Explanation of Madness in Art as Freedom in Foucault's Nietzchean Attitude, Focusing on Goya's Paintings

The French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) following Nietzsche, criticized the foundations of western metaphysical. He tried to explain different forms of ‘otherness’- alterity- referring to those who are marginalized and excluded from power positions, through disclosure and subversion of the canons and self-explanatory principles. Madness can be considered one of these forms of otherness as Foucault found it in modern era’s artistic works. Foucault considered Francis Goya’s paintings as leading us out of what the power structure decided. In this study, the relationship and interaction between Foucault’s ideas regarding artistic madness with Nietzsche’s Dionysian principle is analyzed; the interaction of these two views with each other and with the artistic madness depicted in Goya’s works is also studied. By giving evidence from Modern art particularly from Goya’s works, artistic madness form Foucault’s view is explained and considered as a form that make freedom possible out of the dominant power structures.