WHEN WALLS BECOME DOORWAYS - CREATIVITY, CHAOS THEORY, AND PHYSICAL ILLNESS

An interdisciplinary approach combining chaos theory, art history, med icine, and psychology was used to study the impact of illness on creat ivity in the lives of 21 visual artists-Botticelli, Durer, Michelangel o, Titian, Goya, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Redon, Monet, Matisse, Ryder , Munch, Beaux, Marsh, O'Keeffe, Kahlo, Demuth, Blaine, Schonzeit, Fla nagan, and Longo-Muth. Art history and medicine provided biographical data and physical information, and psychology offered insights into mo tivation and behavior. As a mathematical abstraction of behavior, chao s theory revealed the dynamics of the creative illness through an unde rstanding of the patterns that emerged in the lives of the artists. A period of illness was modeled as creative chaos, which functioned as a time of transition to a new stage of life and the production of new a rt. The artists studied clustered into four patterns. First, a period of illness preceded choice of a career in art. Second, illness transfo rmed the creative process and the art produced Third, for some artists , illness became life's focus, with negative consequences To the artis ts and their art. Fourth, artists who remained creative during an inca pacitating or terminal illness produced work in an entirely new medium .