Art, creativity, and despair

[Primula Baggins]

[Note: I split this discussion from the "Vincent" thread because it clearly went beyond talking about van Gogh. Prim, feel free to change the title. - VtF]

It's absolutely true that people with severe mental and emotional problems can produce great art. It doesn't follow that they're the only ones who can—that they could not possibly have been great artists if they were healthy.

[Impenitent]

The idea that severe mental and emotional problems not only produce great art but are necessary for its creation is a dangerous romanticisation of mental illness.

There is nothing romantic about depression, psychosis or bipolar disorder and it does a great disservice to those who are dealing with mental illness.

(Not suggesting here that Prim has made any such inference, but I've heard it often enough. In fact, throughout my teens I made that connection in my own mind and I think was one of the reasons I was so passionate about Van Gogh and Blake. It's a rather gothic conception, I think, which teenagers often fall in with and can be very dangerous - justifying self-harm by romanticising it.)

[Primula Baggins]

I agree completely, Impy. I do think it's romanticism that attributes great art to a person's illness. The drive to work hard at one's art can derive from some kinds of mental illness, but the original gift does not.

Perhaps it's appealing to think that suffering brings achievement, because that forms a compensation of sorts.

[baby tuckoo]

If the suffering and eccentricity is an affect, it serves no purpose but the breaking down of a wayward soul.


But there is plenty of evidence that neurosis, pain, disconnection, and drug use are spurs to creativity. One might wish that it were not, but it is.

[Primula Baggins]

Spurs to creativity, but creating what? Mostly nonsense; we've probably all seen such things. What's the creative impulse worth in the absence of talent or skill? What can it accomplish?

I think the gift also has to be there. Illness or drug use alone is not enough.

[Frelga]

I wonder if it's not the other way round. There is plenty of neurosis, pain, disconnection and drug use out there that cause suffering without producing anything creative. But an extreme talent is an aberration, and unfortunately is often accompanied by the above symptoms. Whether it's all part of the same syndrome, or a coping mechanism of an abnormal - talented - person in a "normal" and often insane world, I cannot say.

[baby tuckoo]

And I certainly didn't say that the dysfunction in any way caused the art or fueled the talent. Rather, it is a bi-product. There's plenty of evidence.

Any fool who thinks that the dysfunction and alienation will lead to great art deserves what it gets.

[Primula Baggins]

I concede that. Just so we keep away from the idea that only such people can create art.

(I don't create art; I create entertainment. So there is nothing personal in this discussion for me.)

[Alatar]

I have the same concerns regarding the romanticism of drug use. How often have we heard that certain artists were at their most creative when using drugs? This strikes me as a false connection. Sure, the Beatles were probably stoned while writing their best music. Sure, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs was recorded in snatches between regular heroin binges. However, does that mean the link is causal? Most artists at their most succesful were also at the stage where they finally had money and were exposed to drugs. Does that mean that the drugs caused their success, or the other way round? Many of those artists were simply in a position where commercial success was no longer the driving force and so creativity was given room to flourish. I'm sure if one were to dig a litttle deeper that there's far more artists with talent who were destroyed by drugs than those who were improved by them.

[WampusCat]

An interesting book on this subject is "Touch With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament" by Kay Redfield Jamison, who has herself struggled with bipolar disorder. It's been a while since I read it, but I recall thinking she made an excellent case that creativity and mental anguish often seem linked.

Personally, I suspect that there is a genetic component that makes the two traits more likely to be found together, although they may also be found separately.

[axordil]

The underlying issue as I see it is that culturally we tend to valorize depictions of anguish and suffering even as we try to avoid them in our own life. The "great" art of the past four centuries in Western circles, especially since the Romantics, focuses disproportionately on the subjects, across all media.

It's no wonder we lose a higher percentage of artists, writers and musicians to self-destructive activities, since our expectation is that they will delve into mental, emotional, and spiritual places we prefer to avoid, in order to tell us all about nasty things we already should know (and do, at some level). Cleaning out the septic tanks of one's soul on demand gets tiresome.

[yovargas]

Me and a friend have been having a debate for a while about why it seems (to me, at least) that novels considered "fine" literature consistently seem to focus on depressing subjects like loneliness and loss of hope, as if joyful thought is less worthy of being considered serious art.

[axordil]

joyful thought is less worthy of being considered serious art.

So long as we define serious art as being that which touches on things we prefer not to engage with, or perhaps in, that bias is going to be there. People don't have a problem with being happy, so they don't take "happy" art as seriously. The artist isn't doing anything their audience wouldn't, if they had the skill, so their activity isn't as valued. People who get into depressing, harrowing, painful areas--we don't want to do that, so we value those who are willing to. Perhaps too much, yes.

[yovargas]

we don't want to do that, so we value those who are willing to.

Speak for yourself. I pretty much gave up on "fine" literature because of this obnoxious bias towards misery.

[axordil]

Sorry, I was using the literary "we" there. You are certainly not alone in having a problem with the bias towards "downers" in art. But it's been there for a long time, and it has shaped our expectations as a culture--I'm not defending it, only explaining why it's there.

edit to add--and, apropos of the thread, the toll it takes on artists.

[Primula Baggins]

I'm probably in a similar boat to yours, yov: I have trouble mustering interest in literature and films about people who create their own misery, when that's all the story is about—when nothing is learned and no redemption appears possible.

I know people are fallible, I know that bad things happen to good people—but for a story to speak to me, there has to be more to it than that. I want the character to learn something, to grow, to at least begin to reach out for help. Otherwise I literally don't see the point of accompanying the character on this downward, hopeless journey. I already know that such things happen. I'm reasonably empathic and reasonably intelligent and already try to be compassionate to people who suffer, no matter what caused their suffering. All these books and films do is lead me through it again; there's no insight for the character or for me.

In terms of the stories I love best, I'm a romantic, yov, and I think you probably are, too. There is always hope, and people can learn better, and it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. All that kind of thing.

(This is probably why I will never be an artist. )

[axordil]

Prim--

Being a romantic, I would argue, is the root of both hope and despair.

[Primula Baggins]

Yes, certainly—believing that we can affect our own fate to at least some extent leaves room for both triumph and defeat.

My romanticism certainly extends to real life. In fact I would probably say it's founded there and extends into my views about art.

[yovargas]

It's not so much an opposition to "downers" - though to often, it seems, the artist is saying nothing but "Life sucks. We're all doomed."; if I can say in six what it takes you 300 pages something's wrong - but the treatment of "downers" as generally higher art than more positive or even (dare I say it) entertaining works.

The artist isn't doing anything their audience wouldn't, if they had the skill, so their activity isn't as valued.

One role of the artist is to help people paths towards a more meaningful and, yes, happier life. That's not something that just anybody can do sucessfully, skilled or not.

[axordil]

One role of the artist is to help people paths towards a more meaningful and, yes, happier life. That's not something that just anybody can do sucessfully, skilled or not.

I certainly think that's a possible role, although not one that has had as much currency as it might in recent years. It does raise the question as to whether the best way to help people is to give them examples of happy people as role models or unhappy people as cautionary tales (to be reductionist about it).