# Name a great artist who wasn't a tortured soul. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 5, 2006, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138 "2006-03-05T15:45:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Gerome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/85e7bf/32.png) [@Gerome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gerome)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/21 "2006-03-06T06:28:36Z")
It’s also probably likely that the artists from troubled backgrounds get more press and attention simply because their stories are more interesting. Say you’re a soft-piece journalist/arts writer, and you have to hype two upcoming exhibitions: who’s going to have the more interesting story, a former junkie from a broken home who has schizophrenia or a guy who’s grown up in a comfortable middle-class existence? ---
**Author:** ![HazelNutCoffee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/22 "2006-03-06T06:52:47Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > The ultimate disproof: William Shakespeare. Grew up in comfortable circumstances and was successful quite early. It didn’t hurt his talent in the slightest. First person I thought of when I opened this thread. I’m pretty sure that Jane Austen’s life was pretty much normal - except for the fact she didn’t get married, which was odd only because of the times she lived in, I suppose. At the very least, I am quite sure she didn’t abuse any substances. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![USCDiver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uscdiver/32/354_2.png) [@USCDiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/USCDiver)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/23 "2006-03-06T07:05:24Z")
[Marge]Balzac![/Marge] ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/24 "2006-03-06T07:08:31Z")
Well, remember also that if Shakespeare (not getting into the Oxfordian/Marlovian hooplah but just assuming it _was_ the actual man credited) was sexually abused by both parents and was addicted to powdered mummies and cocaine imported from the New World and three times put in jail for breaking his wife’s jaw for not of ripaste making appropriate the table in a manner most timely, we’d have no idea. We don’t even have any records connecting him to the authorship of his plays from his own lifetime- we have next to no idea whether he was happy, sad, whatever. (We do know he outlived his son and had other personal tragedyes). I just saw a Larry King retrospective on _Don Knotts_, who I think most would recognize as a genius. (Think Barney Fife was an easy character to create and play? Try creating some character who is that perfectly realized and consistently hysterical- it’s _way_ harder than playing a straight-man sheriff or a Law & Order detective.) By all accounts he was happy and beloved and a thoroughly positive person. True he was divorced a couple of times, primarily due to his workaholism, but even then he remained good friends with his ex-wives, and also by all accounts was quite the lady’s man. His kids, co-workers, family and friends all seem to have adored him and none seem to have regarded him as tortured. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/25 "2006-03-06T07:36:33Z")
Thomas Kinkaid? ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/26 "2006-03-06T07:50:21Z")
We know _ **Mozarts** _ personality rather well from the incessant stream of letters and diaries he wrote, and by all accounts he was a kind, generous and cheerful man who loved his wife and kids a great deal, was very happy making good music, and had no more money troubles then most people. The movie " Amadeus" distorts his personality to make the story more interesting. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/27 "2006-03-06T13:21:09Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > I suspect that posterity will regard Ron Howard a lot more highly than Werner Herzog. And how tortured a soul was Fellini, anyway? Or Kubrick, for that matter? From what I’ve read of him, he seems to have been a pretty well-adjusted, capable individual. I understand that he felt contempt for any artist who was not also a competent businessman. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/28 "2006-03-06T13:26:56Z")
> [@Gerome](#): > > It’s also probably likely that the artists from troubled backgrounds get more press and attention simply because their stories are more interesting. Say you’re a soft-piece journalist/arts writer, and you have to hype two upcoming exhibitions: who’s going to have the more interesting story, a former junkie from a broken home who has schizophrenia or a guy who’s grown up in a comfortable middle-class existence? One wonders if their admirers aren’t using the artist’s messy lives to rationalize their own: "Well, Poe was pretty badly screwed up, and he was a great writer. My life’s pretty screwed up, too. It’s 'cuz I’m so artistic, and bourgeois society has no place for me … " ---
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/29 "2006-03-06T13:47:40Z")
Me. Unfortunately, mostly for all of you, I am not going to be appreciated until well after I am dead. ---
