Why were all famous artists mad?

"The Soothsayer's Recompense"

Giorgio de Chirico, Italian but born and raised in Greece. Lived from the very late 19th century through mid/late 20th century. He is mostly known for his works created around... 1910 ish to 1930's.

Raised in quite an eccentric family, members with discreet personalities but stubborn. And his mother played the role of the most important woman in his life even during his adulthood as he suffered from illness to do with intestinal pain and had to be looked after constantly be his mother.

His biography I read didnt make him sound so ambitious or anything, it just seemed that he just went with the flow, he would always paint but didn't care much if his works didn't sell very well or if he himself as an artist got very famous.

Throughout his career as a painter, most of his works deal with metaphysics. It seemed that he was rather obsessive when it came to the idea of enigma, mystery or melancholy. He even started depising one of his closest friends Carra just because Carra's paintings seemed to him to have melancholy mood to it and he suspected that Carra was stealing his characteristic.

First thing you (well okay I dunno about you but I do) notice in most his paintings (as well as the subject matter) is the shadow, thick and black, heavy and dominating. And in my opinion, it would be impossible for de Chirico to maintain on painting the melancholy or enigmatic sense without these shadows casted by the setting or rising sun against the silent, solid rather boring subject matters.

The thing I like most of his paintings is that he is able to get you in this strange mood when you look at them just by putting some oil paint on the canvas. I'd say he was pretty successful considering the time and effort he put in to trying to figrue out how to convey mystery, melancholy and enigma into and through painting.

I shall definitely have a go at doing one of his works for my port folio, although I still can't decide which one I like the best.

But I quite like this one : "Metaphysical Interior With the Biscuits"

Okay I don't actually believe de Chirico was mad, it's just that he got depressed a lot and other people considered him mad (probably because of his paintings?)

Depression isn't mental illness is it?

Oh wait a minute, it is.