So true! The difference is we all have those moments of over-abundance of hormones, but those great artists have the wills and magic skills turn those moments into everlasting pieces of art.Originally Posted by Mark Sawyer
Hugo
So true! The difference is we all have those moments of over-abundance of hormones, but those great artists have the wills and magic skills turn those moments into everlasting pieces of art.
Hugo
And to a personality that precluded the normal ways of coping with hormones. However, if Van Gogh, Beethoven, and Schubert had been thus distracted, the rest of the World would be a poorer place.
Last edited by Jim Jones; 2-Aug-2006 at 06:36.
The overall tone suggests that one has to be diagnosed with that infernal disorder in order to be a crackerjack artist. Interesting scenarios might include
A) Developing a vaccine or maybe surgical proceedure to rid society of the disorder as well as artists and aleve the poor blokes form thier suffering.
B) Develop a way to propagate the disorder in accountants, government officials, school administrators, museum curators and other people who feel artistically challenged.
Cheers!
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White
Hugo, I highly recommend the reading of Antonin Artaud's essay about Van Gogh, "Van Gogh, le suicidé de la société" (english title: Van Gogh, the man suicided by society), I think that the only english translation available is the one contained in "Antonin Artaud, selected writings" (University of California Press), edited by Susan Sontag, but do some researches, maybe there are more recent books...
Artaud suffered from mental illness too, and his essay about Van Gogh is written with the blood and the nerves, it's pure poetry, this is one of those writings that changed my life and my approach to art...
Ciao
Marco
Last edited by Marco; 2-Aug-2006 at 23:23.
Thanks, Marco! I have ordered the book. Sometimes I wonder aloud if my fascination with the insane, -Neitszche, van Gogh, Hamlet and King Lear-, just to name a few, is an indication of my own current mental state, or the direction it is going. Thank God I have other obsessions in my life. I have yet to learn a LF photographer AND an avid swimmer gone mad...
Re: Reading Van Gogh
“For I is someone else…
…The poet makes himself a visionary (voyant) by a long, immense, and rational dissoluteness of all the senses. All the forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, to only keep their quitessence. Inexpressable torture, where he needs all the faith, all the superhuman strength, where he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed, above all others - and the supreme Savant! - For he attains the unknown!...”
(Arthur Rimbaud)
Ciao
Marco
I agree!
I also think it's funny when conversations shift from f-stops to post-impressionist painters to interpretations of the DSM-IV. Part of what's great about this forum.
I just ordered the DVD from Amazon. Hope it's as good as you say. I have the one from A&E's Biography series, which is pretty much straight factual.
I still doubt the diagnosis of primary TLE, but no telling what was going on in his brain from his earlier syphlis, and all that absinthe, not to mention the turpentine and lead base paints he nibbled. Whatever it was we'll never know for sure -- just a lot of speculation without an autopsy.
Wilhelm (Sarasota)
Van Gogh's life is a classic example of sufferings from psychological disorder by artists, poets, and novelist. Moreover, in that period medical science was not very advanced. Also, societies have misconception about the illness. All these intensified the problem
As you mentioned, medical science was so primitive then that nobody paid it any attention, and so very many 'eccentric' personalities existed that they were considered within the scope of the norm. Some were considered pests, and others as saints, and the everyday possibly amusing, good company. Finally consider environmental factors such as wretched food, living conditions and drugs, some delivered in common alcoholic drinks.
For all we know Van Gogh's angst might be from perpetual hangovers.
Why don't we include bankers, businessmen, fishers, blacksmiths, priests, philosophers, chemists and so-forth within the aura of 'psychological disordered' individuals? Because they have no cultural history and their conditions do not add market value.
We can find plenty of the same today if we look underneath the veneer of popular history. Begin by looking at the personality of William Shockley.
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