Do Suicides Plague Artists More than Others?
By Ooi Kok Chuen
February 2021 PENANG PALETTE
ARE VISUAL ARTISTS by the nature and process of their creative work more prone to depression and suicidal tendencies? Or is the idea that madness is somehow connected to artistic genius just a myth, perpetuated in romanticised narratives such as Irving Stone’s Lust For Love, about the tortured life of Vincent Van Gogh?A dark harbinger? One of the sordid Black on Gray Series painted by Mark Rothko before his suicide.Van Gogh, in a fit of delirium famously shot himself in...
Ooi Kok Chuen
is an art-writer and journalist, and the author of MAHSURI: A Legend Reborn (Ooi Peeps Publishing), an adult contemporary fantasy “movel” (a novel conceived as a mock movie) spun from a local legend.
