Final Assigment

So I don't know how the rest of my classmates are feeling about our last assignment but quite frankly it is making me feel like I am losing my mind. So I decided to look at the link between art and mental illness. This is a link that has always been an interesting one for me. Are artists better due to the fact that they aren't always in their right state of mind. Does medication dull their creativity ? Or does this link even exist at all ? How is their art affected by their illness if at all ?

 Some of the articles I have been looking at were
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-healing-arts/200901/art-and-mental-illness-stop-the-insanity
 One of the quotes from this article that I thought was interesting was
 "People with emotional disorders are not some defective subset of the human race nor do they differentiate disease and health. Human creativity is complex and ultimately, it is appreciated for its merit, innovation, and imagination."

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/art-and-mental-illness/
One of the quotes I thought most interesting  was
"Scientists have long studied the link between creativity and mental illness, and the lines between the two are often blurred. Studies suggest that creative people often share more personality traits with the mentally ill than “normal” people in less creative pursuits."

This next article was about an exhibit that explored the relationship between art and mental illness
http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/inside-the-head-art-and-mental-illness-explored/

From this research I began looking at artists who at some point had dealt with mental illness. One artist that was to have suffered from depression was Georgia  O' Keefe. Her work in my opinion is absolutely beautiful. A quote of hers really stuck with me "I have but one desire as a painter – that is to paint what I see, as I see it, in my own way, without regard for the desires or taste of the professional dealer or the professional collector."-  Georgia O’Keeffe. And a couple of her pieces did too.



One artist that I found was actually featured in one of the articles I read. Martín Ramírez was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He spent the last 30 years of his life institutionalized. All of his work was actually created while he was institutionalized. Two of the pieces that really stuck out to me. I think what really made me look twice was the fact that the two pieces were so different. There is something about the second one that I just love.
 

Another artist that supposedly dealt with a mental illness was Pablo Picasso. There are a range of Picasso's works that I find extremely interesting but the one that always catches my attention is Guerncia. I have actually had the chance to see this piece in person. It is absolutely amazing. The scale is insane. I remember I walked into the room in which it was housed and I just stood there staring.


One thing that I have gotten from these three artists is their use of scale. Scale can make something comforting and real or freakish and unsettling. I think I am going to experience with scale and my final piece will most likely use scale in a unsettling way.