**Author:** ![Arch\_Trout](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9f8e36/32.png) [@Arch\_Trout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arch_Trout)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/30 "2006-03-06T13:57:18Z")
There’s just one thing that’s been bothering me, no-one has mentioned Peter Falk yet. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/31 "2006-03-06T14:10:06Z")
My first thought, reading the OP was Charles Addams. I’m surprised that **Bertie Wooster** , of all people, didn’t mention P. G. Wodehouse. From what I recall of his life story he was a reasonably happy, contented man, even in some less that idyllic situations. There are a lot of artists who were tortured. There are also a lot who weren’t. The presence or absence of torturing circumstances is not predictive of talent. \ As a mental health consumer I have a particular hate for a [poster](http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Policy/Updates/Updates_andamp __What_s_New___ Healthcare_Reform __EEOC__ Famous_People.htm)\* that one can find in most centers where the treatment of those with mental health problems can be found. It lists a number of famous persons who can be reasonably diagnosed with mental health problems. It includes Abraham Lincoln, several writers, and **Emporer Norton I**. :eek: \ \*The second article touches on the people listed, and their accomplishments. ---
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/32 "2006-03-06T14:18:03Z")
Reading these responses makes me realize that the definition of “artist” is much wider than most would suspect. ---
**Author:** ![Spiff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiff/32/9852_2.png) [@Spiff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiff)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/33 "2006-03-06T14:39:25Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > Norman Rockwell? Rockwell wasn’t an artist, he was an illustrator! :: D&R :: ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/34 "2006-03-06T15:22:17Z")
I took a Japanese literature class not knowing much at all about Japanese literature besides the _Tale of Gengi_ and found out that every single important modernish Japanese author that we studied did himself in one way or another. It got to be kind of funny, really. Particularly when that Dazai guy kept making suicide pacts with girls and they’d die and he’d live. How on earth do you find the _next_ woman to make a suicide pact with once that gets out? And then we get to Ooka Shohei, who wrote _Fires on the Plain_, informed by his experience of the outright horrors of the Japanese campaign in the Phillipines, who comes home from the war, writes a book, lives happily ever after. So it goes to show you never can tell. Perhaps those other guys didn’t have enough _real_ struggle in their lives, like, I dunno, starving in the Phillipines, so they had to make their own drama? ---
**Author:** ![Huasat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/4af34b/32.png) [@Huasat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huasat)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/35 "2006-03-06T15:59:46Z")
Tolkien. He created a beautiful myth, several languages, and an entire world; yet he was an incredibly boring university professor. Even fighting in WWI didn’t mess him up. While everyone around him was writing depressing and dull poetry he was inventing Elvish. ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/36 "2006-03-06T16:18:01Z")
> [@garygnu](#): > > Thomas Kinkaid? Karma will get him yet, you mark my word… ---
**Author:** ![Bomzaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e480ec/32.png) [@Bomzaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bomzaway)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/37 "2006-03-06T16:34:55Z")
> [@garygnu](#): > > Thomas Kinkaid? His soul will be tortured later. Get your tickets now! ---
**Author:** ![Bomzaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e480ec/32.png) [@Bomzaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bomzaway)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/38 "2006-03-06T16:45:40Z")
It can be difficult to gauge if someone was a tortured soul or not. Some hide it pretty well, some you wouldn’t expect to be under any duress due to wealth, health, stable family, gregariousness, etc. Perhaps the artists listed in this thread really were tortured to some extent or another, thus contributing to their genius, but it wasn’t apparent externally. I’m hardly an artist, but I dabble in a little writing and music and I find a little emotional distress can often add a little something to whatever I’m working on. ---
**Author:** ![SpectBrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@SpectBrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpectBrain)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/39 "2006-03-06T18:31:49Z")
> [@Bippy the Beardless](#): > > Karma will get him yet, you mark my word… [Instant Karma…](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/03/05/painter-of-light-thomas_n_16801.html) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138/40 "2006-03-06T18:49:16Z")
Many great SF and fantasy writers have been pretty well-adjusted fellows. Robert Heinlein, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Isaac Asimov – none of them “tortured souls” by any measure. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-great-artist-who-wasnt-a-tortured-soul/347138.md?page=3)