Velvet Underground performers had all been institutionalized as adolescents

Evidence

Headlined SHOCK TREATMENT FOR PSYCHIATRISTS, Seymour Krim’s report in the New York Herald Tribune was truer than he knew. Lou Reed, Barbara Rubin, and Edie Sedgwick had all been institutionalized as adolescents (Reed even received shock therapy) and their performances surely had an element of payback. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 817

Categorization

• XREF: The institutionalization angle echoes the outsider-art-as-therapy thread running through the deck on creativity and madness.
• SEED: Angles on the avant-garde as traumatized adolescents staging revenge against the psychiatric establishment — a reframing of ‘artists as advance guard’ in psychological rather than real-estate terms.