Van Gogh, Art, and Madness

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I had the most wonderful experience on Friday, first, getting out and about with my daughter for the first time since the advent of Delta, and second, getting to see a wonderful exhibition that has just opened at the Dallas Museum of Art, Van Gogh and the Olive Groves curated by the DMA in conjunction with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. (This is not one of the many immersive experiences that are now touring the country, but an exhibition of his actual paintings, never before seen together.) It explores the olive grove paintings produced by Van Gogh in the last turbulent year of his life before he died two days after a suicide attempt in July of 1890. He was thirty-seven. 

 

Oh, such talent! The paintings are breathtaking. But he suffered terribly from episodes of mental illness. There has been much conjecture over the years about the specific nature of his illness--here's just one journal article for those who are research-happy. 

 

 

But it's not the specific cause of Van Gogh's illness that interests me as much as wondering what he might have accomplished in his life if treatment had helped him cope with his symptoms. And of course the corollary--was his genius dependent on his madness? He himself lamented the effects of his illness on his work. Would treatment or medication have damped his creativity? 

 

There are so many instances of mental illness/substance abuse associated with genius, whether painters, musicians, composers, writers. Are there some that especially intrigue you? (I've always been fascinated by the poet Dylan Thomas, who died at only thirty-nine. It was long held that he drank himself to death but researchers now think he died from pneumonia and poor medical treatment.) 

 

LUCY BURDETTE: That sounds like an amazing exhibit Debs! The name that comes to my mind is Ernest Hemingway. I believe he was a genius, but also seriously dogged by depression, as were other members of his family. And William Styron was another. It sure does make me wonder if they’d been treated, would their art be less distinctive? Or put another way, do you have to suffer to write? (Hope not!)

HALLIE EPHRON: Debs, your post brought to mind the generation of talent that was wiped out not by mental illness but by the AIDS epidemic. So many losses. It snuffed out one of my high school friends, Leland Moss, who was on his way to fame as a writer and director. I have vivid memories of “acting” in several plays he’d put on his backyard when we were in elementary school. I was Wendy to his Peter. He died at 41, after directing productions at at La MaMa and Playwrights Horizons and the NY Shakespeare Festival.  The list of theatre talents like Leland, lost to AIDS, is legion. 

JENN McKINLAY: Suffering for one’s art - bleh, that’s not for me. I don’t think I could work if it felt like torture. But there is no doubt that we’ve all heard that “real” artists are temperamental, high strung, eccentric, crazy, etc. I do believe creative humans are drawn to unstructured lifestyles, view the world through a different lens, and feel compelled to recreate that vision in their chosen medium. Michelangelo apparently had OCD, Georgia O’Keefe situational depression, and Rothko (one of my faves) suffered from bouts of depression that he self medicated with alcohol and barbiturates. Would any of those artists have created what they did  the way they did if they’d had a good therapist and appropriate meds? What would the world look like without their work or if their work had manifested differently? I have to admit, that thought sets me back on my heels a bit. 

 

Right now, I’m reading Mary Beard’s How Do We Look (research) and with your question in mind, I’m wondering who carved the three thousand year old, twenty ton, colossal head attributed to the ancient Olmec civilization? What creative spark motivated them? Depression? Anxiety? Piety? Hubris? Hmm.

RHYS BOWEN:  Debs, I saw the Van Gogh exhibit in the spring. Amazing! And I loved how it showed his slipping into bouts of madness. A bright scene of countryside slowly melting into a narrow bed. A chair. Poor man!  On a side note: I had Mohs surgery on my ear. A tiny piece sliced off. And it hurt! All I could think of was how he could possibly have cut off his ear if one small piece hurt so much!

 

I don’t think great art is tied to madness. Rather the other way around. These people only have the escape of art as self expression to relieve their suffering   Like so many comedians suffer from depression. When everyone is laughing they forget for a few minutes the great weight of the world 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I always think of those amazingly gifted writers like Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Zelda Fitzgerald, who struggled with both mental illness and the many ways their societies fenced women in. I wonder how much of their ultimate despair came from (untreated) depression and psychosis, and how much from living in a world that was constantly trying to stuff them in boxes labelled “wife” and “mother.”

 

On a personal note, depression tends to run in my family, and for years I refused to seek treatment during depressive episodes because I thought it might take away my creativity. Let’s face it, the ability to conjure up places and people and plots is mysterious - who knows where it comes from. Thankfully, I did get help, and discovered - of course - that I wrote just as well when I was healthy.  

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I have thought about this so much since you posed the question. I mean--we sit at our computers every  day and make up stories about imaginary people. That takes a certain kind of brain. I think of Thomas Edison, and Mozart. Billie Holliday. Mother Teresa, even. Joan of Arc. Robin Williams. They were different, and tortured, and managed to turn their --obsessions--to do things that would change the world. I don’t think we can understand what makes someone tragic and what makes someone brilliant. We sit here every day and type type type--and others don’t--and why? And I’m not sure how to say this, but there are some actions (and reactions) that are a result of “decisions” and others that we have less control over.

 

DEBS: I would agree, Hank, that what we do--the ability to create worlds and people in our heads--must seem more than a bit odd to many people. Is it a matter of degree, then?

 

READERS, what do you think about all this? And have you seen Van Gogh's paintings in person? They are so amazingly, vibrantly alive. You can feel the passion that went into them so strongly.