A Quote by Peter D. Kramer
What if Van Gogh had taken medication for his mental illness? Would the world have been deprived of a great artist?
Related Quotes
I had a Vincent van Gogh, a small Provençal landscape. We sold it. If you're going to have a van Gogh it should be a really good van Gogh.
It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospects of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a great many devoted art lovers to rout.
Vincent van Gogh's mother painted all of his best things. The famous mailed decapitated ear was a figment of the public relations firm engaged by Van Gogh's dealer.
I knew that I had to find out more about van Gogh. Even though I was far too young, and felt I did not have sufficient technique to write a book about Vincent van Gogh, I knew I had to try. If I didn't I would never write anything else.
They say that art comes from the soul. The more drama in an artist's life, the more he can draw on for his art. Van Gogh and Picasso had troubled souls, but poor Steve Kaufman has been shot once, stabbed 3 times - all by women. That is a lot of drama for great art.
What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. - Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh to His Brother
Someone who copies a Van Gogh does not therefore become Van Gogh, and the same would go for Mozart or anyone else who contributed something that was original. Certainly in the way that I described visualizing numbers in abstract, meaningful shapes.
I want to be remembered. I want to have a legacy. Van Gogh only sold one painting before he died, which would mean that he wasn't famous when he was alive. But in 2017, I know who Van Gogh is.
Inarticulate wretches have been behind most of the major advances in civilization. If Vincent Van Gogh had been able to get on with his neighbours, then he might have become an excellent painter-decorator, and received a big turn out at his funeral, and that would be that. But the genes wouldn't let him.
What makes people the world over stand in line for Van Gogh is not that they will see beautiful pictures but that in an indefinable way they will come away feeling better human beings. And that is exactly what Van Gogh hoped for.
The fields of clinical psychology and psychiatry exist specifically to help the emotionally unstable become more stable and lead happier, healthier lives. Unlike in the eras of Vincent Van Gogh and Abraham Lincoln, there is now professional help available for those who suffer from emotional illness. Treatment may require therapy or even medication, but hope is now available every single day in practically every city in the civilized world.
If I could have any artist's work on my sitting room wall it would probably be by Van Gogh or Picasso.
I have spent most of my life working with mental illness. I have been president of the world's largest association of mental-illness workers, and I am all for more funding for mental-health care and research - but not in the vain hope that it will curb violence.
I've never had a sustained period of medication for mental illness when I've not been on other drugs as well. It's just not something that I particularly feel I need. I know that I have dramatically changing moods, and I know sometimes I feel really depressed, but I think that's just life. I don't think of it as, "Ah, this is mental illness," more as, "Today, life makes me feel very sad." I know I also get unnaturally high levels of energy and quickness of thought, but I'm able to utilize that.
I don't think it was pain that made [Vincent Van Gogh] great - I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.
The artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don't believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life.
Related Authors
Daniel Amen Quotes
American
Psychiatrist
Gerald May Quotes
American
Psychiatrist
Jerome Frank Quotes
American
psychiatrist
Judith Orloff Quotes
American
Psychiatrist
Keith Ablow Quotes
American
Psychiatrist
Maurice Nicoll Quotes
Scottish
Psychiatrist
Milton H. Erickson Quotes
American
Psychiatrist
Peter Breggin Quotes
American
Psychiatrist
Wafa Sultan Quotes
American
Psychiatrist