NZAmoeba

Scratch Shakespere off the list

An excavation at his house in Stratford-upon-Avon found some pots that had traces of opium/dope in them.

Suddently everything makes so much sence...

Marruk

I'm not sure the idea that many creative types have something weird going on in their heads (either natural, or self induced with chemicals) is very accurate. I used to think that many creative geniuses were crazy, but I was wrong, it was only the artists that I was most familiar with. Here is a short list of fantastic artists that were probably for the most part hard working normal people.

Diego Velazquez (although he was a bit obsessed with being related to royalty and becoming great, but those were quite normal aspirations of the time.)

Peter Paul Rubens from what I read was a very normal guy that everybody liked to be arround. He also seemed to do very well with the ladies.

Jan Bruegel the Elder seemed pretty normal.

Anthony van Dyck who began as a child prodigy didn't seem to have any mental problems.

Frans Hals seemed normal, though he did have some seedy business practices.

It could be argued that Rembrandt was pretty normal untill he was much older, although he was never good with his finances.

Jan Vermeer also seemed normal.

Reynolds and Gainsborough, although they were very competitive with each other both seemed to live nomal lives.

This is just a small list focusing on the baroque erra since that is my favorite and the erra I am most familiar with, but If I cared to or if any of you are interested you should go through different art history books and you will see that for every known crazy artist there are probably a minimum of 5 other great normal artists from the same time.

I notice this in my classes, with my instructors, other students, and with the work currently being produced by all kinds of artists that many of them are quite normal and sane. Unfortunatly just working hard and doing a good job in another hundred years will not be remembered by as many people as for example; cutting off your ear and sending it to some girl who doesn't want you.

lisarea

Well, perhaps you should make a list of appropriate nominees, then.

Is there a time limit, maybe? Do you have to wait for someone to die to determine whether the body of their work constituted genius?

I heartily protest your dismissive treatment of Elvis Costello, and in retaliation, I submit the following backhanded dismissal of your assessment, to wit:

Eh, what do you know, anyway?

dangin

OK, anyone who had appeared in an Austin Powers movie is off the "eternal genius" list. There, wasn't that simple.

lisarea

My scathing retort: OH, YEAH?

I consider it my personal responsibility to defend Elvis Costello against any and all negativity. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

How about Kurt Weill? He wasn't in any Austin Powers movies, and I don't think he was unusually screwed up.

It's going to be hard, seriously, to categorize 'geniuses.' Sure, there will be certain agreed upon ones, but not many. I'm not a huge fan of biographies in general, so I'm not usually aware of people's backgrounds and such, but I could think of a lot of people I consider creative geniuses, who might not have the broad or lasting popularity to be generally considered as such.

How about:

Knut Hamsun. An asshole, to be sure, and I think it was his late-in-life Nazi sympathies that tend to exclude him from "Greatest Writers" lists. But I don't think he suffered from any major mental illnesses, and he was a brilliant writer. Again, not sure about the bio aspects.

Salman Rushdie. It seems to me that his real life travails may have unfortunately overshadowed his real genius. And he is an incredible writer. He's got amazing insight, and words are his bitch. And he seems to be a well-adjusted guy, for someone who's got a price on his head.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I'm not aware of anything too off about him.

There are a whole host of others, probably, but my scant knowledge of biographical data tends to stand in the way.

Besides, I think we too often classify any out of the ordinary or contrary to agreed-upon ideals as 'mental illness.' You can take a group of character traits that appear together fairly frequently, call it a 'syndrome,' and lump a whole bunch of people in that group, marginalizing them. There are probably several of these syndromes that are little more than character traits of creative geniuses.

dangin

You're right, but please remember, way up there near the top of this thread I introduced that "crazy or insane" could be in a good way too.

lisarea

I guess my point is--I want to draw a Venn diagram here--maybe "creative genius" is a subset of "crazy or insane."

Edited: Which, of course, is part of your original hypothesis, right? If so, I concur.

Enai

M.C. Escher

a great dutch (I think) sketcher who also did very famous xylographic printings (I mean where you carve the picture you desire into a wooden plate and then print the result onto paper. I looked the word up on the internet and it listet "woodcarving" as an alternative, but I don't mean statuettes).

He was just a normal guy, from a normal family.

Lookie here
for examples of his work.

Enai