Jacob Lawrence, Depression (1950)

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November 18, 2006:

Romanticization of mental illness.

Illness as royal road to wisdom. The Romantics, Dostoyevsky, Poe, Blake. One among other forms of suffering, bound within the problematic of art as "individual expression". Illness, suffering, intoxication: forms of stimulation for the individual who expresses.

Illness as victimization. Frances Farmer. The preposterous rape scene, the documentedly false lobotomy, framed via the most maudlin soundtrack dirge in history. To portray this queen fighter of all fighters as a meat puppet. Of all people.

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