What is the connection between artists and crazy?

Question

Why are many artist's mentally unstable?

Answer 1

What makes you think that they are mentally unstable?

Answer 2

Artists - or anyone who can be referred to as being "creative" - are right brain dominant. In contrast, left brain dominant individuals are typically thought of as being logical, careful, detailed, and professional. Thus is why artists are prone to going overboard - they (not all, mind you) lack self discipline.

Answer 3

They say there's a fine line between genius and insanity, and I say that's true! It is the job of great artists to create new things, to find new concepts and ideas and express them in the form of art. Any mind that has a predisposition for originality is gonna be a little quirky--and what's more, creativity is addictive. If you get one new idea that's a good one, you just want to find more--which leads to the mind deviating further and further from normal, and seeking emotional highs and odd ways of looking at the world. And those drives to create can lead to all kinds of crazy.

I should note that we don't have a very good functional definition of "sane." Abnormal minds can still function just fine--like mine, I hope. XD

Answer 4

I wouldn't go so far as to call them mentally unstable as i would anti-social. Alot of that behavior is really just a put on and all hype. They feel in order for people to take them and their art seriously they have to pretend to be really deep thinkers and that somehow their talent merits some kind of special attention that puts them at a level ''regular'' people wouldn't understand. Get them together around a B-B-Q pit and free beer and they act no different than anyone else. Catch them at a gallery around their art and presto, the actor comes out. For some reason people seem to expect that in an artist and if it works, i say great, go for it.

Answer 5

Puleeze Suzanne...we are neither unstable or crazy...you try making a living in an area that is neither supported not respected in these United States and see how you like starving. The critical public likes to jump on a successful band wagon...but does not support the beginner. Artists have bills to pay just like plumbers or bankers, but generally get paid a lot less for a lot longer than any plumber. In the same catagory are Olympic athletes and musicians.

Answer 6

This subject has been argued about since the ancient Greeks, and is still controversial.

My own opinion is that the same personality traits that make an artist creative (imagination, high concentration, sensitivity to things the average person does not see or feel, making associations between dissimilar ideas), are the very things that can get us in trouble if we let them get too extreme. And, this is basically what the research has concluded.

Since the 1970's. there have been many respected psychological studies done on the correlation between mental illness and creativity.  All these studies have concluded that creative people (artists, writers, poets, etc.) have an instance of mood disorders (especially clinical depression and bipolar disease) at rates as high as 30 times the rate found in the general population.

One more current study by psychiatrist Ruth L. Richards and psychologist Dennis R. Kinney of Harvard Medical School's McLean Hospital concluded that creativity can be enhanced in people with milder forms of bipolar mania.  In general, creativity suffers with extreme forms of mental illness such as deep depression or hypermania.

The general opinion among psychology researchers is that the TENDENCY towards mania or depression may increase a person's intensity of experiences. This tendency also appears to make creative people more sensitive to many things, less inhibited, and more able to concentrate deeply and have rich imaginations. It also gives them a more novel way of thinking, acting, and making associations between dissimilar ideas (the definition of "creative").

For more information, try this highly readable book about the subject: "Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament" by Dr. Jamison.

Answer 7

It's kind of more or less stereotypical. Every artist i met does a lot of weed and drinks a lot of caffine, I'm an arist, I drink coffee but I dont get high, Im slightly crazy, it's because we are too much in our head trying to create the perfect picture (:

Answer 8

There are cliches for everything in life. "Football players are all big men who are self centered and arrogant and brilliant people don't have the common sense that they were born with", are just a few that come to my mind. I think that most of humanity thinks that artists are "out there" because the creative mind is willing to break out of a rut or an established way of thinking to find an answer or to just have fun. I believe that imagination is solving a problem with ordinary materials in a way that no one else ever considered.

Answer 9

It is true that this is a slightly stereotypical way of thinking of artistic people, however history does show that a lot of revered master artists were in fact mentally unstable. And, I can also tell you honestly as an art student that many of the people I've met during my studies are very 'off the wall', and perhaps quite legitimately insane. This may go along with the argument that there is a fine line between genius and insanity. Art is much the same as any other skill or science in that there are people who excel at it beyond the norm. The ability that artists have to see the way they do, and also the way they convey what they see is simply artistic genius.

You can't have it all. If you've got one extremely prominent quality or talent, you've got to be lacking elsewhere. The same goes for geniuses. Many children who are gifted in academics often lack social skills. Many highly intelligent adults become the 'Unibomber' or serial killers. Look at all the musicians out there with serious drug problems, from self-medicating. It all runs together.

To be an artist, you must be very in touch with your soul and with the innermost parts of yourself. Depending on what's going on inside of you, that brutal honesty can be very hard. Art is a very personal craft, and although it is at many times the only means by which people can keep from going crazy, some may go crazy because of it. To be an artist is to be very emotional, and also most times not be appreciated for it.

Van Gogh, for example is legendary in his artistic looniness, but even as one of the most revolutionary artists of all time, he barely made a penny on his work while he was alive, and didn't become known until after his death.

I guess it's all theory, really.

Thanks for letting me ramble!