his messages, he apparently relied less often upon articles from publications as major components in his collages.Michael Bonesteel, “Richard Saholt: The Chemistry of Madness,” in Vestiges & Verse: Notes from the Newfangled Epic, ed. Valérie Rousseau (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2018).Richard “Dick” Louis Saholt was born on February 22, 1924, in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Torfen F. and Josemone R. Saholt. Saholt experienced a traumatic childhood, marked by physical and emotional abuse from his father, Torfen. As a child, Saholt suffered undiagnosed learning disabilities and a speech impediment. He was described as a gentle, sensitive, and shy child.In December of 1942, at the age of 17, Saholt enlisted in the U.S. Army to get away from his bad home life. Saholt served as a sniper, scout, and point man in the Ski Paratroopers of the 10th Mountain Division. The 10th Mountain Division fought and defeated German forces during World War II in the Italian Alps between 1944 and 1945. On November 5, 1945, the military discharged Saholt with back and leg injuries. The military awarded him a Good Conduct Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, and a Bronze Star. Saholt returned from combat with physical injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), visual disturbances, depression, and blackouts. His childhood speech impediment also returned. To overcome his stutter, he enrolled in singing lessons where he met his future wife Doris Marie Johnson. The couple married in 1952.Following the war, Saholt’s physical and psychological ailments continued to grow, impairing his ability to complete training programs or hold a job for more than a few months. For 29 years, Saholt repeatedly appealed to the Veterans Administration (VA) for service-connected disability. During an early appeal in 1964, the head of the Minneapolis Veterans of Foreign Wars office encouraged Saholt to create collages to visualize what he struggled to explain through words. Saholt began to document his experience using war mementos, words, and phrases clipped from newspapers. These collages helped him to articulate the psychological traumas caused by the war.The VA continued to discredit his claims. It denied the impact of the war on his disability and blamed his childhood for his psychological ailments. In 1969, Saholt’s attorney drew medical files out of the VA, revealing Saholt had been diagnosed with “chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia,” a diagnosis kept hidden from him. In 1974, a representative from the Disabled American Veterans organization, used the unearthed file to appeal his case which finally awarded him service-connected disability.Saholt continued to create collages and expanded the size of his work to large-scale montages constructed using photographs and clippings from journals, magazines, and newspapers. By the mid-1990s, Saholt built an impressive body of work encompassing hundreds of collages. He began to share his work in group exhibitions and publications. In 2001, the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore included his work in a group exhibition. Additionally, he was featured in solo exhibitions at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in 2005 and the Intuit: Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in 2016.Saholt passed away at the age of 89 on January 12, 2014. Today, Saholt’s work is included in several museum collections, including the American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY; Inuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago, IL; National Veterans Art Museum, Chicago, IL; and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, St. Paul, MN.Saholt began making collages in 1964 as therapeutic modality, prompted by the VA doctors he was speaking to. It wasn't until 1974, when he visited the media theorist Marshall McLuhan that Saholt was encouraged to produce larger format versions. By his own admission, he really began to slow down and produce way less by 1998.(1924–2014)MinneapolisMinneapolisMinneapolisMinneapolisMinneapolisMinneapolisRichard SaholtRichard Louis Saholt