The Insanity of the Artist

“All artists are crazy.  That’s the best thing about them…. ‘No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness!’  Do you know who said that?  Aristotle, that’s who.”  One of the characters in Irving Stone’s novel, Lust for Life, makes that observation.

Lust for Life is a fictionalised version of Vincent van Gogh’s life.  Van Gogh was as insane as – if not more so than – his contemporary artists like Paul Gaugin.  Van Gogh was so abnormal that women thought him despicable.  None of his family members, except his brother Theo, could bring themselves to like him.

All genuine artists including creative writers possess a degree of insanity.  Normal people follow the norms made by the society.  Normal people believe that life is all about eating, copulating, and conquering.  The horrendous ugliness of that normal existence is what triggers the artist.  The artist is in search of something beyond food, sex and wealth.  That is his insanity.

The normal person knows that there is little beyond food, sex and wealth.  The artist goes out to create a world beyond those parameters.  He repaints the world he sees.  He re-creates the reality he sees around him.  That re-creation is his art.  How the society receives that art is not an issue for him.  He has to re-create the reality or else there is no existence for him. 

I think the tragedy of today’s society is that there are not enough insane people in it.  Too many sane people.  Sane people who destroy the sanctity of art, destroy the sanctity of writing especially.  Trolls, that’s what we have now.  I love the insanity of the genuine masters.