The muses are capricious; some find inspiration at three o’clock in the morning, others in the middle of a heated conversation with strangers, and some others find it in quiet solitude. For many, solitude can be overwhelming and distressing, but for creative minds, whether in prison, illness, exile, or by choice, solitude usually proves to be a perfect setting for painting, writing, or composing, among others. This is reflected in the following artists at different times, all of whom went through periods of loneliness and isolation.
Edvard Munch
The famous author of The Scream lived through the quarantine of the Spanish flu and took the opportunity to create some works of a sickly nature, as the style that always characterized him. Among the most outstanding works is the Self-Portrait with Spanish Flu from 1919. Munch, then in his 50s, managed to capture his physical strength despite the wear and tear of illness. Unlike Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, both of whom are believed to have died from complications of the flu, Munch recovered and lived about 25 years longer.
Tracey Emin
In 1996, Tracey Emin set up shop in a closed gallery in Stockholm for two weeks with nothing but a batch of blank canvases and her art supplies. Emin wasn’t even wearing clothes and could be seen through a set of wide-angle lenses installed on the gallery walls. Emin worked through the legacies of artists she loved such as Schiele, Munch, and Yves Klein, to arrive at her own deeply autobiographical visual language. The project, called Exorcism of the Last Painting I Did, resulted in 12 large-scale canvases, seven body paintings, and 79 drawings and sketches, one of the most important milestones in her career.
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo suffered two significant physical traumas that tied her to her bed and, therefore, to the solitude of her room for long periods. At the age of six, she contracted polio, and it caused her lifelong pain. Then, 12 years later, she was severely injured when the bus she was riding in collided with a streetcar and fractured her spine and pelvis. During her long recovery, she painted her first self-portrait from her bed. Throughout her life, the painter had to spend a lot of time painting from her bed, to adapt, she had an easel and a mirror made adapted to be able to continue painting.
Ruth Asawa
Ruth Asawa was born in California but had her first artistic experiences as a teenager interned in Japanese detention camps during World War II. First entering a camp in 1942 at the age of 16, she lived in a racetrack for five months before being sent to Rohwer, Arkansas, for her 18-month detention. Although forced to live in repurposed horse stalls the teenage Asawa managed to find some inspiration by befriending several Disney cartoonists, also in detention, who taught her the basics of drawing. The artist stated at the height of her career that this experience defined her as an artist.
Gülsün Karamustafa
During the Turkish coup of 1971, the artist was arrested and imprisoned for helping political dissidents. After his release, he was banned from leaving the country for 16 years and painted his powerful series Prison Painting, 15 works made from memory depicting tender and intimate moments in the lives of his fellow prisoners.
Barbara Ess
In 2018, photographer Barbara Ess locked herself away for over a month in her apartment to recover from acute bronchitis. The artist turned to the views from her apartment and the small details of her daily domestic sphere. With that, her Shut In series was born, a set of small prints marked with silver, black and white crayons and then scanned and enlarged.
Joseph Beuys
In 1974, German-born Joseph Beuys presented I Love America and America Loves Me, a happening in which, for three days, the artist lived in a New York gallery with a wild coyote. Beuys considered the coyote to be the embodiment of American individualism, and the confinement was intended to be the artist’s symbolic reconciliation with nature. Surprisingly, the animal became tolerant of the artist’s presence and even accepted a hug at the end of the presentation.
Egon Schiele
In April 1912, Egon Schiele‘s home and studio were ransacked by local agents looking for evidence of immorality in the face of suspicion for his highly sexualized portraits. More than 100 of Schiele’s drawings were seized, and the artist was imprisoned for 24 days while awaiting trial on pornography charges. This imprisonment proved to be perhaps the most profound and emotionally damaging event in the short life of the artist, who channeled his feelings into his Prison Drawings, a series of psychologically raw compositions that are considered among the most important of his career. Schiele was eventually acquitted of the charges against him but was sentenced to an additional three days in prison after the trial for failing to keep the erotic nudes in a sufficiently secure location.
Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
The step-sisters, lovers, and avant-garde artists were living in Jersey in the Channel Islands off England in 1940 when a military blockade began. In response, the women organized Dada-inspired interventions aimed at creating dissent within the German military ranks. When they were discovered and arrested in 1944, Cahun and Moore were sentenced to death, but the punishment was never carried out.
Story originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva
