SCIENCE NEWS, Vol 145, Page 302

Creativity's melancholy canvas

Artists suffer more than their share of depression, a tendency that may fuel
their creativity while it shatters their personal lives, according to a
report in the April [1994?] `American Journal of Psychiatry'.

Joseph J. Schildchild, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School in Boston,
and his colleagues charted the turbulent psychological histories of 15
mid-20th-century abstract expressionists of the New York School, only one of
whom is still alive. The reserachers made psychiatric diagnoses based
primarily on the artist's medical records, known suicide attempts, and evidence
of periodic inability to work or function socially.

Four artists - Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, and
William Baziotes - suffered recurring bouts of severe depression. Two others
- Arshile Gorky and David Motherwell - suffered milder forms of depression
and mania. Similar conditions probably also afflicted Franz Klein and David
Smith, notes Schildkraut's group.

Pollock, Rothko, Kline, Guston and Willem de Kooning abused alcohol, and
Motherwell and Smith apparently also imbibed to excess, the scientists
assert. Gorky and Rothko committed suicide; Pollock and Smith died in car
crashes while driving, both under circumstances that may reflect suicidal
intent.

Prior research has probed the link between creativity and mood disorders such
as depression (Science News: 9/3/88, p.151).

Art may have evolved as a way of accentuating the emotional significance of
communal rituals, Schildkraut proposes. It can still express shared spiritual
and sacred meanings, although few exist in modern "secular" societies, he
contends.

The depressed artist examines painfully the purpose of living and the
possibility of dying in this spiritual vacuum, often at great personal cost,
according to Schildkraut. "Yet depression in the artist may be of adaptive
value to society at large," he maintains.