"There is no great genius without some touch of madness." It's a maxim we're all familiar with as we shake our heads at the antics of everyone from the late actor Oliver Reed to the recently departed King of Pop, Michael Jackson. But this quote is not from Sigmund Freud or Carl Rogers. They are the words of Aristotle, speaking about 2,300 years ago. It seems the artistic temperament has always been marked by strange behaviour. And there are few cases where this is more obvious than that of Vincent van Gogh.
Famously, the artist who painted Sunflowers and Portrait of Dr Gachet, whose paintings litter the list of the 20 most expensive artworks of all time, cut off his own ear and finally shot himself in 1890. His descent into mental breakdown has become one of the great detective stories in art history, and once again, Van Gogh is making headlines. In the final days of 2009, Martin Bailey - the author of a book and curator of exhibitions on Van Gogh - posited that the painter cut off his ear after learning of his brother's engagement. The post-Impressionist artist depended on his brother, Theo, and Bailey thinks this may have tipped him over the edge.
The fascination for scholars and art-lovers alike is that, despite (or perhaps because of) the hallucinations, the paranoia, the drinking and all the attendant problems, Van Gogh continued painting. In fact, he produced two masterpieces in the months before and after cutting off his ear: Vincent's Chair, and Gaugin's Chair. Both of these will feature in the new Van Gogh exhibition at London's Royal Academy, which opens on Saturday. The Real Van Gogh is being called the most important showcase of his work in 40 years.
The idea of the tortured artist is not confined to painters, though. Robert Schumann may have composed some of the most joyful piano music of the 19th century, but he was crippled with internal strife completely at odds with his creative output. So determined was he to become a virtuoso pianist, he invented a device to separate the tendons of the third and fourth fingers. It not only failed to help his technique, but damaged his fingers so badly he became desperate. In just one example of his increasingly bizarre efforts to dull the pain, Schumann would plunge his hand into fresh animal carcasses.
The piano career over, he turned to composing - no bad move, of course. But even then Schumann was becoming chronically depressed. It seems sadly apt that such illness coincided with his attempts to put Goethe's Faust to music: Faust, of course, is the man who makes a pact with the devil in exchange for knowledge. Schumann made his own pact: he killed himself in 1856. Happily, the film director Werner Herzog bucks the trend here: he is still very much alive. The very definition of maverick, during the making of Signs of Life in 1968 he threatened to shoot anyone who tried to stop filming. Heart of Glass saw him put the entire cast under hypnosis, while in La Soufrière he took his crew up a volcano that was threatening to erupt. Most famously, he directed Klaus Kinski at gunpoint during Aguirre, and despite Kinksi's declaring: "Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep," in his autobiography, the actor still worked with the director many more times in his career.
Why? Because, like Schumann's and Van Gogh's, Herzog's sheer talent shone through. So, is behaving in this way a consequence of extraordinary creative gifts? Or did these artists have to be mad to be able to produce such works of genius in the first place? Aristotle would suggest the latter. Scientists, too, have pointed to a gene that appears to be associated with both intelligence and schizophrenia. But the fine line between genius and madness has been romanticised to such an extent that erratic behaviour has become just another tick-box for artists who wish to be recognised. In that sense, it is increasingly difficult to tell whether the likes of Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse act the way they do because they are tortured souls or because they think that's how a creative "genius" should behave.
"We poets in our youth begin in gladness. But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." Perceptive words from William Wordsworth. And therein lies the real answer to this centuries-old conundrum. Poets, artists, musicians and writers are all, in the end, driven by the urge not just to create, but to better themselves or to rediscover the creative spark that once came so easily. They crave recognition and praise. Some deal with such pressure better than others. And some can't deal with it at all.