Melancholy and Art

The blend of melancholy and art is not a new concept. In fact, they can be kindred spirits. From time eternal, artists, painters, musicians and performers have used melancholy to stimulate the deepest of human emotions. Not only does it inspire the audience and form irreplaceable spiritual bonds, it lends the artist a creative prowess never seen or heard of before. Many consider it a kind of necessary awareness, of the dead, irrevocable past, the inevitable future, the dreadful present of this existence and the never ending wheel of time.

Words written with one’s own tears, colours blending with the sadness of the moon, feet thumping against one’s broken heart and fingers tingling with despair. Whether it was the Greek paintings depicting the Fall of Phaeton by Peter Paul Rubens, or Mozart blurting out his last ever composition, Requiem on his deathbed, or Shakespeare’s devastatingly touching tragedies, melancholia has been a veritably common theme in art.

And reiterating this, Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov once said, " I see nothing to treat my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art."

Miranda by John William Waterhouse

Waterhouse gained inspiration from a character called Miranda from one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, The Tempest. In the painting, she appears at the water’s edge in despair as the storm wreaks havoc with a ship and she can hear the dying cries of the passengers.

Often, certain allegories or visual metaphors are used to represent sadness. These could range from animals like crows to supernatural creatures like creeping monsters and ghosts, to darkness and the use of displeasing colors.

Not only that, we often see melancholy as a never ending, eternal and lingering feeling that will always consume an individual “possessed” with it. Other times, we solve it through simple actions, conveying the invariably transient nature of human emotions.

However, what is also not a new concept is the act of romanticizing melancholy. Throughout human history, we have observed artists portray sadness in an admirative tune, sometimes even humanizing the emotion. Either way, artists seem to be invariably in love with melancholy. This isn’t always without harm, though. To quote Victor Hugo, “Melancholy is the happiness of being sad”.

Well, some half-witted people fall so in love with the concept, they make it their entire personality. It gives you a false sense of individuality wherein you believe that you’re somehow better and more unique than most other people, leading to narcissism and also a significant deterioration in your social skills. After all, nobody enjoys being around people full of themselves. It’s only a slippery slope from there, too. It also literally romanticizes sadness, depression and other similar emotions and mental illnesses. This leads to people believing that it's a “cool” or “fun” thing to feel in such a way. Such thinking takes away from the seriousness of mental health and affects people negatively.

Although today melancholia is associated with nostalgia or longing of something of the past, we mainly understood melancholia as a physiological state or condition arising from an imbalance in the four humours. The four humours were a system of medicine adopted by ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen. They were also a part of Shakespear’s cosmology

Many artists throughout history, like Albrecht Dürer, began expressing the idea of melancholy in their work. In his engraving melancholia I, Dürer symbolised melancholy as an enigmatic and gloomy winged female figure.

Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer

The renaissance era, which is also characterised as the “golden era” of melancholy, saw a rise of melancholy inspired paintings, poems and literary works. Many 18th century poets, like John Keats, explored the existential side of melancholy in their works.

Vincent Van Gogh, one of the more prominent artists associated with melancholy, depicted his friend with a melancholy expression, in his Portrait of Dr. Gachet.

Vincent Van Gogh - Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1896)

Melancholia is very much prevalent in today’s music and literature. It’s also influenced many internet aesthetics and trends. Scroll through Tumblr for over 30 seconds and you’ll find a myriad of posts on the #sad girl aesthetic, romanticising the idea of sadness and teen angst. It mainly popularised this in 2012, with Lana Del Rey releasing her debut album Born to Die. This was an important album as it popularised melancholy in music, although melancholy in music existed way before Lana Del Rey, this popularised melancholia to a whole new generation. Lana sings about despair, love, heartbreak, death, sadness and nostalgia. This album was a major success and the single Summertime Sadness peaked at no 10 in the billboard chart. They also called Lana out for romanticising depression and glamorising mental illness in her songs. The entire “sad girl aesthetic” came to an untimely end in 2017 when Lana got rid of her whole sad girl persona and released her third studio album Lust for life.

Apart from Lana, many modern day artists don’t shy away from depicting melancholy in their songs. The 90s grunge movement influenced generations of musicians and also paved the way for punk and emo music of the 2000s. Artists often use their art as a medium to relieve themselves of feelings of grief, death and heartbreak. In this sense, art can serve as an amazing way of treatment and therapy. For instance, Sufjan Stevens, an American indie-folk artist, wrote some of his best albums like Carrie and Lowell in an attempt to grieve for the demise of his mother.

Billie Eilish rose to fame with her sad, melancholic songs like ocean eyes, lovely and when the party’s over. Her sad and relatable image resonated with many teenagers. She helped popularised sad and edgy music to the mainstream population and was a defining icon in pop music.

As the prevalence of melancholy in art steadily increases, we are entering an era where the feelings of sadness, despair and melancholy are glorified while positivity and optimism are often mocked. This increment could either be harmless, or have an everlasting impact on the health, feelings, and life of this upcoming generation. Until then, as Lana says, "We were born to die.”