RE: Spot of the day - The Vigeland Installation - One man's artistic obsession | Madness or genius?
Interesting post (and nice photos). On the issue of genius vs madness, I would try to take one's own personal reaction to the work out of the picture and think more about labels, especially when it comes to mental health. I don't intend to sound angry, judgemental, nor pretentious in any way when I bring this up, but it seems to me that a societal theme that transcends many cultures and time itself has been to call someone "mad" if their method or end product is in any way offensive or distasteful, yet praise their "genius" or "brilliance" if they've accomplished something beautiful or beneficial.
It's an issue that's honestly very close to home for me, so I won't go on and on about it (at least now) but again, good post. Voted and followed.
Many thanks for the thoughtful comment and I am glad to have you "on-board"! :) I mostly agree to your point of view on this issue. I try not to judge much when it comes to it as I know that my thoughts on it would be very personal and subjective whilst art means different things to different people. In the the end just because I don't understand something, or care about it enough to try to, doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a point behind it or that it has no value. It wasn't really my intention to pass any judgement on whether or not the artist is a madman or a genius. Not that that could be easily debated either. As you say, these things pass through a societal filter... But then for all we know the two notions might actually be synonymous.