What actually connected Mayakovsky with Osip Brik: Famous people with mental characteristics

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

People easily pass verdicts by hanging labels marked "expiry date: forever." Stereotypes prevent them from seeing talent in a person who has already shown himself to be untalented - but in a completely different area. And yet those who were given the chance never cease to amaze us - for example, artists with special needs.

Dyslexic creators

Dyslexia is a specific disorder in which a person can hardly read the text, no matter how well he knows the alphabet. For centuries, people who understood the information much better by ear or in the form of visual aids than from sight, put an end to them: they say, they are fundamentally unteachable and simply stupid. Sometimes, instead of stupidity, laziness was imputed to blame: an intelligent child, but does not try.

At the same time, dyslexia is not about intelligence or hard work. In the dyslexic brain structure, structures are perceived differently. And where there is a sag with signs, "dyslexics", on the other hand, take the lead in the field of spatial thinking. They often become visual arts innovators.

For example, Zaha Hadid, an architect, began to build in that futuristic style, which everyone willingly imagined, but did not dare to implement. After her death, she is still equally criticized and recognized as the genius of her craft. By the way, Hadid was a fan of Russian painting of the early twentieth century.

And if you think about this painting, one cannot fail to recall Mayakovsky with his innovative ROST windows - propaganda masterpieces executed at the same time as relevant to the art of his time as utilitarian as possible, that is, with the fulfillment of a practical goal. His works not only stigmatized ideas that were alien and outdated, as he believed, with the help of satire, but also called for self-development.

Moreover, the artist and poet read the texts with great difficulty - although he successfully composed them himself. In his poetic work, he relied on hearing, and when literary sources were needed, they were prepared and retold by his friend Osip Brik.

It is believed that Walt Disney and Leonardo da Vinci may have suffered from dyslexia as well. Disney is one of the pioneers in the field of animation, before opening his studio he worked as a journalist. He really wanted to work in this particular profession, but, getting a job in the editorial office, he found himself sitting over a note on which others spend a quarter of an hour, much, much longer. He also had problems at school, but in his youth it seemed to him that he was simply not motivated to read. Alas, motivation didn't help Disney in any way.

As for da Vinci (who also had difficulty reading), many doubt that he wrote from right to left for the sake of encrypting his texts - after all, the way of reading them is too obvious. This was probably a diagnostic sign. Leonardo da Vinci is known for gushing engineering ideas, and in painting he invented and embodied the sfumato technique, which made Mona Lisa so unique and famous.

Popular video blogger, artist Claire de Lis also suffers from dyslexia. It opened when a dyslexia foundation started raising money and she promised to shave off her hair if her followers made large transfers to the foundation. And at the same time she admitted that she suffers from dyslexia.

Artists with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Although many painters of the past had learning difficulties as children, it is difficult to diagnose an artist with autism in hindsight. Only one case is considered indisputable - the story of Gottfried Mind, "Raphael the cat". In early childhood, the artist looked completely mentally retarded, but he discovered an interest and ability to draw, so his parents decided to send him to study this craft early - maybe he could feed himself.

Painting Mind studied neither shaky nor swiftly, but one day he saw how his teacher portrays a cat. Mindu did not like the cat painted on canvas very much, and he undertook to paint the cats himself, in watercolors. And since then I've only painted them - but it's so great that orders came one after another, and Mind himself became famous in his own way.

In 2017, the world said goodbye to contemporary Australian artist diagnosed with autism, Donna Leah Williams. As a child, Donna was long considered deaf because she communicated mostly with gestures and ignored addresses. At the time, it was believed that autism develops from aggression in the family; the family environment was really very bad, so I was never surprised when the doctors realized that Donna has autism. She left home many times, spending the night with her friends, until at sixteen she left the house completely. In the end, she managed to graduate from university, become an artist and writer, who gave readers a glimpse into how people with autism perceive the world.

In 2006, another famous artist died with the same disorder, the Scotsman Richard Wouro, the son of a Polish émigré and British teacher. He learned to speak only at the age of eleven, but even at the age of six it became clear that he was artistically gifted - in kindergarten he was given to draw with pastels, and he almost immediately impressed the teachers with how mature he did it. It was the end of the fifties, it was customary to hide children with autism from the world, but Vouro's talent was allowed to develop freely, and at the age of seventeen his first exhibition took place. One of the following exhibitions was opened with a speech by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; she also bought several of Richard's works.

Over time, Vouro's troubles became more and more. No glory saved him from loss of vision, and then from the development of lung cancer. He died at the age of only fifty-three. His landscapes (and Richard was a landscape painter) are still sold for a lot of money.

The American graphic artist Stephen Wiltshire also successfully earns money by drawing. He is a landscape painter, like Vouro, but he only paints city panoramas. But it is very accurate, expressive and from memory. To do this, he climbs very tall buildings to look around the city, or rides over houses in a helicopter. Another famous artist is still very young, this is a girl named Iris Halmshaw. She paints in splashes, but always very consciously, and her canvases leave a strong emotional impression.

Down syndrome artists

Many people are critical of the creativity of people with Down syndrome, because they are unable to overcome the academic technique of painting or drawing - which means that their experiments "there is no point in looking." But if art fulfills its role - for example, conveys impressions or evokes emotions - then technique fades into the background.

The most famous artist with Down syndrome is the late Judith Scott. As a child, she was separated from her twin sister and was placed in a psychiatric clinic for many years, where she was not allowed to draw with pencils because she was “stupid” and “misbehaving”. Judith closed herself in, but when, many years later, her sister managed to find her, she immediately recognized and blossomed.

Shortly after moving to her sister, Scott began to create sculptures from different bases and threads. These sculptures, if placed one after another, created a single story of her relationship with her sister - a happy childhood together, a terrible separation, a reunion. Their expressiveness is so great that at exhibitions people began to cry.

At the peak of popularity is now the British artist Tazia Fowley, who assembles her paintings like a mosaic, painting spot after spot. One of her paintings is decorated with a nursery in the English royal palace - she was placed there by the Duchess of Kate Middleton, wife of Prince William. Tazia inspires many teenagers with the same diagnosis to become seriously interested in drawing and other visual arts. Critics talk about her special sense of color and mature composition of works - this must be noted separately, since until recently it was believed that spatial thinking, including ideas about composition, was not available to people with Down syndrome.

And this list is, of course, incomplete - As an artist recognized as "mentally retarded", for 60 years he painted girls warriors: Henry Darger's Unreal Kingdom.