Professor Forgas of the University of New South Wales in Australia in a 2009 study about moods and how they affect people said : "Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world." He goes on to say that a "mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style". Looking at examples through history we might consider that Beethoven, Poe, or Bosch may have agreed.
As a young writer I certainly would have agreed. But the great works of humanity, the works that have been meticulously preserved through centuries of painstaking conservation, have something more to offer us than commiseration. They do more for us than just reproducing yet more misery, despair and self-pity. There is a whisper of hope in those messages that are timeless.
In more recent history we have, through our patronage, upheld and supported the idea that artists must suffer. There is a stigma for young artists to feel like they should demonstrate that they know pain. Almost as an obligation. To show that they suffer and know suffering. Any artist that doesn't suffer and communicate their misery isn't an artist at all in the current art world. However, if you're bold, brash, arrogant, and can talk a mean painting; if you confuse your audience and tell them how worthless their life is; if you just throw snot on your canvas and tell us how angry and miserable you are; if you do these things and can walk with a swagger then you've got a chance today. But these things, these productions, feed off of despair and hatred. The 'tormented artist' focuses on misery, anger, and other dark forces and has no room in their message for optimism.
I should know, I was once among them. But in the great works there is expressed a aspect of humanity that perseveres through that pain. Like heroes they show us how to endure. Through these works there is a beauty rooted among the quiet suffering. Like color compliments we have no context for them to exist in until their opposite is introduced. One simply cannot exist without the other. Without dark, we would not know light, etc., etc.. But its more of being a part than a whole. Anyway, so its fundamentally sound, as an artist, to know pain and have the ability to express it, even if only as a counterpoint to beauty.
But in our finest works there extends a ladder to the bottom of our dark wells. A speck of hope that this too shall pass. It's more important for an artist to demonstrate a state of mind, or a way of thinking about things that releases or eases pain's grip and shows us something meaningful and sometimes even profound. At the very least we are shown that someone else, among the centuries of swarming humanity, knows how we feel. To manifest the sublime that courses through the pain and triumphs in spite of the forces stomping us down. We are shown a bit of who we are on a fundamental level. A part of what it is to be human. There is that mounting feeling that we just, might, make it out of this. That its going to be alright. Without that element, we're simply misery mongers. A broken wheel. Dead weight. But with that element, we see that just as in life, there lies a peculiar beauty in our anguish.
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