When Walls Become Doorways: Creativity, Chaos Theory, and Physical Illness

Abstract

An interdisciplinary approach combining chaos theory, art history, medicine, and psychology was used to study the impact of illness on creativity in the lives of 21 visual artists--Botticelli, Dürer, Michelangelo, Titian, Goya, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Redon, Monet, Matisse, Ryder, Munch, Beaux, Marsh, O'Keeffe, Kahlo, Demuth, Blaine, Schonzeit, Flanagan, and Longo-Muth. Art history and medicine provided biographical data and physical information, and psychology offered insights into motivation and behavior. As a mathematical abstraction of behavior, chaos theory revealed the dynamics of the creative illness through an understanding of the patterns that emerged in the lives of the artists. A period of illness was modeled as creative chaos, which functioned as a time transition to a new stage of life and the production of new art. The artists studied clustered into four patterns. First, a period of illness preceded choice of a career in art. Second, illness transformed the creative process and the art produced. Third, for some artists, illness became life's focus, with negative consequences to the artists and their art. Fourth, artists who remained creative during an incapacitating or terminal illness produced work in an entirely new medium.

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