Is there any difference, necessarily, between madness and great art (whether painting, writing, or whatever)?
Oh, there’s definitely a difference. Serious mental illness — schizophrenia, clinical depression, hypomania, bipolar disorders — is not conducive to success in art any more than it’s conducive to success in the legal field, or accounting. Art demands discipline and a certain level of detachment, as well as technical skill and concentration, and mental illness can shred all of those things. But I have no doubt that there’s a link between certain kinds of mental illness and creativity. Too many great artists have produced work in the up (manic) cycle of a bipolar disorder, for instance, for the relationship to be discounted. Do you believe art has a responsibility to be moral? I think individuals have a responsibility to be moral, and art inevitably reflects that. There’s a big difference between the work of someone like Joel-Peter Witkin, which is extremely dark and draws on the same themes and imagery as the work of the (fictional) photographer in GL. Witkin may have used dead people
