upworthy

van gogh

Health

Researchers have pinpointed the reason why creative people often come from broken homes

There's a long list of creative geniuses who had hard childhoods.

via Canva/Photos

A woman painting.

Why do some people feel they are devoid of creativity, while others are bursting at the seams? A new study published by The Conversation has found that creativity is closely related to how people were raised and that there are two wildly different upbringings that produce creative adults.

The first type of creative person is raised in stable circumstances and has support from their parents to pursue their craft. They are given lessons and have ample resources to learn more about what they love. The other type of creative person is someone who endured trauma at a very young age and developed a deep inner world to help them combat persistent anxiety.

Does trauma result in creativity?

It makes sense that many of the creative giants of our time, Vincent van Gogh, Charles Dickens, John Lennon, Oprah Winfrey, Beethoven, Michael Jackson, and Frida Kahlo, all endured difficult childhoods, and it may be the catalyst for their incredible creativity. In Donald Winnicott’s 1971 bookPlay and Reality, the famed psychoanalyst notes that when children are young and have separation anxiety from their parents, they cling to “transitional objects” and specific behaviors. When the absence is prolonged and difficult, the behaviors transform into creativity.

“Some academics have proposed a model to explain this phenomenon,” Carlo Valerio Bellieni, Professor of Pediatrics, Università di Siena, writes at The Conversation. “Up to a certain level of separation or neglect from parents, the capacity to develop talents grows, but beyond a certain limit this decreases and alterations in social behaviour become more acute.”

Bellieni says that when young people experience trauma, it causes them to create a “parallel mental world” to shield themselves from the outside world. “The conclusion is that, paradoxically, children raised in an unfavourable environment can develop their own inner creative world to survive the stress, but in several cases, at the cost of producing mental health disorders,” Bellieni writes.

imagination, childhood trauma, creativity, airplanes, kid playing, flight, luggageA child pretending to be a pilot.via Canva/Photos

How does childhood adversity result in creativity?

To put it simply, when young children experience trauma, they develop a more robust imagination than those who do not, which gives them a fertile ground for the creative process.

Bellieni’s findings are echoed in a 2018 study by California State University, Northridge that analyzed 234 professional performers. The study found that the performers experienced a higher rate of childhood trauma and neglect than those who were not in the performing arts. The performers who experienced adverse childhood experiences were found to be more absorbed by the creative process and more receptive to art.

danging, performers, mental health, trauma, creativity, woman dancing, performing artsA woman dancing.via Canva/Photos

"Lastly, [this] group identified greater appreciation for the transformational quality of creativity, in particular, how the creative process enabled a deeper engagement with the self and world. They recognised that it operated as a powerful force in their life," the researchers wrote, "So many participants in our sample have experienced poly-traumatization and yet they also embrace their passion for performance and creativity. They are embracing ways to express all that is human."

Ultimately, creativity can stem from two very different places: support or neglect. But whether it is shaped by love or loss, creativity helps propel our world forward and is a wonderful gift that helps us all better connect to the world around us. Let’s hope that as these wounded creatives share their gifts, they also find healing along the way.

From Your Site Articles
creativity
Pop Culture

Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo navigate today's cringey corporate culture in hilarious ad

We've all had bosses like this.

AICP/Vimeo

Van Gogh and Kahlo might have had their critics, but nothing like this.

In a parody video titled “Museum-worthy,” renowned artists Vincent Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo must navigate the constant influx of “creative input” on their masterpieces from cheesy middlemen dressed in period garb and spouting marketing mumbo jumbo.

Even though the sketch was created to encourage professional creatives to enter a contest for the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), anyone who has had to deal with cringey corporate culture will get a kick out of it.

Van Gogh is informed that while “the client was super happy” with his “Starry Night” painting, they wanted it to make it a “sunny day” for a happier tone.

Also, his painting unfortunately failed a focus group since it did not make viewers “more comfortable about the plague.” So, of course, an influencer, aka Father Anton, is brought in “to break through and resonate with younger audiences.”

Meanwhile, Kahlo is told her unibrow is “too confrontational” and is politely asked to remove the monkey from her self portrait in favor of an animal that “scored higher on trust,” like a puppy.

Give it a watch below:

Triggered? You’re not alone. Just take a look at some of these comments gleaned from Youtube:

“The people who made this commercial really captured what its like to deal with these people. Especially the influencer part.”

“For me this really showed me how ridiculous corporate control and content-isation really is. We're so used to it that we don't think about it any more, but can be soul sucking.”

“Okay, I actually LOL'd at the end No lies detected, though.”

“This ad was BRILLIANT and so on POINT!”

“I love this…it also made me uncomfortable, as it’s just toooooooo relatable.”

Art is subjective, but it seems we can all agree that a) this ad hits the nail on the head, and b) we are ready for corporate cringe to be done, please and thank you.

By the way, if you want to see more of what happened during that focus group for “Starry Night,” you can check out an equally funny companion piece here.

From Your Site Articles
humor
Joy

Gallery experts shocked to find an unseen Van Gogh painting hiding behind one of his works

It was found during an X-ray.

via Wikimedia Commons

The Scottish National Gallery.

The National Galleries of Scotland made an incredible announcement on July 14. Experts at the Edinburgh gallery discovered a self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh after taking an X-ray of his 1885 painting "Head of a Peasant Woman."

