Crazy Art

[kittynh]

I've mentioned this disease before on the forum, and now it's on Yahoo news...so I finally have a link to an article about it.

(before I've only heard about it, and there was some doubt that this happens).

I love "Bolero" also, and the use of color in paintings by these people is really amazing. She could do ordinary paintings. But once the creativity part was jazzed up, she came up with some wonderful modern art.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/08/rare-brain-disease-g.html

[Bikewer]

There was a book out a few years ago, titled as I recall "The Art of the Insane". I didn't read the whole thing, but I listened to an NPR interview with the author and thumbed through a copy at the bookstore.
There was quite a lot of material on art produced by sufferers from various sorts of mania and obsessive/compulsive disorder. As you might imagine, some of these were incredibly complex, and tediously constructed over a period of years.
Interesting stuff.

[kittynh]

there has been some studies of why so many artists have drinking problems or drug abuse issues.

I went with the "well, it's almost a tradition" theory.

But, mental anguish often means you think a little bit differently and thus see things in a new way. Boring people usually don't create great art. It doesn't mean they are all nuts. Some great artists are really fantastic happy people. But they are rarely boring.

[thrombus29]

Nothing beats:

The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger