Reading Reflection on A Stone for Unica Zurn

Does tragedy make art better? Does suffering make the artist more talented? or just more fascinating? These are all questions I ask myself after reading the tale of Unica Zurn. The lover of surrealist artist Hans Bellmar and an artist in her own right, Zurn's biography is one that alternately breaks your heart and turns your stomach.

So the answer to my questions, in my opinion are, sometimes, not neccessarily and definitely yes....

Sometimes hearing the story behind the artwork, the inspiration for it, can drawn us into the piece the way a cold viewing could not. Many times historians search for deeper meaning behind art works but I wonder if its because we feel the need to explain why a piece attracts us. I don't feel that there always has to be a reason one is touched by a piece, sometimes it just reaches into our inner most pysche for reasons we cannot explain. This is how two people with identical knowledge and background can look at the same piece and perhaps have totally different viewpoints.

Suffering also does not neccessarily make the artist more talented. But perhaps a dearth of extreme experience does. Very few of us can claim to have lived a life haunted by the same demons as Zurn. Today most of us would use the miracles of modern pharmacuticals to never feel the inner agony she obviously did. Why did she continued to suffer, through many hospital visits and presumably many medical interventions? This is a mystery of the mind we can never know the answer to. Maybe the medications she was offered were debilatating, maybe they made her lethargic, or maybe she just didn't like the person she was on medications.

Finally, in answer to the question if suffering makes the artist more fascinating, in my opinion, the response is affirmative. There is no price that can be put on the experiences of individuals. But if their work allows us, even for a moment to experience just a little slice of that life, be it wonderful or horrific, than that is more than just fascinating. It is a window into the soul of another living being. Whether we should be allowed in is a right they relinquish when they chose to create work. But I tend to wonder if they are compelled to allow us in so they can validate whatever exists within.