Since antiquity, artists and art historians have tried to define the phenomenon of "art". Aristotle, one of the first to define art, characterized art as imitation (mimesis), and in the Romanic period, art was defined as an inwardness, ecstasy, and getting away from the pressure of reason and logic.
According to the French sculptor Rodin, art is an effort of thought that seeks to understand and explain the world, according to Tolstoyre, art is the transfer of an emotion that a person has always felt, through line, color, movement or words, so that others can feel this emotion in the same way.
Not everything that occurs in a person can be expressed in words. Words are not enough to describe and express many things that people hear and want to express in their spiritual world and in the depths of their unconscious. Visual language is one of the most primitive and sincere forms of expression connected to human nature. In visual arts, non-verbal expressions, shapes, movements and colors are at the forefront.
As Freud pointed out, psychoanalysis is never only a method for the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, but can also be useful in solving problems of philosophy, religion and art.
Freud defines art as one's attitude towards life, the joy of play, a step beyond reality, the theatrical depiction of pain, not the pain itself. Freud described art as the symbolization of a displaced sense of satisfaction, and by establishing an affinity between art and dreams, he stated that art arises from the conflicts of the person.
The artist cannot experience his instincts and subconscious desires at the level of the conscious self (ego) due to social prohibitions. If the conflict between the conscious and subconscious cannot be resolved at this level, a mental disorder called neurosis occurs, or the conflict turns into a creative product through the sublimation mechanism.
Psychiatrist John Rickman argues that both creative and destructive impulses are intensely present in the artist and that these two different impulses interact with each other. He sees the artist's product as the triumph of creative power over destructive, destructive impulses.
As a result of his research on artists such as Dostoyevsky and Beethoven and their works, Freud argues that the artist tries to fulfill his impulses that he keeps under pressure through imagination and imagery.Dostoyevsky's hatred for his father, his wish for his death and his guilt over it are reflected in his novel The Brothers Karamazov.
A. Adler, based on Beethoven's deafness and the reason for his deafness (he became deaf as a result of his father hitting his ear violently), says that creative individuals are in an effort to overcome a deficiency, a lack of organ function through their creative acts.
The French painter David was criticized for the dullness, flatness and excessive symmetry in his paintings.A review of the artist's life history reveals that he had a large area of deformity, possibly a benign tumor, on his right cheek.It is understood that the tumor caused a distinct facial asymmetry in the artist, that the tumor was first located on the upper lip, and that it also significantly distorted the artist's speech. The painter uses unconscious defense mechanisms with his works, as if he heals himself with his paintings.
The Spanish painter Goya suffered from a succession of physical and mental illnesses in his life. Syphilis, neurolabyrinthitis, schizophrenic reaction, senile depression, these recurrent bouts of illness led to incomplete paralysis, epileptic seizures, semi-crippledrity and, at times, hearing and speech impairment, thought disorder with hallucinations and loss of contact with reality. This clinical picture was attributed to Goya's excessive exposure to ochre, a toxic compound that was the artist's most used coloring agent. The painter took on a different personality after his illnesses.
Goya - When the mind sleeps it creates monsters
If we recall examples from other areas of the fine arts: the poet George Byron, the lameness of the writer and poet Walter Scott, the composer and pianist Chopin, the writer Kafka, the poet and playwright Schiller.The creative process can be influenced by the state of the body, such as the tuberculosis of the writer Cervantes, the obvious physical disorders of the painter Toulouse-Loutrec and the writer Hemingway, the visual impairment of the writer Huxley. The psychic reflection of a physical deficiency or inadequacy early in life may not affect the creativity of every artist. But it can have a profound effect. This deficiency can stimulate the creative power, often unconsciously.
The death of a loved one has affected the works of many artists. The loss of a beloved object can cause depression. Loss early in life can lead to unresolved grief, excessive preoccupation with the deceased, guilt and psychological disturbances. In talented people, this state of mind can lead to the emergence of creative thoughts as a compensation. The particular danger here for the artist is the confusion of the boundary between the self and the expression of the object. Eventually, the artist's ability to assess reality may be impaired and psychosis may result.
The painter Edward Munch watched his mother die at the age of 5 and his sister at a young age. Analytical analysis of Munch's art reveals that the painter was deeply affected by the death of his mother and faced a visual trauma. In the painting The Scream, the death of fleeing from the red area symbolizes his mother, who died of pulmonary hemorrhage. The figure's turning her head and holding her head with her hands is interpreted as an intense escape from the horrifying scene.
Munch - The Scream
During his 37 years of life, painter Van Gogh's life was full of losses. The painter had his first mental crisis when he was rejected by the person he wanted to marry, and his troubled days began when he spent all he had for the miners. Immediately after the death of his father, he made his first big painting. He enrolled in the academy, could not accept the discipline of the school because of his personality, settled in the house of the painter Gaugin, and one day when the disagreement between them increased, he walked on Gaugin and cut his earlobe. After this incident, we see the painter in a mental hospital. Despite temporal epilepsy and the resulting psychosis, Van Gogh continued to work with ambition. Painting the room where he stayed in the hospital, the painter painted the objects in pairs to compensate for his loneliness. Within two months of his release from the hospital, he painted 60 paintings. We see Van Gogh's power in his self-portrait with his pipe and bandaged ear. He painted this picture during his recovery period after cutting his ear. The painter, who was sick and lonely, gave his remaining life energy to his paintings. Van Gogh's state of mind is evident in the last self-portrait he completed a month before his suicide; the artist's face, which is constantly struggling with seizures and fears, is in grief without excitement, his lips are tightly closed, his eyes are pensive.
Van Gogh - Self-Portrait
Van Gogh - Room at Aries (room at the hospital)
Van Gogh - Self-Portrait
Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter, experienced the greatest pain when she was unable to paint, something that goes beyond the 32 times she was operated on, cut and sliced. Kahlo tripped over a tree root during a walk at the age of 5 and fell, after which she suffered from polio and began to live with a weak limp. At the age of 19, a car accident broke her third and fourth vertebrae, and an iron rod that entered her hip and exited her uterus caused deep wounds. Frida's mother builds a bed with columns and hangs a mirror on the ceiling of the bed so that she can watch herself. The artist's first reaction is one of horror, but after a while she looks at her dismembered body lying under the mirror, at her inner world with less fear, and begins to draw herself as she sees herself. It was also a way for him not to feel the excruciating pain. When he breathed his last in 1954, diagnosed with pulmonary embolism, the last painting he left behind was a still life titled "Long Live Life".
The opposite view on the artist's personality and creativity came from C.G.Jung. He says that there is a natural psychological connection between art and the artist, but when it comes to art and psychopathology, one should be in an approach that does not harm the essence of art, and that a layman would not confuse a pathological phenomenon with a work of art. Existentialist psychiatrist May supports this approach. He says that a strong stance should be taken against approaches that suggest that talent is a disease and creativity is a neurosis. May states that a neurotic person struggles with feelings of loneliness, nothingness and alienation, just like an artist, but while the artist expresses these feelings through creativity as a product, the neurotic person is unable to do so.
It seems that art, the artist, creativity and mental illness will be discussed until the secrets of the human brain and personality are unlocked.