Why does the artist community seems to attract the mentally ill? - It's rare to see a skilled artist who's also mentally well

[IndigoDownSuperEgoUp]

I think most of the opinions here are coming from a modern western perspective, which muddies up what art really is.
The western scene developed the mythological character of the ‘tortured insane artist’ and found it so compelling that you had entire generations where more than half of the new artists were trying to imitate this mythological hero in the west.
The eastern scene didn’t mythologize, sacralize, or decorate this myth, and instead developed an idea of a stoic scholar-artist that adheres like glue to convention and tradition, and never really saw these new-age schizos in bulk until they encountered the west.
I’d recommend people ITT read this book by the name of Obtaining Images by Timon Screech, because it demonstrates that the creation of art doesn’t mandate becoming some insane barbarian sex pervert, and that creativity isn’t necessarily obliterated by not being a jartycacafloopa that goons to centenarians getting decapitated by BBCs.
More importantly, I think that this book is also evidence that art is not fundamentally connected to insanity, because grorious nippon had a thriving art industry even back then that didn’t need insanity to work properly and produce a lot of interesting things.

 

[Pomniman]

I think most of the opinions here are coming from a modern western perspective, which muddies up what art really is.
The western scene developed the mythological character of the ‘tortured insane artist’ and found it so compelling that you had entire generations where more than half of the new artists were trying to imitate this mythological hero in the west.
The eastern scene didn’t mythologize, sacralize, or decorate this myth, and instead developed an idea of a stoic scholar-artist that adheres like glue to convention and tradition, and never really saw these new-age schizos in bulk until they encountered the west.
I’d recommend people ITT read this book by the name of Obtaining Images by Timon Screech, because it demonstrates that the creation of art doesn’t mandate becoming some insane barbarian sex pervert, and that creativity isn’t necessarily obliterated by not being a jartycacafloopa that goons to centenarians getting decapitated by BBCs.
More importantly, I think that this book is also evidence that art is not fundamentally connected to insanity, because grorious nippon had a thriving art industry even back then that didn’t need insanity to work properly and produce a lot of interesting things.

This sounds sensible if you don't think about it too hard, but is actually gay and retarded in practice because well over half the things that were considered normal in the periods and places you're talking about would've been called insanity and torture by default in "the West".

 

[Rainbow Child]

Once upon a time there was a book called, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and it was required reading for any talented child hoping to become a skilled adolescent. The basic premise was that the Left Hemisphere of the brain, the dominant hemisphere, sees things in maps, abstractions, and simplifications, so if you're drawing with it then the sun is a quarter circle in the corner of the page with squiggles around it (or a house is a square with a triangle above it, or an eye is a vesica with a dot in the middle, or...), but the Right Hemisphere, the submissive hemisphere, sees things as they are, complex and unique, so if you're drawing with it then your drawings get more naturalistic and window-like.

The Left Brain / Right Brain thing got tossed in the bin for a while as Pop Psychology. The whole thing was based on epilepsy patients who had the corpus collosum severed, and couldn't really be tested much more beyond that niche population. But then neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist resurrected the idea with his tome The Master and the Emissary, which probably everyone you've heard cite it hasn't finished in its entirety because it's packed to the jams dense. The Left Brain is the predator brain, looking for food. The Right Brain is the prey brain, looking to not become food.

Right from the get go, I'll hedge my bet with @IndigoDownSuperEgoUp and agree that the idea is mostly a myth based around the life of Vincent Van Gogh, and it just sort of has a self-fulfilling social contagion to itself. The artist is SUPPOSED to be a lunatic, the Left Brain Map says so, and so then he is. But, probably a bit of it has to do with being more Right-Brain Dominant than average.