By Luis Ramirez-Liberato
Content warning: This story contains mentions of suicide and mental illness.
On Dec. 23, 1888, Vincent Van Gogh cut off his left ear after an argument with painter Paul Gauguin over his plans to leave their home in Arles, France. Psychiatrists have theorized that Van Gogh suffered from an epilepsy-related illness, hallucinations and episodes of psychosis. Coupled with the infamous painter’s alcohol abuse, this blend of speculated mental or physical health struggles and a relentless drive to create art serves as one of the most notable foundations for the tortured artist trope.
The tortured artist is an archetype represented across centuries, whether it’s through artists like late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain or fictional characters like drummer Andrew Neiman in the film Whiplash.
Some critiques of the trope have brought forth questions asking if this classification possibly romanticizes mental illness as a necessary component of producing art—this has prompted research into correlations between those who practice art and their mental health.
A report from the Karolinska Institute in 2012 found that people working in creative professions “were almost 50 per cent more likely to commit suicide than the general population.” The report also found that authors, in particular, had a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with conditions such as schizophrenia and substance abuse.
Recognizing the connection between mental illness and the arts is important to understanding how the tortured artist archetype manifests across various lived experiences. This archetype can operate on three levels: intrapersonally, interpersonally and through the audience perspective.
Derek Fisher is a Toronto-based author whose short story Does Anyone Care How the Vegetable Oil Feels? satirizes the tortured artist trope. The story follows a writer who spirals into excessive and, at times, extreme acts of self-destruction to produce their writing.
While emotions and memories influence all artists, Fisher makes it clear that there is “a big difference between the pain that might be inscribed into a memory versus the real-time difficulty of some of the things that we might see in the tortured artist.”
He finds that the driving motivator for artists to adopt the tortured artist persona is a political tie. Fisher notes that the West’s approach to art and admiration of individuals is driven by the capitalist need to succeed no matter the cost.
“[There is] a political argument that [the tortured artist] has to do with this very American individualist and very kind of neoliberal, profit-driven approach to everything, where in order to make it, we have to grind ourselves into dust,” said Fisher. “I think that in the Western world, we have all, to a certain extent, adopted this take on what it means to do anything successfully.”
Fisher said the structure of our working lives—where we are expected to break our bodies down for profit as a means to participate in society—can translate into our art practices.
“I think some people can actively avoid this if they try, but I think it’s hard to break out of this [mindset]. Ideology is a really strong force,” said Fisher.
Author and professor of English at Toronto Metropolitan University, Kari Maaren, sees that the societal relationship to tortured art is necessary for audience intake.
“We exist to survive. We do what we can to survive. And humans have evolved so that art is necessary for survival,” said Maaren. “We try to grasp for the best art we can—the art that we enjoy, the art that makes us want to keep on living—but if that destroys another person, sometimes we’re okay with that. And then it turns into an archetype. It turns into a mythologization of the artist. The artist is not just a person. They are a mythical figure.”
Art spaces can find challenges when comparing personal experiences in how much they suffer in each other, standardizing an expectation of how much one is supposed to suffer for their art. It becomes more dangerous when this passivity becomes an active abuse when an artist’s peers delegate these expectations.
There is an egotism that breeds in certain “tortured artists” and even a sense of pride in their suffering, which can become damaging when artists within their community compare who has suffered more for their art.
Prose writer Charles Bukowski expressed that his creative process started with boxed wine and slowly drinking himself into a stupor while he worked away at his typewriter.
Bukowski contributed to glorifying the tortured artist trope by praising harmful practices for the sake of art. In an interview aired on Het Geschreven Leven, he was asked to discuss the death of author Malcolm Lowrey, who passed away due to heavy drinking and choking on his vomit. In the conversation, he refers to death by alcohol as glorious but criticizes those who died under these circumstances as only having written “dull shit,” in reference to Lowry’s work.
A cyclical pattern exists among tortured artists where the justification for their identity relies on the idea that self-destruction produces great art. This belief suggests that high-quality art is only achievable through indulging in self-destruction or by maintaining a negative mental state.
Fisher reflected on his involvement in an audience-based perpetuation of the tortured artist from a love of art produced by tortured artists.
“It’s hard not to ask the question of, ‘If the author didn’t have the personal experience, would this book exist? And if this book didn’t exist, would that be a shame to humankind? Are we happy that the author had this rough life experience, these terrible things, so they give us this great art?’” asked Fisher. “It’s a really troubling question, but I know that when I think of [Hunger], I’m very happy that it exists. So I don’t really know what to do with that question.”
Maaren answered this question simply.
“I think there are two answers to that question, and frustratingly, the answers are yes and no,” she said. “‘Is it worth it?’ It’s worth it for the world; it’s not worth it for the person.”
Maaren believes that there is an inherent selfishness within audiences who think that great art is only produced under torture.
“You’re reckoning with the fact that there is a human person here. You’re putting your needs above their needs,” explained Maaren. “At the same time, it’s nice to have good art in the world. But the audience has to admit that it’s a callous reaction. It is a callous reaction because you’re counting the art above the [artist].”
The relationship between audiences and tortured artists affects the cycle of abuse but Maaren also sees harm in the act of applying the archetype to begin with.
“Why do we have to take disability and make it into something that becomes a magical archetype that every artist has to have? It’s not just somebody who might have a disability or be the way they are,” she said. “We have to turn it into something that is attached to their artistic nature. They are artists, and thus, they must be tortured.”
According to Fisher, emotions and lived experiences are the basis from which art manifests. But while individuals may at one point in time play into the tortured artist persona, time marches forward and so does the tortured artist.
While the lifestyle is a fatal condition to some, others manage to evolve into sobriety or a state of mental wellness that is not a detriment to the art—the art is simply different, neither better nor worse.
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