wherefore art thou?

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me earlier to delve deeper into the world of tortured/not tortured neurologically ill artists. And by art, I mean any and all forms of the arts, darlings. I’m intensely fascinated by it all, and a big fan of the cerebral artgasm. It works out for me because I’m not scared to think and opine, no matter how ill-informed I am. This ain’t curation, kids, it’s just a fast and dirty roundup of contemporary things, and does not necessarily reflect the multimillion dollar private art collection of yours truly.

Today’s linkdump is brought to you by the words subjective and snarky.

But it before we get into it, here’s something to either put you in a good mood, or become homicidal in my direction, because…

welcome to bipolar street

(it’s the turnoff after manic depressive crescent) (scheduled post)

Street Art, Tags, Stickers & Stencils

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bipolar self portrait linkdump

Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889

Medi-curation time, my little cuckoos. For your delight and edification, I have once again trawled the Internet to find contemporary self portraits by people with manic depression. It’s all mixed up (no mixed episode jokes please) and so the known rub shoulders with the unknown and the only common denominator is my subjectively critical eyeballs. I haven’t included any of the great painters with their posthumous diagnoses, except the one on your left. I’m sure you’ll agree that it absolutely could not be left out. There’s a small selection of kids’ art, some videos and, as per usual, so many links that if you joined them up, they’d reach the moon.

BipolART

Ohhhkay, so I read a BBC article – Missy Douglas: Visualising bipolar disorder through art. A painting a day for a year, of her emotions. I thought yeah ok, valid project, decent hook, but um, well, meh. What is more interesting than splodgy abstract expressionismy thingies, is that she did it all unmedicated.

My opinion is irrelevant to you, art’s subjective (what isn’t?) and frankly I’m more interested in the mechanics and the buzz than the paintings. I headed over to her website to check it out further: 2:365 The article on the Bipolar Burble blog is definitely worth a read. I wish there was more about the meds though. Did she, like Juliann Garey, do it under medical supervision, for example?

I had a look at her portfolio too, and went eh, meh, hmmm, yuk down the various styles. Anyroad up, all good stuff in the name of awareness and fighting stigma. I hope loads of people do like (and buy) her work, I really do. Um. Except the babies. Those are always disturbing and there’s too much of that art around already.

Two of my favourite artists appear on the list below.

Kay Redfield Jamison’s list of bipolar artists: