Choose any characteristic and any group of people and then go looking for examples and you can always "prove" your theory.
Are all top Politicians adulterers? Look at the facts ... Clinton, Kennedy, Blair, Sarkozy ... perhaps one has to be an adulterer to be a successful politician, the facts prove the theory, don't they?
Was Byron egotistical because he was an artist? Obviously so. It was nothing to do with being LORD Byron, the head of a noble family in an era when that must have been something like being a minor Emir.
Some artists are good at reflecting what ordinary people feel, others present an original view of the world around them, others may live in a personal nightmare and have that reflected in their work.
To find out how much madness or eccentricity the average famous artist has you need to make a random selection of artists - say the last 100 to have works sold at Sotheby's for over $50,000 - and examine their lives. Cherry-picking your examples simple reinforces your own bias.
And why does this topic lump poets with painters? What's the connection there?
Choose any characteristic and any group of people and then go looking for examples and you can always "prove" your theory.
Are all top Politicians adulterers? Look at the facts ... Clinton, Kennedy, Blair, Sarkozy ... perhaps one has to be an adulterer to be a successful politician, the facts prove the theory, don't they?
Was Byron egotistical because he was an artist? Obviously so. It was nothing to do with being LORD Byron, the head of a noble family in an era when that must have been something like being a minor Emir.
Some artists are good at reflecting what ordinary people feel, others present an original view of the world around them, others may live in a personal nightmare and have that reflected in their work.
To find out how much madness or eccentricity the average famous artist has you need to make a random selection of artists - say the last 100 to have works sold at Sotheby's for over $50,000 - and examine their lives. Cherry-picking your examples simple reinforces your own bias.
And why does this topic lump poets with painters? What's the connection there?