Austin Taylor discusses the link between art and mental health, and looks at the potentially harmful motif of the ‘tortured artist’.
Van Gogh
Paint and pot
Picture the scene: your creative writing deadline is rapidly approaching, you’ve completely run out of ideas, and then the internet tells you that Ernest Hemingway – one of America’s most celebrated writers – once said: “write drunk, edit sober”. In such desperate (hypothetical) circumstances, you’d perhaps be forgiven for thinking that it might just work. […]