Art and Suicide

Chapter 8 looks at specific ways in which art can sometimes be crazy-making, with a detailed examination of three artist suicides. Research on artists and suicide, specifically, is sparse. We know as little about any artist’s reasons as we do about anyone else’s, but a few studies are have been done. And at least actuarially, in relation to level of overall risk, the good studies provide some helpful grounding. To get at a range of possible dynamics, none universal, in this chapter the author inspects the particular cases of Diane Arbus, Kurt Cobain, and Sylvia Plath. Specifically, the author examines how suicide sometimes comes at the end of a process of artistic redefinition. The artist tries something new, in terms of form or content, apparatus or theme, and the product, so unlike anything he or she has attempted before, seems at first outrageously right and satisfying. Sometimes that feeling lasts, sometimes it doesn’t. But either way, the new development occasions a risky and not necessarily valid reassessment of all prior artistic activity.

The Mind of the Artist

Because artists make something out of nothing, the process can seem like magic, divinely inspired and inexplicable. It’s not. A single, potent factor lies at the heart of most everything creative: the mysterious, multifaceted trait of “openness.” This book describes the role of the openness dimension in the typical artist mind: how it loosens thinking, how it widens feelings, how it motivates behavior, and how it foments a useful inner chaos encouraging artistic invention. For creatives, openness is a unifying glue. It binds together states and processes at the core of the art-making impulse. A related key variable is trauma, according to scientific findings: the raw material with which so many artists work. In novels, poems, stories, and photographs, trauma gets symbolically repeated, shaped in the direction of a torturous beauty. Scientifically astute, conceptually subtle, and packed with richly detailed artist examples—from David Bowie to Frida Kahlo, from John Coltrane to Francesca Woodman, from Diane Arbus to Kurt Cobain—The Mind of the Artist demystifies artistic genius. It is a new, true portrait of artistic vision.

A tragédia em A maçã envenenada, de Michel Laub

Neste artigo analisamos as ações narrativas do romance A maçã envenenada (2013), de Michel Laub, para visualizar como o autor compõe no livro o elemento trágico, ou seja, a partir de eventos narrativos capazes de apontar para o aniquilamento do protagonista e enfatizar a exposição de um mundo desordenado. Para bem compreender o conceito de tragédia, utilizamos as concepções de tragédia moderna desenvolvidas por Raymond Williams, que vê na ação trágica o próprio conceito de revolução. Ademais, será apontada a admiração do protagonista pela postura romântica do cantor Kurt Cobain que recusa subordinar-se às normas desse mundo desordenado cometendo suicídio.