Why Do People Think Great Art Comes From Pain

6ncent van Gogh was a chronic alcoholic, his most celebrated paintings borne from absinthe-induced hallucinations earlier he shot himself in the chest. Sylvia Plath, after writing The Bell Jar, notoriously gassed herself in the oven later a string of previous suicide attempts. David Foster Wallace suffered from crippling mental illness while writing his greatest piece of work, Infinite Jest, and hanged himself after wrestling with low for decades — historically speaking, he was even an exception because he didn't dice penniless and unknown.

Bukowski, Winehouse, Woolf, Hemingway, Cobain, Rothko … the list is unending. I grew up on the voices of these artistic visionaries whether they were painters, writers or musicians. Their very names have heralded artistic valor of biblical proportions for me. These names are imbued with passion and prestige, yet the living, breathing people who bore them were largely depressed, leading tumultuous lives. Though I laud and fondly remember them, many of their lives were fueled past drugs, depression and tragedy. Naturally, this blurs the line betwixt venerating the works and legacy of artists themselves and celebrating the very essence of their hurting.

They are part of a narrative equally long as human history — the idea of the tortured creative person is culturally debated, simply to me it has e'er been a self-axiomatic truth. Art is a mimicry and celebration of humanity, and flesh's greatest virtue is surviving arduousness. The notion of tortured artists, withal, has been largely centered on a skewed assessment of the creative process: that hurting is a prerequisite for producing slap-up art.

I have personally fallen casualty to this cultural inclination to glamorize pain in the name of art. For a spell in my mid-teens, I found myself longing for misfortune. Twisted, I know. I wanted to mimic the raw emotion and dark humanity manifest in some of my favorite works, but this proved a futile task at the time, given my comparatively pure and wholesome life experiences. If I could only live through their afflictions and decipher what makes them tick, then I could be similar them: one of the greats.

As a civilization, we have a tendency to glamorize pain as an offshoot of art. Scores of contemporary entertainers take taken their own lives, however the discourse surrounding their legacies is focused on their creative personic accomplishments rather than their demises. When it comes to artists, we are quick to dismiss typical stigmas surrounding suffering and mental disease in favor of their artistic contributions. The tortured artist characterization has get a damaging myth that impedes and minimizes the humanity of our about historic icons.

The implication that happiness and artistic genius are mutually exclusive is unsettling and forms a paradox betwixt the desire to be happy and the want to create. By willfully and eternally glamorizing images of soulfully melancholy artists, we ignore the very real mental welfare struggles that make them who they are. We shouldn't be so close-minded as to say suffering causes art but rather that suffering is a symptom of artistic talent and an inherent drive to create. What tortures artists is also what makes them great.

While we romanticize the suffering of the artistic process, nosotros also find condolement in it. We feel a piddling less alone; we sympathize what it ways to be human a little amend. To the masses, art is a lesson in coping with the curse of consciousness. If nosotros are going to suffer regardless, we might as well find solace in the fact that others tin draw meaning from sharing in our pain.

In the end, the lesson I accept from this is not to celebrate hurting or care for it as a badge of artistic legitimacy. Rather, the most celebrated artists chose not to recoil, wallow in cocky-pity or resign themselves to passivity only to harness their suffering and plough it into something the world could cherish. When I feel alone, I read Bukowski and am comforted past his loneliness. When I have insomnia, I allow Chester Bennington sing me to slumber. And, in realizing that my pain can be just as pretty as that of the greats, I create. I write poems, emotional ramblings and columns expressing my angst and I understand that we brand art not merely because information technology'due south cleansing but likewise because nosotros need to do it to cope.

Maybe it's non that artists are broken or that broken people are artists, but each of u.s. has the power to create beauty from pain, a reprieve from suffering in vain. At least that's what I'd like to believe.

Catherine Yang is a sophomore majoring in communication. She is too the lifestyle editor of the Daily Trojan. Her column, "Catharsis," runs every other Wednesday.

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Source: https://dailytrojan.com/2017/09/27/catharsis-pain-precede-great-art/

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