[alt text and transcript of posts. First post from wenchyfloozymoo. A series of still screenshots of Australian writer/comedian Hannah Gadsby speaking and gesturing expressively at a mic, with captions as follows.]
But I–A couple of years ago, a man came up to me after… my show.
He had an opinion.
Now, in the show, I’d spoken about taking antidepressant medication, and he had an opinion on that.
Now, interestingly, I’d also spoken about how unhelpful unsolicited advice is in a… mental health plan, but he mustn’t have heard that bit.
He said, “You shouldn’t take medication because you’re an artist. It’s important that you feel.”
He said, “If Vincent van Gogh had have taken medication, we wouldn’t have the sunflowers.”
I never, ever, ever thought that my art history degree would ever come in handy.
I tore that man a college debt-sized new arsehole.
I said, “Good opinion, mate. Except that he did medicate. He self-medicated a lot. He drank a lot. He even nibbled on his own paints. He didn’t just paint sunflowers, he did quite a few portraits of psychiatrists. Not even random ones. Psychiatrists who were treating him. And medicating him. And there’s one particular portrait of one particular psychiatrist, and he’s holding a flower, and it isn’t a sunflower. It’s a foxglove. And that foxglove forms part of a medication that Van Gogh…took for epilepsy. And that derivative of the foxglove plant medi-fucking-cation…”
I must have skipped a dose that day ‘cause I was feeling.
“The derivative of the foxglove, if you overdose it a bit, you know what happens?
You can experience the color yellow a little too intensely. So perhaps… we have the sunflowers precisely because… Van Gogh medicated.
What do you honestly think, mate?” I said.
“That creativity means you must suffer?
That is the burden of creativity?
Just so you can enjoy it?
Fuck you, mate. If you like sunflowers so much, buy a bunch and jerk off into a geranium.”
[second post by water—damage is an image of the Van Gogh painting described, in the artist’s distinctive swirling textured style. It shows a man with light coloured hair, heavy hooded eyes and a mustache, wearing a white hat and dark coat. He rests his cheek against one hand and leans on it as he looks thoughtfully in a direction just slightly to the right of the viewer. His opposite hand rests on a vivid red-orange table with the foxglove plant.]
[following the third post in text by dovewithscales, another screenshot from redshoesnblueskies of a quote from American artist/writer Ursula Vernon.]
“If ONE MORE PERSON says “What if they’d medicated Van Gogh!?” I think I’m permitted to set things on fire. If they’d medicated Van Gogh, he’d either have painted twice as much, or he’d have been happy and unproductive. And you know what? Starry Night wasn’t worth a terrible price in human misery. It’s neat. It wasn’t worth it. Sometimes I wonder if being an artist makes me jaded to ART. Because it’s not magic and it’s not mystical, it’s just paint or pixels. And it can do amazing things! But you don’t owe humanity to be miserable just so you can move paint around in interesting shapes. Jesus. Art is not some kind of Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas bargain where you agree to be miserable so everybody can go “oh! Neat!” for 5 minutes.“
Ursula Vernon, dropping the mic.
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