Catharsis: Does pain precede all great art?
Vincent van Gogh was a chronic alcoholic, his most celebrated paintings borne from absinthe-induced hallucinations before he shot himself in the chest. Sylvia Plath, after writing The Bell Jar, notoriously gassed herself in the oven after a string of previous suicide attempts. David Foster Wallace suffered from crippling mental illness while writing his greatest work, Infinite Jest, and hanged himself after wrestling with depression for decades — historically speaking, he was even an exception because he didn’t die penniless and unknown.
Bukowski, Winehouse, Woolf, Hemingway, Cobain, Rothko … the list is unending. I grew up on the voices of these artistic visionaries whether they were painters, writers or musicians. Their very names have heralded artistic valor of biblical proportions for me. These names are imbued with passion and prestige, yet the living, breathing people who bore them were largely depressed, leading tumultuous lives. Though I laud and fondly remember them, many of their lives were fueled by drugs, depression and tragedy. Naturally, this blurs the line between venerating the works and legacy of artists themselves and celebrating the very essence of their pain.
They are part of a narrative as long as human history — the idea of the tortured artist is culturally debated, but to me it has always been a self-evident truth. Art is a mimicry and celebration of humanity, and mankind’s greatest virtue is surviving adversity. The notion of tortured artists, however, has been largely centered on a skewed assessment of the creative process: that pain is a prerequisite for producing great art.
I have personally fallen prey to this cultural inclination to glamorize pain in the name of art. For a spell in my mid-teens, I found myself longing for misfortune. Twisted, I know. I wanted to mimic the raw emotion and dark humanity manifest in some of my favorite works, but this proved a futile task at the time, given my comparatively pure and wholesome life experiences. If I could only live through their afflictions and decipher what makes them tick, then I could be like them: one of the greats.
As a culture, we have a tendency to glamorize pain as an offshoot of art. Scores of contemporary entertainers have taken their own lives, yet the discourse surrounding their legacies is focused on their artistic accomplishments rather than their demises. When it comes to artists, we are quick to dismiss typical stigmas surrounding suffering and mental illness in favor of their artistic contributions. The tortured artist label has become a damaging myth that impedes and minimizes the humanity of our most celebrated icons.
The implication that happiness and creative genius are mutually exclusive is unsettling and forms a paradox between the desire to be happy and the desire to create. By willfully and eternally glamorizing images of soulfully melancholy artists, we ignore the very real mental welfare struggles that make them who they are. We shouldn’t be so close-minded as to say suffering causes art but rather that suffering is a symptom of artistic talent and an inherent drive to create. What tortures artists is also what makes them great.
While we romanticize the suffering of the artistic process, we also find comfort in it. We feel a little less alone; we understand what it means to be human a little better. To the masses, art is a lesson in coping with the curse of consciousness. If we are going to suffer regardless, we might as well find solace in the fact that others can draw meaning from sharing in our pain.
In the end, the lesson I take from this is not to celebrate pain or treat it as a badge of artistic legitimacy. Rather, the most celebrated artists chose not to recoil, wallow in self-pity or resign themselves to passivity but to harness their suffering and turn it into something the world could cherish. When I feel alone, I read Bukowski and am comforted by his loneliness. When I have insomnia, I let Chester Bennington sing me to sleep. And, in realizing that my pain can be just as pretty as that of the greats, I create. I write poems, emotional ramblings and columns expressing my angst and I understand that we make art not just because it’s cleansing but also because we need to do it to cope.
Maybe it’s not that artists are broken or that broken people are artists, but each of us has the ability to create beauty from pain, a reprieve from suffering in vain. At least that’s what I’d like to believe.
Catherine Yang is a sophomore majoring in communication. She is also the lifestyle editor of the Daily Trojan. Her column, “Catharsis,” runs every other Wednesday.