health and fitness: Do you need to be troubled to be a genius?

vendredi 1 avril 2016

Do you need to be troubled to be a genius?

What can we learn from the Warhols, Gershwins and Lincolns?

You’d be sympathetic, I assume, if you heard of a man so psychologically troubled that he compulsively saved receipts, empty food cans, old toothbrush boxes, stamps and toenail clippings, squirrelling them away in boxes. You’d feel sad to learn how difficult he found it to relate to other people – and how he referred to his portable tape recorder, which he carried everywhere, as his “wife”. Such haunted souls seem destined to live on society’s fringes, contributing little. And yet, whatever you make of his art, it’s hard to conclude that Andy Warhol, who did all of those things, made no contribution.

A recent book by the science journalist Claudia Kalb is entitled Andy Warhol Was A Hoarder, and she provides ample evidence for that claim – and for her arguments that Marilyn Monroe had borderline personality disorder; that Abraham Lincoln was seriouslydepressed; and that George Gershwin suffered from hyperactivity, to name just a few. A slight tilt in the course of history, and Warhol might only have been famous for 15 minutes – as the subject of a voyeuristic reality show.