tortured soul?

back alley said:
do you think that one has to suffer for his 'art'?

the tales are endless of the great artists being miserable, tortured people who cannot find happiness in life but only in their art.

whadyathink?
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Hi man 🙂
Can be, many of us suffer from ups and downs.
But as photo is concerned, some of the greats like Willy Ronis, HCB, Doisneau, Burri, cannot be placed into your described category.
I would not say this is a necessary nor a sufficient condition then.
As for me, unhappiness gives musical inspiration; happiness drives me to street photo; while science feeds the other part of my brain, with a different sort of emotion, more childish than what art activities do.

I like your blog a lot, Backalley, superb pics
 
back alley said:
the tales are endless of the great artists being miserable, tortured people who cannot find happiness in life but only in their art.

whadyathink?
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Artists have much better opportunities to publish their suffering than car mechanics or shop assistants - but that does not imply that the latter suffer any less.
 
My family, mainly my mother's side, has a history of clinical depression. My son has been on medication since he was seventeen (now thirty five) and it's haunted me on and off for most of my life, though I have chosen never to take the medication route.

My most creative photos (IMO) have generaly been made while I've been on a downer. I think the inner search for something other than your own misery often reveals a source of ideas and artistic expression that you aren't aware of at other times.
 
If you are totally at ease with everything how can you create something? Surely creativity stems from some sort of conflict, desire, longing or drive, whether that be internal or a product of interactions with the outside world. You cannot communicate when you have nothing to say. This does not mean you have to be starving and miserable. You could just as well be passionate and happy.
 
Maybe we've just been fed the idea of a tortured artist too often. In much the same way that a NY detective must be an (ex) alcoholic, carry emotional baggage about the death of his partner, and of course be divorced, before he could possibly solve a murder.

I know nothing about art, but I don't see why art must always come from a dark place.
 
I don't think it is essential but I do this that it is often a part of the work. When you do what you love you sometimes get hurt. I think we all know you can't separate love from pain.

That said most of the artists I know seem happier than the nie to fivers...
 
sevo said:
Artists have much better opportunities to publish their suffering than car mechanics or shop assistants - but that does not imply that the latter suffer any less.
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I believe that car mechanics and shop assistants can (and some do) suffer but, the suffering of an artist is an inner turmoil that can find expression and 'release' in their work, whatever field of art they may work in.

Much of what we understand and perceive of this angst (in our media blitz era) is related to Vicent Van Gogh and his life etc "...How you suffered for your sanity, How you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they're not listening still. Perhaps they never will... Credit to Don Mclean
 
SimonSawSunlight said:
I think art is a big and very complicated word.
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Indeed.


I would love to meet a true tortured artist, all I come across is boundlessly optimistic (about their own work) people who have the least bit of doubt. The idea of starving artist is history, these days with all these well-fed artists one cannot have much hope for the future of art.
 
back alley said:
do you think that one has to suffer for his 'art'?

the tales are endless of the great artists being miserable, tortured people who cannot find happiness in life but only in their art.

whadyathink?
Click to expand...


I think that this is one of those stereotypes that holds true more often than not. But like the pretty blond or blonde that stereotypically has an empty head, there are those who are quite intelligent.

Exceptional people are exceptionally not "common". And as reading many threads on the intertoobes may prove, there are far more people who don't care for details, for precision, for many things that, frankly, they don't have the time for.

Also, I don't think that one "has to suffer for their art". Good artists suffer the blind around them, suffer the insensitive, suffer the tone deaf...etc.

Then there are the pretend artists...trying to follow a manual, as if doing those things that "the tortured artist" do grants you any of that. You know, like those who think that buying a very expensive camera ought to improve your photography. Or that becoming a Tibetan monk should grant you instant Nirvana.

I think "tortured" people arrive at their sensibility due to the same factors that make them "tortured"...not the other way around.
 
