Stendhal, Overdose of beauty
too much perception of beauty can be disruptive to emotional stability, as shown by the effects of the Stendhal Syndrome. Six artists appreciate the issue and bring their personal experiences about the phenomenon.
On January 22, 1817, Henri Beyle, a Frenchman aged 34, employed in the military commissariat and decided to become writer, writes in the paper that is currently in Italy and plans to convert into a book: "Florence, January 22, 1817. The day before yesterday lowering the Apennines to reach Florence, my heart was pounding. What nonsense! ".
In 1979, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Magherini Graziella, director of the Department of Mental Health of Florence and the Psychiatric Service of Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, described the symptoms of the condition called Stendhal Syndrome and first diagnosed in 1982. Sweating, tachycardia, fainting, uncontrollable anxiety or, conversely, prostration. Euphoria mixed with disorientation, a feeling of aversion to a room and even irrepressible desire to harm it. Too much beauty can end up being harmful.
This assault on health, which continues to occur today, has been aptly described as "overdose of beauty." A bad indeed exquisite. Most striking is that in the time that would be expected spew forth the aesthetic pleasure ... skips the challenge from the other side, causing the momentary subject's emotional collapse, now a victim. Much earlier, in 1919, Sigmund Freud and his forays into the inner workings of the human mind, had spoken in his article "The Uncanny", something which could be associated with this, when he pointed la existencia de un no explicitado lazo entre la creación artística y el sentimiento de lo ominoso, suscitador de angustia y terror.
Seis artistas actuales revelan en este número de Descubrir el Arte en qué grado han sido víctimas de este fenómeno, y cómo combatirlo. Para Cristino de Vera, el secreto es ser humilde y observar la obra de arte como a un árbol milenario. “Tú no le miras a él, es él quien te mira a ti”. A Eduardo Arroyo el dulce veneno de lo bello no le afecta, su antídoto es sentir siempre esa emoción, esa alerta que es parte del trabajo del artista.
Guillermo Pérez Villalta, after his stay in Rome, has developed what he called the anti-Stendhal syndrome: experience art as a superb everyday.
Rafael Canogar only the anxiety felt "wonderful" once, at MoMA in New York. For his part, Juan Antonio Aguirre will always yield to the powerful force of color, and Soledad Sevilla him great pleasure to see how the two dimensions of the canvas are able to decompose and expand in space.
By José María Solé and Kristian Leahy.
This
article was published in Discover magazine art n º 114, under Art Theory
