Always on the cutting edge of art and fashion, the Parisians deserve recognition for an innovative effort to reverse engineer talent. If van Gogh and Mozart were crazy, so the reasoning goes, why not fill museums with the drawings of mental patients?
It doesnât take a logician to suspect that this strategy puts the cart before the horse. Van Gogh and Mozart were so talented they were a bit crazy. Einstein was âcrazy smart,â and not a little eccentric. But being crazy doesnât make you talented.
Mark Morris is a brilliant choreographer. So brilliant, in fact, that he can get away with being beastly to his dancers. But being an a**hole wonât make an ordinary choreographer great (a point that should be better publicized in the dance world), any more than developing a strange physical tic will make one a more brilliant academic, or wearing a pocket protector will improve oneâs grasp of economics.
Unsurprisingly, most of the mental patients who submitted the best artwork to the French "La Clé des Champs" were professional artists before they lost the old grip on reality.
UPDATE: I'm similarly out of patience with a common tendency to blame the sins of politicians on lawyers as a group. While it is true that many politicians are lawyers, only a tiny percentage of lawyers are politicians. The power hungry may attend law school, but going to law school doesn't make one power hungry.
Posted by Marie Gryphon on August 6, 2003