Are eccentric artists really creative —or really crazy? Science weighs in

It takes a broad mind (and a ton of patience) to fully comprehend how artists think and act, especially the more eccentric ones. Vincent van Gogh allegedly cut off his own ear, Lord Byron kept a rather unusual assortment of pets (which included monkeys, a crocodile, and a bear that he even took with him to college), and nobody really knows why Lady Gaga does what she does.



Does an artist’s imagination excuse (or even offer an explanation for) their odd behavior? Is there an actual relationship between being artistic and being perceived by the general public as pants-on-head crazy?

Mad about art

“Mental illness is neither necessary nor sufficient for creativity,” clarified psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman in his article on Scientific American (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2013/10/03/the-real-link-between-creativity-and-mental-illness/). In the essay, Kaufman mentioned a few studies investigating the connection between mental disorders and artistic talent, and challenged what he called the “romantic notion that mental illness and creativity are linked.”

According to Kaufman, there may be a positive effect on creativity brought about by mental illnesses, if recent findings are any indication. However, it’s certainly not as simple as “artists are nuts” –  based on research, artists are more likely to be related to people with mental disorders than to actually have them.

In 2012, a study of almost 1.2 million subjects in Sweden brought to light an apparent association between creative professions and the first-degree relatives of people with mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, as well as the siblings of people who have autism. Despite this, people in scientific and artistic professions were not necessarily more prone to mental illnesses.

“Could it be that the relatives inherited a watered-down version of the mental illness conducive to creativity while avoiding the aspects that are debilitating?” asked Kaufman.

Supposedly, the relatives of patients with mental disorders are able to facilitate imagination and creative thinking by opening the flood gates of their minds, while still maintaining control over their own thoughts and actions.  This allows them to be more receptive to strange or novel ideas than non-artistic types with increased latent inhibition - a mental filter that causes the mind to treat a given stimulus as irrelevant, preventing the person from learning or deriving meaning from the experience.

Grab an art tool and just go crazy

Don’t worry about being branded as a nutjob, though, especially if you’re artistically inclined.

A 2014 paper published in the European Journal of Social Psychology points to evidence that people might actually be more appreciative of your work if they think you’re off your rocker.

Attempting to determine the relationship between the perceived eccentricity of an artist and how their art is assessed, two psychologists from the Ireland’s University of Limerick and the U.K.’s University of Southampton talked to 250 participants spread across five experiments.

In the first experiment, the researchers asked the group about how they perceived Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers painting. Strangely enough, when the topic of the artist’s clipped ear was brought up, the participants seemed to hold the painting in higher regard.

The second experiment compared eccentric artists with non-eccentric artists. The results showed that the study group preferred the eccentrics’ artwork. The researchers got the same result in the third round, which involved fictitious works of art – the participants gave a higher rating to the more eccentric-looking artists.

In the fourth study, the researchers noted that eccentricity had a greater effect on so-called “unconventional” art, such as Joseph Beuys' “The Pack,” than on more conventional works of art.

Lastly, the researchers focused on Lady Gaga, presenting images of her to the participants in both highly eccentric and relatively normal garb. Interestingly, the participants were more likely to appreciate her music whenever her penchant for unconventional fashion was played up. However, the participants were also critical of her performance get-up, expressing a heightened appreciation of her work only when her displays of eccentricity felt “authentic.”

“These novel findings indicate that art evaluations are partly rooted in perceptions of artists' eccentricity and evidence the importance of perceived authenticity and skills for these attributions,” wrote the authors in their paper.



The next time you think of doing something weird, shocking, or unconventional, at least you’d have a creative and somewhat acceptable excuse (with apologies to Matchbox Twenty): “I’m not crazy, I’m just a little artistic.” — TJD, GMA News