beyond the obvious many psychological problems that famous masters of the arts may have had, more tangible/diagnosable diseases are sometimes the cause of a distinct artistic creation.
Frontotemporal Dementia: this family of neurodegenerative disorder has been linked to sudden behavioral changes before the condition becomes problematic. (a).
Dr. Adams, a mathematician and chemist leaves her career as a scientist to take care of a very sick son that miraculously recovers. Afterwards she decides to take up art and abandon science.
She painted this and she titled it Image of a migraine
This other one she called Pi
and yes the colors mean something she represented certain digits with colors
to show the patterns in the decimal digit representation.
in 94 as her condition worsened she became fascinated with this song
and began trying to capture the song in a painting.
This project was very important to her, so imagine all the minute details with which the painting tries to describe the song that she hid into this representation.
The funny thing is that Ravel composed the song when he was exactly the same age as Dr Adams when she started painting "Bolero Unraveled" and Ravel probably suffered of the exact same condition as he had all the same symptoms Dr Adams had.
Unfortunately, she passed away last year, but she left lots of very interesting artwork and an illustrated Invertebrate Zoology book that's just marvelous.
Aphakia, or the absence of a crystalline lens inside the eye is another interesting condition.
Claude Monet, started painting in redder tones towards the end of WWI as he had developed cataracts :a denaturation of the protein inside the eye's own lens due generally to prolonged exposure to UV light. Once Monet's eyes got cloudy the not-so-ultra-violet light (bluish purplish) had a harder time going through his eye than the redder tones with bigger wavelengths.
Around 6 years before his death Monet had the cloudy crystalline lenses removed so he would be able to see again. His aphakia probably made him able to sense Ultra Violet light, as is reported in many cases of the same condition, which would have made him see the world much bluer than the average person. I sometimes wonder what crazy things Monet would see with an increased spectrum of colors to work with.
I mean, just coming up with "Impression, Sunshine" without extra color sensation...
His paintings made after the operation are somewhat bluer and have a different distribution of colors like in these Water Lilies
Leonardo of Pisa
2 comments:
Sorry, this is the first I hear about Dr. Adams, and I find it quite fascinating. Is there any indication as to why she became obsessed with this song in particular (apart from the rather uplifting feeling it transmits)? And are there any speculations regarding the codification of the song in the painting? Might the holes represent the music, or the colors, or the shapes? No doubt it's a mixture of everything, but I was wondering if you yourself had any theories about this.
Also, forgive my pretentiousness, but you misspelled "masters" in the first paragraph.
Regards.
The only link between the song and Dr Adams is the fact that both her and the composer of the song were suffering from the same illness. The painting is certainly fascinating, but i don't make any conjectures.
thanks for that pointing out.
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