Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email
 |
Checking for direct PDF access through Ovid | |
Excerpt
Philip Sandblom, 224, pp., New York, NY; Marion Boyars publishers, 1995 $19.95.
William Blake wrote “Poetry, Painting and Music,” the three powers of Man of conversing with Paradise which the flood did not sweep away.
Poets, pictorial artists, and musicians must have three unique talents: extraordinary powers of perception, the ability to communicate in their chosen metier, and (like surgeons) the self-discipline required to spend years learning the craft of their specialty.
Sandblom has for more than two decades explored how disease alters the creativity of these talents. As perhaps the world's most revered surgeon and as a bona fide scholar of the arts, his credentials are impeccable. In this, his eighth edition devoted to the theme, Sandblom introduces the reader to a surprising group of new illustrations of his thesis, sprinkling his beautifully illustrated text with just enough old friends from previous editions to make the inveterate Sandblom reader feel comfortable.
As in any work of art, the style of this book is almost as important as its substance. With the ease and confidence of a connoisseur, the author has no need for pretension to erudition. It is as though Sandblom and his wife were hosting a tea party of perhaps 200 leading artists—all friends—and Sandblom takes the physician colleagu aside and sotte voce in a few words explains how the physical or mental aberration of his artist guests affects his creativity. This powerful yet invariably gentle man avoids obloquy, always emphasizing the positive aspects of how the challenge of disease affects artistic creativity.
Most artists live closer to the interface between normal and abnormal behavior than does the common man. The incidence of emotional disease among artists exceeds the norm, and a significant portion of the book demonstrates how manic depression, schizophrenia, and other disorders can be traced in the artist's production, be it music, poetry, or the pictures.
As benefits and edition rewritten in the closing decade of the 20th century, Sandblom has expanded his previous illustrations to include recreational hallucinogens, and I felt that he was more than restrained. Perhaps the author simply did not invite these unfortunate artists to his party. As contemporary poetry and prose makes it acceptable to disregard previously mandatory rules of its craft, an increasing number of incompetent artists who never learned the rules take cover behind soaring fights of imagination resulting from hallucinogens, and call it art.
In addition to the list of congenital defects, physical abnormalities, endocrine disorders, and various infectious diseases, Sandblom in this edition focuses on how anticipation of death affects artistic creativity.
This book is gradually becoming an important medical text. In future editions, I hope that an index will cross-reference diagnosis of diseases with the artist and provide page numbers in the text for use by clinicians waiting to explain how various diseases can be traced in artistic productivity.
This book is a monument to how a surgeon cam combine a distinguished professional and art-critic career. It is made more memorable in demonstrating that even in these hectic times a man can live a full life for eight decades with dignity and grace.
