Love has long been a muse to the creative mind, offering a channel for expression and being a source of inspiration to countless individuals. Throughout history, renowned artists like Vincent Van Gogh and contemporary musicians like Taylor Swift have centred much of their work around the theme of love. Regardless of their unique circumstances, the concept of love, whether requited or unrequited, continues to connect creative minds even today. But why is it that love and creativity have such an intimate relationship? Moreover, through this understanding, can we, as individuals living in an emotionally intricate and complex world, harness the love we already have to enhance our creativity?
Negative Moods and Creativity: A Cognitive Perspective
To understand this complex interplay between love and creativity, it is essential to look at broader research on the connection between mood states and creativity. Activating moods (for example, fear or joy), whether positive or negative, increase creative performance, unlike deactivating moods such as boredom or helplessness. Additionally, the hedonic contingency theory states that negative mood states cause one to believe the effort put into a task is perpetually inadequate. Thus, sad artists and those with negative mood states are more likely to persist in their efforts to achieve higher standards of creativity. Those that are happy, however, tend to be more satisfied with their actions and thus do not persist in their attempts to be increasingly creative.
Further, creativity has been found to be at its highest in people with moderate mental illnesses and low emotional stability. Often, this emotional instability facilitates creativity to the extent that people whose livelihoods depend on their creativity (such as artists, writers, actors, and authors) may refuse psychiatric treatment due to the possibility of a complete cure and as a result, decreased creativity. David Foster Wallace, a prominent American writer celebrated for his novel Infinite Jest, harboured reservations towards psychiatric treatment and medication. He attributed his creative blockages to the effects of depression medications and believed they were muting his emotions.
Does love inspire creativity?
Love powers creativity by expanding and changing the way we think. It has been found that people tend to process information in two distinct ways– either through global processing, or local processing. The former involves a more abstract and holistic view of the world while the latter emphasizes focus on details of physical or tangible objects in one’s immediate surroundings. Thus, global processing often leads to creative thinking, while local processing leads to analytical thinking. Research on the Construal Level Theory suggests that temporal perspectives, i.e. how far into the future one perceives an event to be, determine the kind of processing used. When one perceives an event to be far into the future, global processing is used; however, when the same event is perceived to be in the near future, local processing and analytical thinking are used. Since romantic love generally involves long-term attachment to one’s partner, it can be viewed as being in the distant future, thus eliciting global processing and creative thinking. Therefore, love can be said to expand our horizons of thought. However, more tangible derivatives of love, such as sex, are often perceived as being in the immediate future and thus elicit a local processing model of analytical thought.
The connection between the two concepts is further solidified by findings that suggest that cooperation among partners increases creativity. When divided into dyads, participants in a study performed more creatively when an added dimension of cooperation was introduced. Love naturally requires commitment and cooperation, and thus, those in committed relationships may be inspired by this partnership to be creative.
Additionally, our bodily reactions to love and creativity overlap, involving the secretion of dopamine, a hormone commonly associated with happiness and pleasure. Lovers and artists are often driven by the same motive– to create something tangible out of a concept that exists only in theory. Thus, there is a common striving to achieve satisfaction and fulfilment, often fuelled by dopamine.
Unrequited Love and Creativity
Sure, love fuels creativity. What happens, then, to unrequited love? Where does that energy go? The Freudian defence mechanism of sublimation can be used to understand the channelling of frustrating and negative emotions that come with unrequited love into more acceptable sources. Often, this pain is sublimated through creative outlets such as creating art or writing. A study conducted to understand the effects of various emotions on productivity and creativity found that those who listened to sad music and were emotionally agitated produced more objectively creative artwork than those who listened to happy or neutral music. Therefore, the pent-up frustration and sadness of heartbreak or unrequited love may be expressed through creative means as catharsis.
Born out of a yearning for companionship and love, Vincent Van Gogh’s painting of his bedroom (‘The Bedroom in Arles’) is a prime example of the inspiration that the lack of love brings. In this piece, Vincent paints two identical pillows on his single bed, almost in an echo of his previous words, “If you wake up in the morning and you’re not alone and you see in the twilight a fellow human being, it makes the world so much agreeable.” Despite numerous heartaches and rejections in his personal life, Van Gogh channelled his intense feelings of grief and turmoil into his brushstrokes, finding catharsis and solace in art.
Another instance of the inspiring effect of love on literature lies in the book ‘The Letters of John Keats’, a posthumous compilation of letters written by Keats to family, friends, and his last lover, Fanny Brawne. Through his letters filled with longing and love for Brawne, Keats can be seen conveying his desire to write elaborate verses of poetry for her. In one letter, he even goes on to say, “I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion, I have shuddered at it; I shudder no more, I could be martyred for my religion; Love is my religion, I could die for you.”
The profoundness and beauty of the work of John Keats, Van Gogh and hundreds of such writers and artists throughout history allow us a front-seat view of the fascinating effects of love and longing on creativity. While numerous studies have focused on the relationship between mood states and creativity, very little research has been done on the themes of unrequited love, the emotions that emerge out of it, and their influence on creative endeavours. As we await more specific research, we are left with historical evidence of the relationship between the two as a reminder that beautiful and meaningful art can emerge out of sadness, just as it can emerge out of joy, if not more intensely.
References:
Artincontext. (2023). “The Bedroom in Arles” Van Gogh – 3 Studies of One Interior. artincontext.org. https://artincontext.org/the-bedroom-in-arles-van-gogh/
Max, D. T. (2009, March 1). David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass “Infinite Jest.” The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/09/the-unfinished
Masumi Pradhan