To find another painting by Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh 132 years after his death is an incredible discovery not only for the art world, but humanity. It’s like digging up a hidden track by the Beatles, a secret notebook by Isaac Newton or unreleased poems by Langston Hughes.

"Hidden from view for over a century, the self-portrait is on the back of the canvas with Head of a Peasant Woman and is covered by layers of glue and cardboard," the museum said in a statement.

The discovery is historic but it makes sense given the fact that Van Gogh was known for using both sides of a canvas to save money. The artist only sold one painting in his lifetime and became famous after his death in 1890 at the age of 37. He would go on to become one of the most influential painters in Western art history.

Lesley Stevenson, the gallery’s senior conservator, says that she felt “shock” to “find the artist looking at us,” she told the BBC. "When we saw the X-ray for the first time, of course we were hugely excited."

The Edinburgh gallery describes the painting as "a bearded sitter in a brimmed hat with a neckerchief loosely tied at the throat. He fixes the viewer with an intense stare, the right side of his face in shadow and his left ear clearly visible."

Even though it will take countless hours of delicate restoration for the new painting to be separated from "Head of a Peasant Woman," the museum has a good idea of what it looks like thanks to the X-ray image.

Van Gogh famously cut off his ear in 1888, two years before his death, and in what is presumed to be a self-portrait, the artist’s ear is still attached to his head. He lopped off the lower part of his ear during a bout of depression while staying in Arles, France. He later documented the experience in a painting titled, “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear.”

“Later in date than the Head of a Peasant Woman, the hidden painting is likely to have been made during a key moment in Van Gogh’s career, when he was exposed to the work of the French impressionists after moving to Paris,” the gallery wrote on its blog.

Museum visitors will be able to see an X-ray of the image in a lightbox at a new exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery entitled, “A Taste for Impressionism: Modern French Art from Millet to Matisse.”

"Moments like this are incredibly rare," Frances Fowle, a senior curator at the National Galleries of Scotland, said according to ABC News. "We have discovered an unknown work by Vincent Van Gogh, one of the most important and popular artists in the world."

From Your Site Articles
art
Most Shared

Van Gogh's paintings come to life at this incredible art museum. Come take a tour.

Do you remember your last trip to an art museum?

If we're talking typical art museum, you probably walked around an expansive but sterile space, looked at some pretty paintings from a respectful distance, then went to the gift shop to buy a magnet of one of those paintings for your fridge. Okay, I may be personalizing that last part a bit, but you get what I'm saying. On the whole, a day at an art museum can be lovely, but it's often not terribly memorable.

Perhaps that's one reason why museum attendance has been steadily declining across the United States since the early 2000s, especially among the younger demographic. Another might be that, since technology satisfies most of our entertainment whims in the comfort of our homes, it takes something truly extraordinary to motivate us to leave them.

But what if you could literally step into a painting and experience it all around you a la "Mary Poppins"? Something like that would surely be worth the trek.

The Van Gogh exhibit at The Carrières de Lumières Workshop of Lights. Photo via E. Spiller/Culturespaces. Used with permission.

That's exactly what The Carrières de Lumières, an art center in the south of France, is offering as part of a new series of art installations it's doing in collaboration with Culturespaces.

The exhibition, called Atelier des Lumières or "Workshop of Lights," takes the art of well-known artists and styles and creates a totally immersive experience by blanketing the space's 75,000 square feet and 50 foot-hight walls with it.

Right now, and through January 5th, 2020, you can wander through the mesmerizing, and often chaotic world of Vincent Van Gogh.

Photo via Culturespaces/E. Spiller.

When patrons enter the space, they go on a journey through the different stages of Van Gogh's creative life, which anyone who's seen his work before knows varied significantly.  "The immersive exhibition evokes Van Gogh's inordinate, chaotic and poetic inner world and emphasizes a permanent dialogue between shadow and light," the press release for the exhibit notes.

At this exhibit, you can actually walk through his "Wheatfield with Crows" and see the wind rustling the stalks.

Photo via Culturespaces/E. Spiller.

Or watch his "Almond Blossoms" rustling in the trees.

Photo via Gianfranco Iannuzzi/Culturespaces.

Then follow them as they blow off into the wind.

Photo via Culturespaces/E. Spiller.

You can be totally enveloped by his "Irises."

Photo via Culturespaces/E. Spiller.

And stroll past actual lapping waters in his "Starry Night Under the Rhone."

Photo via Culturespaces/E. Spiller.

Don't worry, his most famous "Starry Night" is there, too. In fact, it's the star of the show.

Photo via Culturespaces/E. Spiller.

Photo via Culturespaces/E. Spiller.

Photo via Culturespaces/E. Spiller.

If all that wasn't cool enough, the exhibit also has an incredible musical component that takes the experience to a whole other level.

You're basically getting a trip to an unforgettable museum and a trip to the symphony all at once. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more culture-filled experience.

Now while you do have to book a flight to the south of France to witness this immersive exhibit, based on the praise from patrons who've already visited, it's well worth the trip. Plus you'll be in Provence afterwards which isn't too shabby a place to spend a few days.

However, if you (understandably) can't swing an international trip, there are plenty of awesome interactive exhibits and museums you can check out in the states instead. Here are just a few:

Visual art can take on so many different forms, and, thanks to technology and innovation, artists today are busting through the limitations of previous generations. If you step outside your comfort zone and support them, the experience will no doubt leave a lasting impact and remind you that some things are worth leaving the house for.

From Your Site Articles
Trending Stories