Self-expression through art is a tool people have used for generations to endure hardship. When authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway created the Lost Generation following the end of WWI, they continued to express their feelings through art because it was their only way to communicate the battles they fought in their lives.
Fast forward to today, art fanatics continue to associate good art with troubling mental illness. One often associates the memory of the legendary artist Van Gogh with his constant consumption of yellow paint or how he cut off his ear during the height of his mental illness. Albert Camus’ approach to life was not as a nihilist who saw no meaning in life, but as an existentialist who believed that people could find their own meaning despite chaos. Still, society’s sole association of his prose with sadness ignores his intended message to his audience. In this light of a “tortured artist,” he is remembered as someone who was great not because of perseverance but because of the hardships placed upon him.
Art is supposed to allow others to resonate with different pieces, but the fine line between appreciation of nuanced art and the idea that mental illness is required to create long-lasting, meaningful art has been crossed.
The “tortured artist” trope is something that is both fascinating yet also devastating. The complexity within the lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway made their writings even more captivating, but the light in which they were remembered is often skewed and misses the mark of why authors like them wrote. After reading their work, one should feel inspired by the persistence in their pain, not their pain alone.
On social media apps, people are admiring “suffering musician” and “suffering actors”, and by placing them in the light of someone who was great because of their suffering.
According to a study on self-diagnosis in mental health researched by the University of Colorado Denver, the process of relating to someone and internalizing their struggles has become popular on Tiktok, causing people to self-diagnose themselves solely on behaviors.
Consequently, popular culture has taken artists in this way and allowed young people who express themselves through art to play into mental-illness with a drive to create “timeless art” from it.
Our modern society is missing the point of art. Artists express themselves despite sadness. They do not create art solely to extend their hardship, but to battle with it through unique communication of their perspectives. In many examples, art could allow an artist to fight their depression and find joy, but in other cases, depression was not a battle that could be easily won.
Osamu Dazai wrote No Longer Human about a man who did not feel as if he was a human being. The main character struggled with communication, depression, alcoholism, and addiction. Shortly after, Dazai drowned himself. No Longer Human was actually a semi-autobiographical book that not only acted as a great classic in Japanese Literature, but also as a suicide note. The art was Dazai’s last call out to the world for help.
The allure of the tortured artist–an artist whose art is derived from depression and mental struggle–is not something that is beautiful. It is full of tragedy, and overlooking how these people express their hardship in order to help themselves and others learn from it cannot be ignored.
So, how do we grow to truly appreciate art? We must change the focus that is associated with meaningful art.
Art is not made because people were content with their state of mind; art was made because there was no other way for artists to communicate their struggles. Instead of looking at Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and figuring that the artist’s depression made it great, instead, we need to recognize that the artist’s perseverance to observe beauty in the face of depression is what made it a masterpiece.
