The Artist in Torment

[sleigh]

Part of this comes after viewing Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on nurturing creativity -- if you haven't already watched it, you really should. I don't entirely agree with her take on creativity, but I believe nearly a creative artist of any ilk can understand where she's coming from and will find her talk intriguing and uplifting.

Not long after I saw Ms. Gilbert's talk, I re-watched the 2004, Academy Award-winning animated short called Ryan by Chris Landreth. Ryan is a quirky and strange documentary about Ryan Larkin, who back in the late 60s/early 70s put out some truly gifted animated shorts for the National Film Board of Canada, and who spiraled down in later life into drug abuse and addiction, ending up homeless and panhandling in the streets. I was also reading Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, and came across this quote:

"Nor will Sylvester ever be a writer, though his name blaze in 50,000-candle-power red lights. The only writers about me for whom I have any respect, at present, are Carl and Boris. They are possessed. They glow inwardly with a white flame. They are mad and tone deaf. They are sufferers."

Here are a few other quotes: "There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you." (Maya Angelou) "I am a great artist and I know it. The reason I am great is because of all the suffering I have done." (Paul Gauguin) "Work is nearly always a torture. If I could find something else I would be much happier, because I could use this other interest as a form of relaxation. Now I cannot relax." (Claude Monet)

There you have it, again and again. Those who are true artists are mad and tormented. Yet...

Maybe this is why I'll probably never be considered to be a "true artist"--I enjoy writing. It's what I makes me feel good, more than nearly anything else. I look forward to those moments when I can sit down at the computer and just be alone with the story-in-progress. Writing isn't a torment for me; in fact, it's quite the opposite. It's a salve; it's a moment of joy; it's what keeps me sane.

Oh, sure, I have those "dark moments of the soul" at the middle of every damn book where the words don't seem to want to come and I wonder if I'll ever find my way through to the end of the book. I agree with Isaac Bashevis Singer, who said: "Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression." That's true -- the story that ends up in print in the book never quite matches the one I had in my head. And Denise can tell you how depressed I was feeling at the beginning of this year: when I had no contracts for new books; when my agent of the last twenty years or so decided to part company; when I was seriously wondering if my writing career was over.

But that wasn't about the writing; that was just life. We all have moments in our existence when reality throws us a wrecking ball that threatens to rip apart everything we know. But, for me, it's often writing that helps me to get through those times (that and the support of Denise and other friends...).

I'm not a tortured artist. I wonder how much of that is myth and perception. Yes, there have been artists whose lives seem to have been one long tragedy -- but there are just as many others who seemed to have lived lives no more tragic than anyone else's. Shakespeare is the one name in literature everyone knows, but from all indications, his life was not an eternal torment. Leonardo da Vinci doesn't seem to have been especially tortured, nor does Charles Dickens, Ansel Adams, or a dozen others I could name as being what we consider artistic geniuses. Yes, they had rough patches -- like everyone else in the world -- but by and large their adult lives were relatively placid.

And there are millions of people who have had torment and and tragedy in huge, heaping, stinking shovelfuls, yet those horrors didn't make artists of them.

So I wonder... why is the Artist-As-Tormented-Soul such an enduring portrait? Why is that we tend to associate artistic greatness with a tragic life? Why do we seem to celebrate such anguish?

What do you think?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I sometimes wonder if it's a kind of excuse -- that some writers (and artists and musicians) have had addictions and problems and so forth and justified them as necessary to their work, when they may have been more to do with their personalities. It's also, certainly, an artefact of the Romantic Movement. Many of the Romantics were also unconventional, and suffered for that in some ways (though Byron, being an aristocrat, got away with all sorts of stuff with far fewer consequences and still played the 'tormented' card), and this rather became part of the pose. But there was an earlier model of professionalism -- Aphra Behn springs to mind -- and other Victorians stuck to it (Dickens, Tennyson). And Dumas was certainly a Romantic, but he relished his life.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Random thoughts:

You have to suffer to be a middle manager. You have to start at the bottom, kiss the asses of incompetent morons, do boring work, commute long distances, put up with a spouse who's complaining, and deal with office politics. And your company might fold for reasons unrelated to your talent.

Most art does not provide instant feedback. Raising children is interactive. Teaching is interactive. Medicine and law require firm decisions that have immediate results. Sales has a bottom line daily, weekly and quarterly. In construction, things are shaped by your hand every day. But when you write, any sort of direct response to your work might wait until its finished or beyond, perhaps years. A painter needs a reputation. So it's not so much that artists suffer as they don't get to enjoy what they're doing while they're doing it. Bumping higher on Maslow's Hierarchies takes time.

Really good art tends to encompass a wide range of experiences. In order to write/paint/compose about strong emotions and vivid aspects of life, one must have to have gone through them. Suffering is one such.

As you point out, not all artists are tortured. Yet living in squalor at the start of your adult life is par for the course for anyone. It's just that artists get to tell people about their life in greater detail. The firemen of the world are no less important than the writer, but their backstory is told less often.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Oh, and in case it wasn't evident in the post above: "Tormented" is often code word for "poor". Working at McDonalds or starting at minimum wage is enervating, soul-sucking work... but at least you have a little bit of money coming in. Writers don't see much money for a long time. Artists also. Living in a loft eating fast food for a long time will torment anyone.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Writing fiction is painful and difficult for me, but I wouldn't call myself tormented! I'm in Dorothy Parker's camp: "I hate writing, but I love having written."

If that clarifies as tormented, then going to hell is gonna be a party.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I would like to know where the perception of torturedness and artistry first hit Western Civilization. I would like to know how giftedness fits into the notion of tormentedness-producing creativity. I would like to know what 99% perspiration, 1 % inspiration Thomas Edison would think of this theory that demands psychic pain to produce art.

K.

[minxlaurel.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm going about my writing the wrong way, but I really enjoy it. I see myself as more of a "the journey is part of the gift" person, less of a "woe is me."
Yes, life does bring lots of challenges, some good, some bad, some really tragic. There is energy in every experience, energy that belongs to you, to use as you see fit. You can even use it for your art, but I don't believe tragedy and torment are a requirement.