Schizophrenic Artists

Some of the world's leading artists, writers and theorists have had mental illnesses - the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and Norwegian Edvard Munch to name just two.

Vincent van Gogh battled severe depression, and famously cut off his own ear. In spite or perhaps because of his troubles, he created legendary masterpieces, such as his "Sunflowers" series.

Paul Gauguin, a close friend of Van Gogh, also experienced severe bouts of depression and tried to end his life. He left his native France for Tahiti, where he produced a series of sensual paintings such as "The Spirit of the Dead Watch".

Celebrated Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's life was fraught with anxiety and hallucinations.Munch described his inspiration for his painting The Scream:Shown left.

One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord ,the sun began to set - suddenly the sky turned blood red, he wrote. I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature. it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream.

Spanish painter Francisco Jose de Goyay Lucientes was another famous artist who succumbed to a serious case of the blues. His paintings often depicted images of insanity.Shown left is one of his black painting -  Saturn Devouring his Son.(shown right). It depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (in the title Romanised to Saturn), who, fearing that he would be overthrown by one of his children,ate each one upon their birth. The work is one of the 14 Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823. It was transferred to canvas after Goya's death and has since been held in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

 Legendary artist Pablo Picasso is said to have struggled with depression. That didn't stop him from producing canvasses of vivid and explosive color, such as '"weeping women" (shown left).The model for the painting, indeed for the entire series, was Dora Maar, who was working as a professional photographer when Picasso met her in 1936; she was the only photographer allowed to document the successive stages of Guernica while Picasso painted it in 1937.

"Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman.And it's important, because women are suffering machines."explained Picasso about his model.

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama voluntarily checked herself into a psychiatric institution in the 1970s, where she became a permanent resident. Obsessive themes are dominant in her work, and her installations.Her installation named Narcissus Garden (shown right)-The tightly arranged 1,500 shimmering balls constructed an infinite reflective field in which the images of the artist, the visitors, the architecture, and the landscape were repeated, distorted, and projected by the convex mirror surfaces that produced virtual images appearing closer and smaller than reality. The size of each sphere was similar to that of a fortune-teller’s crystal ball. When gazing into it, the viewer only saw his/her own reflection staring back, forcing a confrontation with one's own vanity and ego.

We may never know what it's like to be in the mind of someone suffering from schizophrenia. The closest thing we may ever have is art like this. Much of this art may look scary and negative, but the act of setting the anxieties to paper is a positive for the artists.

Schizophrenia is an intense and unforgiving mental disorder whose symptoms can include everything from abnormal social behaviors, to hearing voices, and not knowing what's real. It often accompanies other, less severe mental conditions like depression and anxiety.

But there are some who have turned to something far less harmful to cope with their condition: art.

Karen May Sorensen recently began pushing the boundaries of her "madness," by posting drawings and paintings on her blog while on varying levels of medication.(shown right)

While some of them may be disturbing to look at, for their creators these works help to visualize the unrest in their heads. This makes the harsh consistency of their thoughts a little more bearable. Except the fact that one major characteristic of schizophrenia is that they don't realize they're ill, so for them there aren't hallucinations or voices in their heads, they're extremely convinced that all of this is real.

Spooky, strange, but probably an accurate portrayal of schizophrenia feels like on the inside.(shown left)

The most wrong thing to do is trying to convince them they aren’t real. Because they see them, they are real to them. And no amount of "you aren’t real" will change it. But to give power over them, put them in control of the voices/sights. Make it so they can keep them in line, they are the master, not the hallucination. Basically you can’t get rid of them, but you can be the master in the situation. They work for you, you don’t work for them.