JSU said:
Henri Cartier-Bresson and W. Eugene Smith are both geniuses of photographic art from my perspective.

The difference, fundamentally, between the two is their parents. HCB came from a family of great wealth, WES didn't.
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I'd say it's incredibly simplistic (and convenient) to point out somebody's wealth as a "fundamental difference".

HCB fought and escaped the Nazis. Eugene Smith experienced war a different way. They both did.

I'd say that another "fundamental difference" was the self-destructive and addictive behaviour of one and not the other.

Chopin was a tortured artist. So was Berlioz. Chopin was an aristocrat (whether he owned the money or not). Berlioz was anything but. And one of them really hit them drugs, while the other one didn't.

Wealth has nothing to do with personal sensibilities; you do not buy personalities, you acquire them. Wealth is, of course, a grandiose facilitator, but not an ingredient of a person's "artistic sensibilities".

One can argue, of course, like everything, that "wealth", "sensibility" and "drugs" are subjective. But if we split every single hair we find, we'll end up with nothing but proteins.
 
To complicate things further, suffering is not always what it seem. We all know people who have comfortable lives, and yet they experience every day as torture. And then there are people who have undergone massive hardship and loss, who experience life as joy.

I'd say say artists tend to be "those who have a capacity to endure true suffering".
 
GSNfan said:
Indeed.


I would love to meet a true tortured artist, all I come across is boundlessly optimistic (about their own work) people who have the least bit of doubt. The idea of starving artist is history, these days with all these well-fed artists one cannot have much hope for the future of art.
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What a load of stupidity. Where the hell are these 'well fed' artists? I don't know any.

Let's make this perfectly clear: Your attitude is morally no different than that of someone who says that it is ok to exploit the poor in sweatshops. To say that a group of people who, for the most part, do not make enough to live are 'overfed' and need to starve shows a lack of basic compassion for your fellow man. How dare you? What if someone said the same about YOUR job?

There is no excuse for artists starving. The art world is awash with money that is carefully kept out of the hands of artists....the people who actually MAKE the art. As for artist being optimistic, of course they are. Art is a business, and artists are small businessmen. The only ones who go around with no confidence are the ones who have swallowed the idiotic idea that art is not a business, and they're letting themselves be exploited. All businessmen know that if you are not confident in your product's quality, you cannot expect your customers have any either. That means no one buys. When you present your product as good and worthwhile, people will buy it. That's as true of art as of cars or breakfast cereal or shoes or anything else that businesses make and sell.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
What a load of stupidity. Where the hell are these 'well fed' artists? I don't know any.

Let's make this perfectly clear: Your attitude is morally no different than that of someone who says that it is ok to exploit the poor in sweatshops. To say that a group of people who, for the most part, do not make enough to live are 'overfed' and need to starve shows a lack of basic compassion for your fellow man. How dare you? What if someone said the same about YOUR job?
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When I used the word starving, I thought well-fed would be a good contrast to it and it would make a better sentence, is that make me a writer-artist, or someone who's the bane of existence for those who lack reading comprehension?

Before you get your pants in a knot over nothing, and accuse people of condoning sweat shop and any other such nonsense, learn something that is the basic duty of every human being, humour.

Btw, artist is NOT a job, its title that is given after someone has created art.
 
GSNfan said:
When I used the word starving, I thought well-fed would be a good contrast to it and it would make a better sentence, is that make me a writer-artist, or someone who's the bane of existence for those who lack reading comprehension?

Before you get your pants in a knot over nothing, and accuse people of condoning sweat shop and any other such nonsense, learn something that is the basic duty of every human being, humour.

Btw, artist is NOT a job, its title that is given after someone has created art.
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What you said was not humorous. It was meanspirited and callous. Artist is a job for those who do it professionally. By your reasoning mechanic, lawyer, doctor, and teacher aren't jobs either. They're just titles one gets after one works on a car, sets foot in a courtroom, cuts someone open, or teaches someone how to do something.
 
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