The Question of Genius

The Question of Genius.

What makes genius? Is it but a mere label attached to a contemporary wave of awe as brought about by a redefinition of cultural and material practices? Does it yield itself purely within the realms of artistic talent or do its roots persist to quantify a more in-depth and surreal experience on par to a philosophical and metaphysical consciousness at the expense of physical deprivation and illness. As artists we are bestowed with that most plaguing and sordid ability that renders our faculty with the disposition as to view the world apart from everyone else’s perspective or yet those not bestowed by the touch of the uncanny. Our art often becomes the maize or yet the visual rendition of a creative mind already distorted and as such creeping to make manifest an ounce of normality through its medium and pictorial representation.

Thus is creativity an illness that needs the cure of distilled reality as brought about through the artist talent and his inspired intuition and as such would explain why illness may be manifested as an agent of creativity as it stimulates a sense of coping and adaptability? However within the confines of the artistic vision which tends to hold a perspective devoid of limitations both within the discovery of his own vision and dually by the path of a pursued existence that often is devoid of dogmatic or customary personage one finds a true expression of adaptability where the creation as fuelled by vision and the crass of illness makes manifest a new reality all of which confines to a rule beauty.

Thus how are we to term Genius beyond the confines of the enigmatic explanation? If we are to address such a notion then it seems that the discovery of genius within the artist always fills the description posthumously. Some might argue that Genius is that steadfast notion, the almost celestial notion of a hope in a belief devoid of evidence within a reality which by intellect the artist cannot grasp but which indeed he is led by in discovery and purpose. Yet be it not just a faction of trend it becomes evident that genius possesses both the perspective and path of a new reality and the interpretation of such a reality which he renders clear as a dialect for the lay. He thus shows us the world anew and the path to discovering the newness through a language of individuality that yet has a universal interpretation.

We may thus in part perceive the genius as he which is within the world but not of it whose related existence to the physical may only be interpreted through the anguish of his own physicality. He suffers anguish for his art only by a means to an end of redefining existence.