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Madness, it seems, is in vogue and black moods are the new black. And since links between mental illness and creative genius are nothing new, it makes sense that the connection is being explored, and even celebrated, in the world of the arts. Liz Main does some exploring herself.

If Virginia Woolf were still alive she might well have been a star guest at the Madness and Arts international festival in Toronto last month. Instead, Nicole Kidman picked up an Oscar for portraying Woolf in the film ?The Hours?, while performers from nine countries showcased the links between mental illness and the arts in the first international festival of its genre. The Canadian organisers of Madness and Arts set up the festival to educate, entertain and de-stigmatise mental illness. And they had serious funding ? 650,000 Canadian dollars, more than £280,000 ? to bring participants from around the world, including theatre companies from Japan, Australia, Germany and Britain, and an orchestra from Cuba. The festival featured workshops in dance, poetry, clowning, jazz and jewellery-making, alongside performances of theatre, an operetta, music and dance ? all performed or created by people with direct experience of mental distress.

Connections with insanity

The connection between mental illness and the arts is far from the stereotype of zombified patients weaving baskets in asylums; but that?s nothing to do with care in the community. Throughout history great art and madness have gone hand in hand. Greek philosophers were quick to spot the connection between artistic ability and mental instability. Plato dubbed creativity ?divine madness?, while Aristotle pondered ?Why is it that all men who are outstanding in philosophy, poetry or the arts are melancholic?? and came up with the answer that ?No great genius was without a mixture of insanity.? Centuries later Marcel Proust came to the conclusion that ?Everything great in the world is created by neurotics. They have composed our masterpieces, but we don?t consider what they have cost their creators in sleepless nights, and worst of all, death.? It?s a theory still being pondered and questions remain. Was death the cost of creative genius for Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Ernest Hemingway or van Gogh? Or is the link between madness and the arts mere coincidence? And if creativity leads to such anguish, why is the therapeutic role of the arts increasing? Do madness and the arts go hand in hand?

Certainly some artisans believe they?ve been aided by forays beyond sanity, and psychiatrists and psychologists have spent much time examining possible causes. Researchers have certainly found that levels of mental illness are much higher in creative artists than creative counterparts in more structured occupations. Even in adolescence, aspiring artists are shown to be more prone to mental disorders than their peers, while in the adult population around three quarters of poets, music performers and fiction writers and two thirds of painters, composers and non-fiction writers experience mental instability, compared with around a quarter of eminent natural scientists, politicians, architects and businesspeople. Commenting on her own research, which found high incidences of mood disorders among writers and poets, American psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison ? who has a serious and enduring mental illness herself ? notes that ?Intense emotional pain went hand in hand with creativity for even the most successful of these artists.? But Jamison dismisses the ?simplistic notions of the ?mad genius?? and notes that ?such a generalisation trivialises a very serious medical condition and, to some degree, discredits individuality in the arts as well.?

Whatever the reason ? be it the academic theories about cognitive similarities in creativity and madness, or Edgar Allan Poe?s much simpler theorem that ?They that dream by day are cognisant of many things which escape those who dream only by night? ? the link remains, and history demonstrates that the arts would be much poorer without the contributions of those who were also mad.

Unknown works

What if Alfred Tennyson, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Sylvia Plath, John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickenson, Dylan Thomas and Walt Whitman had never written poetry? Or Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Anderson had never published their writings? Or worse still, if they had but their work had been hidden in the files of occupational therapists. What if the art of Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko and even Michelangelo had languished on the walls of a psychiatric unit, or been thrown out when they were discharged? Is that what is happening to the modern equivalents? The arts are alive and well in mental health circles today ? but too often the audience is limited to those already in the system.

Anne Sexton found her gift for poetry while in a mental hospital. For her it was an outlet for her emotional distress although not enough of an outlet to prevent her death by suicide. It was an outlet that won her a Pulitzer Prize. Similarly Jackson Pollock?s canvas drippings have been interpreted as an attempt to make sense of his chaotic inner life. Expressive therapies are increasingly being used to help people come to terms with and communicate the confusion and pain in their minds ? art therapy, dance music therapy and psychodrama let individuals find a way of letting the world in on their pain while letting some of the pain go. Alongside art therapy are occupational therapy programmes, which may include painting, creative writing, photography, pottery, ceramics, poetry and drama. For many people who have experienced mental illness, developing an artistic outlet is an integral part of recovery. For some the art is personal, but people who want to bring their art to a wider audience often find out that the audience is made up of their peers in the mental health system, while the public misses out because they have no way of accessing the pool of talent. That?s improving with exhibitions of art work by psychiatric patients and with organisations like Survivors? Poetry (one of many examples) that publish work and hold events open to the public.

Potential pool of talent

But will the UK ever rival Canada in staging an international festival committed to madness and arts? One step towards this is the Reel Madness film festival coming up in London this summer (http://www.reelmadness.co.uk). Reel Madness, organised by Mental Health Media, Rethink and the Documentary Filmmakers Group, will showcase different genres of film including films by people who have experienced the psychiatric system. It will include feature films and documentaries together with talks, seminars and workshops. But will we see a festival of madness that ranges across the arts here in the UK? If someone doesn?t come up with an initiative to draw from the huge pool of talent that is lying dormant within the mental health system, future lists of great artists might be missing some eminent names, without us ever knowing. Doubtless neurotics are still composing great masterpieces, but now those neurotics are more sheltered within the system, the genius needs a way to get out.

Liz Main is a spokesperson for the Mind Out for Mental Health Campaign.
t: 020 7403 2240; w: http://www.mindout.net; e: liz.main@btopenworld.com