Does Illness Influence Art? 11/1/01
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Does Illness Influence Art?
Disease often marks work of great geniuses, expert says
By Neil Sherman
HealthScout Reporter
TUESDAY, Aug. 15 (HealthScout) -- Vincent van Gogh placed a foxglove
flower in front of Dr. Paul Gachet when he painted a portrait of the
homeopathic doctor in 1890. During the last months of his life, van Gogh
had sought help for epilepsy from Gachet.
Van Gogh's reference to foxglove, from which the drug digitalis is
derived, provides insight into his medical condition at the time, says
Dr. Paul Wolf, a professor of pathology at the University of California,
San Diego. Too much digitalis, which van Gogh was taking, creates a
penchant for the color yellow.
Wolf, who studies how illness impacts the lives and creations of the
world's famous painters, composers, writers and political leaders,
talked about those effects to the annual meeting of the American
Association for Clinical Chemistry last month.
"Why van Gogh had a propensity to the color yellow hints at a
progressive toxic state," Wolf says. "In his famous painting, Starry
Night, there are yellow circles around the stars. And that's a symptom
of an overdose of digitalis. Gachet tried digitalis to try and clear up
van Gogh's epilepsy, and it didn't work."
Yellow wasn't the only thing van Gogh loved.
"Van Gogh did have epilepsy, but that could have been due to the fact
that he drank a lot of absinthe, and absinthe has a poison which affects
the brain -- wormwood," Wolf says. "The poison causes the nervous
system's cells to fire at will and so, in reality, van Gogh may have had
toxic epilepsy due to absinthe."
Van Gogh also had "a strange obsession with eating strange things. He
liked to taste his paints and drink turpentine. We think these various
toxins may have wreaked havoc with his vision and his thinking
processes," Wolf says.
But while Wolf thinks illnesses have had profound effects on the lives
of creative geniuses, he still believes no one will ever understand what
really makes an artist tick.
"Van Gogh and Beethoven, for instance, were manic depressives, and the
idea that melancholy is associated with creativity goes back to Grecian
times. You don't have to be a manic person to be creative, but there is
a higher incidence of creativity in these kinds of people. Ultimately
creativity is a mystery, unknowable," he says. "You may be able to
ascribe genius and creativity to the chemistry of the brain and to the
genes, but it's not the whole story, only part of it."
Wolf also speculates the condition that caused Ludwig van Beethoven's
deafness, Paget's disease, affected the composer's creativity and
productivity.
"Beethoven thought he went deaf because his father used to beat him
severely and caused brain damage and damage to his auditory nerve, but
Paget's disease not only caused deafness in Beethoven, it caused him to
get depressed, and it caused him to be an alcoholic. Paget's disease in
Beethoven cut off his productivity," Wolf says.
Paget's disease is a chronic disorder that typically results in enlarged
and deformed bones, according to the National Institutes of Health. The
most common bone disease in the United States, it can cause pain,
deformities, hearing loss and can limit activity.
Wolf says Beethoven's depression also may have been the wellspring of
his inspiration.
"The loneliness of the deafness and its resulting depression could have
expanded, in some way, his musical inspiration. When you are very manic
you have a flight of ideas, and when you are depressed you don't create
anything. You may need both sides to be an artist," he says.
One art historian doubts the usefulness of such speculation.
"How van Gogh saw, or whether he had yellow visions, or whether he
sucked the paint out of his brush, all these things are very speculative
and tend to represent the need of the physician who proposes these
things on the basis of their medical expertise and not the basis of the
extant literature," says Aaron Sheon, an art history professor at the
University of Pittsburgh.
"To my mind, the artist, to some extent, believe in their specialness.
But that's probably not any different than the myriad of millionaires in
Silicon Valley. What you have is a human being who adapted to his
physical situation rather than surrendering to it," Sheon says.
What To Do: For more on artists and manic depression, see the Food and
Drug Administration or the Depression and Related Affective Disorders
Association .
SOURCES: Interviews with Paul Wolf, M.D., clinical professor of
pathology, University of California and the Department of Veterans
Affairs Medical Centers, San Diego; Aaron Sheon, professor, department
of art history, University of Pittsburgh, Pa.; July 26, 2000, American
Association for Clinical Chemistry meeting presentation
Copyright Š 2000 Rx Remedy, Inc.
Last updated 8/15/2000 12:00:00 PM.
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Reality isn't the way you wish things to be, nor the way
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