In darkness, bright ideas

Published: 8 April, 2011

• “HAUNTED by thoughts of death” – hence the “melancholy” of artist Watteau? (Review, Melancholy of an art master, March 25.)

Attempts to master depression have ALWAYS been stimuli to creative processes, transforming stress into incredible achievements, sorrow leading to joy, darkness bursting into light.

Eric Hobsbawm averred: “Creative artists were sages, prophets, moralists, sources of truth.”

Human suffering can activate the artist’s energies, the nameless and overlooked transformed by the artist’s angst.

“All the great works have been born of despair or of protest or of a refuge from both, but anguish informs them all” – Leonard Bernstein.

MIKE BOR, MA
Hyde Park Square, W2