healthmedicinet

What about artists like Yayoi Kusama, who began painting as a child as a way to manage her visual hallucinations? “Painting saved my life,” she wrote in The Telegraph. “When I wanted to commit suicide, my doctor encouraged me to paint more.” Or Frida Kahlo, who turned to art after a bus accident left her with a broken spinal column, collarbone, ribs, pelvis, as well as 11 fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, a dislocated shoulder, and a punctured uterus that would never bear children. 

What about all the art made from political suffering, like the artists showing support for Ferguson, or protesting gun violence, slavery, sexism, or government oppression? 

What about the entire field of outsider art, in which art becomes the vital lifeblood of individuals facing unimaginable barriers? Artists including Madge Gill, Michel Nedjar, August Walla, Bill Traylor, Aloise Corbaz, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Lonnie Holley, James Castle — the list goes on and on — battling extreme mental and physical obstacles often in near total isolation, who turn to art as a space of order and solace. For artists like these, the end goal of self expression is not a sweet spot in The Met or high auction prices. How could it be when most often they don’t expect their work to be seen at all?

What Graddy’s study gets wrong is that most artists working during times of strife aren’t trying to break auction records or break into a major museum. They’re just trying to get through the day. Assuming grieving only lasts a year — which it doesn’t — there are still numerous other opportunities for adversity to manifest itself in an artist’s life.

Bottom line: Suffering isn’t there to bolster creativity, creativity is there to assuage suffering. It’s not about the quality of art, but the quality of life. 

 

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