Unikum oktober 2020

horse. I click on any article that so much as mentions
a hint of actual information on how far along George
R.R. Martin is on his newest book. I love a good Jaden
Smith twitter breakdown as much as any person. The
point is we ourselves as consumers of mainstream
art/entertainment are most likely complicit in a system
that has broken more than one soul. And it does
pain me to think of what creative wonders we might
be losing from those who can’t take the pressure.
Kunst: Gustave Courbet
whose work would paint a picture of quite a tortured
sole. He is quite a private person, so it’s hard to draw
conclusions but based on his sheer output and seemingly
stable family life I would guess that he might
have a dark mind, but a somewhat normal outer life.
What I see as the common denominator of these artists
and the more troubled examples from earlier
is mainly the intensity of the devotion to their craft.
When Charlie Parker wasn’t doing heroin, he was
most likely practicing his scales. It’s important to remember
that very few artists are able to create while
deeply depressed, psychotic or dead. Often will their
work be born in spite of their struggles rather than
because of them. Though there is no doubt that having
a mind that works atypically will likely create
art that “normal” minds might not conceive of as easily.
Another famous “tortured artist” trope is the former
child star run wild. These cases are especially disturbing
when the star in question started so young that
they never really seemed to have any say in whether
they wanted the career or not. But here I think
the cause of their tortured nature is much clearer. It
isn’t the child star themselves that are born broken,
they’re being exploited by the entertainment business
and the process, sadly is subsidised by those of
us that consume said media.
HANNAH GADSBY AND TAKING CARE
So if an artists creativity is born from or in spite of
their individual struggles the message I would like
to express is compassion and connection. We can all
benefit from well intentioned help from people who
genuinely love us no matter the level of creativity involved
in our lives. Australian? Comedian Hannah
Gadsby in her special “Nanette” shares a story about
a fan telling her that she should stop medicating, because
she’s an artist and artists need to feel. If Van
Gogh had medicated, we wouldn’t have those pretty
flowers. After actually using her art degree to drop
some knowledge on how Van Gogh most likely had an
altered colour perception caused by his medication,
she share the much more potent story:
“Do you know why we have the sunflowers? It’s not
because Vincent van Gogh suffered, it’s because Vincent
van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through
all the pain he had a tether, a connection to the world.
And that is the focus of the story we need. Connection.”
Peace out.
The comedian Dave Chappelle famously walked away
from a 50-million-dollar TV deal in 2006. Reports at
the time were inconclusive as to his reasoning, seeing
as how his show was at the height of its success. On
his special “The Bird Revelation” Chappelle sheds
more light on his situation at the time by telling a
story of how a Pimp used some pretty horrific manipulation
to keep his most valuable worker past her
breaking point. With this he relates how he feels a lot
of entertainment companies exploit their artists not
just monetarily, but also psychically and physically.
Our cultures’ obsession with the personal lives of
our favorite artists has certainly not gone down after
the advent of social media and reality TV. But what
does this do to our beloved creatives? I honestly don’t
know, and I don’t want to preach from some high
Kunst: Van Gogh
OKTOBER 2020 UNIKUM NR 8 17