Does suffering enhance [photographic] creativity?

[jay_briggs1]

<p>The book "Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament" by Kay Jamison,exposes the many geniuses we have had that died at there own hand, were institutionalized, or died from a social disease. <br>

The main purpose of the book is to show that there is a significant correlation between artistic temperament and manic-depressive illness.(Amazon review). I could not finish this book as is was so melancholic. And to find practically all poets,writers, painters of the romantic era forward had tragic lives.<br>

With all the psychiatric help and psycho-pharmacology available today I think the anguish and suffering could be greatly lessened.<br>

What effect this has on the artists output is the question: if Van Gough was on<br>

Prozac could he have painted "Starry Night" was it bi-polar or glaucoma? Or a divine madness?</p>

 

[jay_briggs1]

<p>Sorry I entered my post twice.<br>

Jay</p>

[mike dixon]

<i>So, MRI scanning the brain while doing logical tasks showing activity in the left hemisphere of the brain, and activity in the right while doing creative things are nonsense?</i><P>

 

Differences in activity in the different hemispheres of the brain during different kinds of tasks isn't nonsense. Extrapolating from that to oversimplified, overgeneralized pseudoscientific fluff like "the right side of the brain is the center of artistic creativity" is what's nonsensical.<P>

<i>I must ask, you aren't one of those people believing that the earth is 4000 years old as well are you? Trough science, we have learned a lot of things on how the brain works, it's not something some individual sat in a room and decided last year you know.</i><P>

My area of specialization when I was a grad student was neuroendocrinological mechanisms of programming development. My knowledge of brain studies doesn't come from reading pop psychology articles. A rejection of junk science doesn't mean that I'm anti-science.

[furiousennui]

<p>I know I'm late answering the question, but I only just got here. :)<br>

For me, life experience makes the best art. That includes suffering, elation, pain, tranquillity and ennui. If the role of art is to be a form of commentary on the human condition, than the more of that condition, up to and including death (I know that, having died three times at least this year, and profoundly changes how you see the world and think) that you experience the richer and broader the palette on which to draw.<br>

On the subject of artists and where they fall on the bell curve of "normal" psychology, whilst I see that a great many artists may be categorized as bi-polar, ocd, scizophrenic, or suffering some other neuroses, I don't see it as an essential part of their make up. I can think of, and know, many who would be considered normal (whatever that is).<br>

For mine, the mark of a great artist is passion, dedication and discipline. Muses cannot be relied on to act on whim, on demand. The great artist is so practised at their craft that they are creative on demand. More of my thoughts on muses, and their personal effect on me, can be found at <a href="http://furiousennui.com/2011/10/29/musings-on-muses/">http://furiousennui.com/2011/10/29/musings-on-muses/</a> . I will not, at this juncture, that my relationship with my uses is a two way street. I know that most of them would not be my muses if they hadn't been affected by my passion, drive and discipline as an artist, and I fervently hope, and suspect, that they also see me as an influence, maybe even a muse.</p>